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Sometimes a Japanese person will say to me:

> そんなに丁寧な言葉を使わなくてもいいんですよ。

This is an invitation to be less formal. But how much less formal? As I have
experienced, sometimes [unintentional
gaffes](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/94/how-rude-is-it-to-say)
can be committed blithely as one learns to navigate the treacherous waters of
the politeness hierarchy. Note that the expression itself uses です even though
it is a request to use less formal speech, and that is the level of politeness
I would normally be using. So I find the whole matter confusing. The eternal
politeness dance ...

Now, here's the catch: I feel it would be rude to ask something like "What
level of politeness do you suggest I use?" That might come off as sarcastic
or, worse, a rebuke. Any advice?

**Edit to add more detail**

An example of this kind of occurrence: At a lunch after a business meeting, I
was using standard TV keigo: _desu_ , - _masu_ , plus _o-_ and _go-_ where
appropriate, plus a bit of _nasaimasu_ and _itashimasu_ to senior people. The
gentleman seated across from me (on about the same level as me), said this
rather matter-of-factly. Honestly, I really wish he hadn't said this. It was
like saying "Don't worry about the snakes, just stick your hand in there."
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politeness
"You don't have to be so polite." Really?
As others have said, this is a really hard question to answer because it is
always so context-dependent. This is the sort of thing that Japanese people
themselves struggle with, to an extent, especially when people from different
generations or backgrounds (Tokyo vs Osaka etc.) are speaking with each other.
All those "introduction to keigo" books in the bookstore aren't just there for
light reading.

Here's an analogy: You grow up playing classical piano. In your 20s, you get
into jazz. Your fundamentals and technique are fine, but you don't yet have
your own _sound_. One day, you're at a jam session playing standards. A
saxophone player who also part-owns the place comes over to you in a break and
says, "You know, you don't have to play so _in_ all the time." How do you
change your playing style?

Your options are pretty similar as a language learner and a musician:

  * Listen. Pay close attention to how others around you talk, both on your side and the other side, higher status and lower status, very familiar to each other and recently introduced. If you hear differences than you think you can adopt...
  * Experiment. Take it one step at a time: Try dialing back some of the less common honorific and humble forms first, especially if others on your side and in your position are too.
  * Observe. People probably won't react in immediate, visually obvious ways unless you do something really bad. But they might react in more subtle ways, by engaging with what you say more deeply, and asking you more direct questions -- or the opposite.
  * Woodshed. Practice as much as you can. If you haven't got a tutor or anything, or friends/family who'll let you practice on them, buy books and do the exercises. There are good books and bad books, but even a bad book should give you a better idea of how to make fine-grained changes. And...
  * Find a mentor. If you can enlist someone in your company to help you out, great. If they are your supervisor, even better! Ask them after the meeting how you went. (Ask them questions like this!) Copy what they do. You'll find your own style eventually.

And one final meta-point: Be aware that sometimes people don't say exactly
what they mean. Some people really do want to speak more casually (I have
seen, in a business context, Customer A specifically ask if Supplier B
wouldn't mind using "san" rather than "sama", and I believe they meant it).
Others think they do but don't like the results. Others may want to speak very
casually at lunch but very formally in the meeting room. It all comes down to
observation and experience.
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Matt's answer is a good practical approach for learning _how_ to deal with
this issue, but I thought it might be helpful to offer a suggestion about
_why_ this is happening to you.

I attended a lecture at Temple University on this very topic, and the
professor giving the lecture had the theory that not only are politeness and
closeness inversely correlated, but also that perception of your Japanese
ability was matched to how familiar you are with casual forms of speech.

Those of us learning Japanese are often beaten over the head with the premise
that Japan is a society that holds politeness, formality, and ritual in high
regard, and so we must conform not only to grammatical rules, but also to
strictly defined behaviours. There is, of course, some truths in that.

However, I fear a lot of the time we Japanese learners over compensate by
staying polite and/or formal for fear of making a small verbal mistake that
will result in everyone in a thirty yard radius committing ritual suicide.

What a Japanese person is trying to tell you by being "less polite" is not
that the rules for polite ritual interaction are different from what you
thought.

The Japanese person is trying to tell you that you can relax and take on a
more friendly tone, as your politeness makes you sound like you're keeping a
distance.

It's also an encouragement, because (according to the aforementioned
professor's theory) it means they believe you might be holding onto a textbook
approach even though your Japanese is good enough to support more natural
conversation.

As a result, asking how polite you should be defeats the purpose because the
question itself asserts to your listeners that you do not know them well
enough to ease into the right mode. If someone asked me in English "Hey man,
how rude can I be to you?" I'm not sure how I would answer, but I would know
that the person asking doesn't seem to know me.

The key is to let go of your worry that there is a rule book that has a
diagram covering each kind of personal and business relationship and what
level of formality and politeness to use. And I say that knowing full well
there are keigo manuals and books for Japanese learners that make it seem like
there are. Those are guides to start the uninitiated.

More importantly, there is no snake pit. In general I think we have to dispell
this notion that Japanese are fragile and will shatter at impoliteness. Trust
them that they have a feel for the language that is good enough that they can
detect that you tried and missed, and did not mean a genuine offense.

It's an art, not a science, and you will be able to roll with it if you go by
feel. In English, you know when to say "Excuse me, would you mind terribly if
I ask you the time?" and "Dude, what time is it?" The ability to make such
distinctions in Japanese, and in fine gradients, comes with experience.
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"Sometimes?" This happens to you often? Sounds like you are forgetting to
slack off the polite form after a while to show familiarity. Ease into that
俺とお前の関係. But if someone is your superior at work, I think you should keep it
going.
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