Metaknowledge around Misconceptions about Japanese Grammar

Double Honorifics (Niju-keigo)

• The Misconception: The perception that "it is grammatically incorrect in theory but compromised and used in the real world" is a textbook fallacy.

• The Reality: It has been widely used historically since ancient times. It is more accurate to say that "it is grammatically acceptable, but its acceptability and level of politeness vary depending on the situation and collocation. In other words, it can be excessively polite."

The Nature of Textbooks: The Trade-off Between "Efficiency" and "Accuracy"

• The sentence "Textbooks cherish efficiency at the expense of accuracy and naturalness(, which is a reasonable strategy, though)" lies at the core of this argument.

• Because even advanced learners believe that "textbooks are always right," when they encounter discrepancies with real-world Japanese, they tend to misinterpret the situation, mistakenly thinking: "People used to speak exactly like the textbooks, but reality has diverged over time."

• If the underlying premise—that "textbooks are not perfectly accurate to begin with"—becomes widely shared knowledge, the burden on instructors would be significantly eased.

Other Grammatical Points

• Gender Differences in Sentence-Ending Expressions: Rather than reflecting actual usage, these gendered expressions heavily rely on a shared illusion  (an archetype in media) within the realm of standard Japanese. Because of this, it is highly questionable whether they should even be taught as part of practical Japanese language education.

• Interpretation of Te-iru: Technically, any verb can be either progressive or resultative (even including the infamous 死んでいる), but in practice, there’s a huge preference depending on the specific verb. Without context, 行っている leans toward the resultative meaning. The progressive meaning isn't extremely rare, though you would usually use other expressions. In short, it depends.

• は meaning "as for": A tentative explanation to avoid digging into double-subject sentences.

• The in-out-group theory: invites misunderstanding that giving between third parties always uses やる instead of くれる, and can't explain these examples.

1. 私がくれたからといって、ずっと持っている必要はない
2. 私にお金をやったからいいというものでもない