I don't think the example of "oyomi nasaru" is correct deferential keigo. o-verb suru is always humble, and nasaru is just the deferential form of suru. I have taken a lot of keigo classes and while it is often seen as confusing by many people, even Japanese, the rules are actually pretty simple once you learn them.
I removed the page quote due to the attitude of the article. While it's technically correct, I doubt the person who wrote it deserves any publicity, and the overall tone pretty much discredits everything he's writing.
I'd reccomend finding a better page quote for this trope.
Is this a good place to ask if someone is using keigo? Because I have a couple of instances where a character might be using that register, but I don't know enough about Japanese to tell. (Or I only have it in English, so even if I knew it, I wouldn't have the Japanese in front of me to say.)
The first is from Azumanga Daioh. Kagura, before asking if reindeer exist, starts by saying something that was dubbed as "Might I ask you something?" Tomo asks her, "What's with... being so formal?" I could listen to the Japanese, but that wouldn't tell me anything.
In Yotsuba&!, Yotsuba meets the father of the Ayase household for the first time, and says, "Your daughters help me out so much. Thank you for everything." I understand her speech is written in hiragana, so I could likely work out what words she's using (thanks to a hiragana chart), but again...
How — and when — do you tell a philosophy it's adopted? What do you do when it wants to meet its birth adherents? Hide / Show RepliesIt's difficult to tell from this... in the latter case the character may or may not use keigo, depending on her personality, her relationship with the person he's talking to, etc. In the first case it could be anything from the character using polite/respectful speech or addressing the other in a formal way.
Per TRS, this was merged with UsefulNotes.Japanese Language and disambiguated. In addition, a trope for the association of keigo with formal characters will be split off.
Edited by GastonRabbit Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.