Special Sonkeigo Verbs

The productive お〜になる and 〜られる patterns can honorify almost any verb — but the verbs you actually use most in respectful speech override them with special, memorized forms. 行く becomes いらっしゃる, not ×お行きになる; 言う becomes おっしゃる, not ×お言いになる; 食べる becomes 召し上がる. This is the same logic as English irregular verbs: frequency drives irregularity. The verbs you say ten times an hour (be, go, come, say, do, eat, see, know, give) are exactly the ones with suppletive honorifics — so this small closed list, not the templates, carries the bulk of real 尊敬語（そんけいご）. This page is your map; each verb has its own page for the details.

The reference set

Every one of these elevates the other person (a superior, a customer, a そと-outsider who is the subject). Never use them about yourself — for your own actions you humble down with 謙譲語（けんじょうご） instead.

Notice the far-right column. For most of these verbs there is a matched pair: one word to raise the other person, one to lower yourself. That pairing is the deep structure of keigo — see the axis mapping table for the whole grid. Get these opposites in your ear and you can honor a customer and humble yourself in the same breath, which is exactly what service Japanese requires.

The ラ行 quirk: 〜います, not 〜ります

Here is the one irregularity that unites the messiest members of the set. Five honorific verbs end in ～る and look like ordinary godan ラ行 verbs — but their polite ます-form is 〜います, not the ×〜ります you would predict:

These five — いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, なさる, くださる, ござる — are the whole club. The ～り of the stem softens to ～い before ます (a historical sound change frozen into the modern language). Once you internalize this single fact, the top honorifics stop being a bag of exceptions and become predictable: their dictionary form is 〜る, their te-form is 〜って (いらっしゃって, おっしゃって, なさって, くださって), and their ます-form is 〜います. Learn the pattern once, apply it five times.

When a verb has no special form

The list is closed, and most verbs are not on it. For everything else — 読む, 使う, 待つ, 決める — you fall back on the productive routes: お読みになる／読まれる, お使いになる／使われる, お待ちになる／待たれる. That division of labor is the whole system: memorize the high-frequency suppletives here, generate the rest with お〜になる or 〜られる.

Why these verbs, and not others

The list is not arbitrary — it is a frequency list in disguise. Compare English: the verbs with irregular pasts (go/went, be/was, say/said, do/did, eat/ate, see/saw, give/gave, know/knew) are the very verbs you use most, precisely because heavy use preserves old, irregular forms while rare verbs get regularized. Japanese honorifics work the same way. The actions you perform toward superiors constantly — greeting them (be/come/go), quoting them (say), describing what they do (do), offering them food (eat/drink), pointing them to something (see), checking what they know (know), thanking them for giving (give) — are exactly the ones that kept special honorific words. Learn this closed set and you are not memorizing trivia; you are covering the actual verbs of respectful conversation.

Alternatives and register

A few of these verbs offer more than one honorific, differing in weight and channel — useful to recognize even before you produce them:

The spoken forms (いらっしゃる, くださる) dominate face-to-face keigo; the heavier ones (賜る, お越しになる) cluster in ceremonies, signage, and formal correspondence. Don't force the heaviest form everywhere — over-formality reads as stiff or sarcastic among colleagues.

Common mistakes

Mistake 1 — regularizing a verb that has a special form. Learners apply お〜になる to a verb that already owns a suppletive honorific.

The special form always wins over the template. お言いになる, お行きになる, お見になる, お食べになる all sound like a foreigner reaching for a rule where a native reaches for a memorized word.

Mistake 2 — conjugating the ラ行 verbs as if they were regular.

Mistake 3 — using a sonkeigo verb about yourself. This is the deepest error, because it elevates you.

Mistake 4 — stacking a template onto a special verb (二重敬語).

The special verbs are complete honorifics on their own. Adding お〜になる or 〜られる on top produces 二重敬語 — see the exceptions there, since a few doubled forms (お召し上がりください) have become entrenched.

Key takeaways

• The honorifics of Japanese's highest-frequency verbs are irregular suppletives you must memorize — frequency drives irregularity, just like English strong verbs.
• Each pairs with a humble mirror for your own actions (いらっしゃる↔おる／参る, おっしゃる↔申す, 召し上がる↔いただく) — learn the pairs, not the singles.
• Five ラ行 verbs — いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, なさる, くださる, ござる — take 〜います, never 〜ります. One rule closes the biggest irregularity.
• Verbs not on the list use the productive お〜になる / 〜られる routes instead.
• The special forms are already honorific — never stack a template on top (×召し上がりになる) and never use them about yourself.