Disagreeing Politely in Japanese: 3 Ways

After discovering 3 ways to agree in Japanese, let us now look at what you can say when your opinion differs from your counterpart’s. As briefly mentioned in the post about agreeing, sō desu ne そうですね can also be used at the beginning of your disagreeing statement. You can say: ‘Sō desu ne. Demo ne,…’ そうですね。でもね、… This roughly translates to ‘Yes, but um…’. The fact that sō desu ne reappears here, shows that in such situations it clearly is not used to express agreement with somebody. It is just a simple verbal ‘nod’ in the sense of ‘I have acoustically heard you (but don’t necessarily agree with you)’.

Moving on to a more pronounced way of disagreeing with someone: sō janai to omoun dakedo そうじゃないと思うんだけど – ‘Hmm, I don’t think so’. To omoun dakedo softens the statement of disagreement like the ‘hmm’ in English. Otherwise, it would be a very plain and strong ‘No!’.

A third strategy to present your differing opinion is by saying baai ni yoru 場合による. Baai means ‘case/situation’, turning it into something like ‘It depends on the situation’. The tactic of this expression is actually to avoid giving a clear-cut statement. However, through this act of avoidance, you also avoid agreeing completely, hence disagreeing on a certain level.

And now you can shine disagreeing politely in your future conversations!

Don’t forget to check out the following video by Dōgen to learn about more ways to disagree in Japanese!

Written by Jannick Scherrer