I’m currently learning Japanese via Genki textbook and one thing came up that wasn’t gone over by the textbook.
I learned that we can express the purpose of movement via verb stem + に行く/来る/etc. For example, レストランに食べに行きます。If I want to turn this into extra-modest/humble form, how would it go?
I thought of いただきに参ります or 食べに参ります but was unsure if either would be correct. What do you guys think?
2 comments
This is an area that might even trip up native speakers, but I feel like 食べに参ります is sufficient for most cases. I think that いただきに参ります would be more often used for receiving/getting something rather than eating.
(Not saying that you did this in your example, but as a general reminder, don’t forget that double keigo is also wrong, rather than making a sentence extra modest.
**In my non-native speaker opinion**, 食べに参ります sounds fine, whereas いただきに参ります sounds wacky. You usually use いただく in response to an action someone ‘higher up’ than you did, as a way to humbly thank/accept the action.
If you were talking in the context of going to a restaurant, nobody higher up than you is doing a particular action for you, hence no need to use いただく. If you were talking to your boss, for example, who was like “hey I brought some snacks for the office”, you would just use いただく without needing to express the 参る part