Relaying a Message in Japanese: Dengon and Reporting

Taking a message on the phone

The sequence is fixed enough to learn as a script. You establish that the person is unavailable, say when they will be back, offer to take a message, take it, read it back, and give your own name so the caller knows who has it. That last step is standard practice in Japanese offices and is often the one learners skip.

Offering to take a message before the caller asks is the expected move. Dengon o oazukari shimashō ka, shall I take a message, positions you as helpful rather than as an obstacle, and it is what a Japanese colleague would say.

Confirming what you wrote down

Reading the message back is not optional in a Japanese office, and it is where mistakes are caught. Names, numbers and dates are the three items that must be confirmed, because they are the three that cannot be reconstructed from context if you get them wrong.

For names, ask how the kanji are written if you will need to write them. For numbers, read them back digit by digit. For dates, say the day of the week alongside the date, because that catches an off-by-one immediately.

Fukushō, repeating back, is a named practice rather than a personal habit. Announcing that you are doing it is normal and expected.

Reported speech: to itte imashita and its relatives

To relay what someone said, attach the quotation particle to to a plain-form clause and follow it with a verb of saying. The clause inside stays plain even when your sentence is polite, which is the rule learners most often break: ashita kuru to itte imashita, not ashita kimasu to itte imashita.

The verb of saying changes with the status of the person who spoke. Itte imashita is neutral and covers most cases. Osshatte imashita is honorific and used when reporting a customer or a senior person. Mōshite orimashita is humble and used when reporting your own side to an outsider.

Passing the message on

When you deliver the message, lead with who it is from and what they want, then give the detail. Your colleague needs to decide whether to act now, and burying the request at the end of a chronological account makes that harder.

Keep the caller's words distinguishable from your own summary. Signalling with to no koto desu, they said that, or to itte imashita separates what was said from what you inferred, which matters if the message is later acted on.

To no koto desu is the most useful phrase in this section. It marks a whole statement as reported without needing a verb of saying.

The honorific trap in relayed messages

Japanese in-group and out-group rules apply to the whole message, and they flip depending on who you are talking to. To an outside caller, your own manager is uchi, inside, so you drop the title and use humble forms about them. To your colleague afterwards, the same manager is senior and takes honorifics again.

This is a real source of errors, because the message is the same and the language is not. The practical rule is to ask who is listening rather than who is being described, and to reset the honorifics each time the audience changes.

Notice that the caller keeps their honorifics in every row. It is only your own side whose language changes with the audience.

Written messages and chat

Most relayed messages now travel by chat or email rather than a paper note, and the conventions compress. The expected shape is source, request, deadline, and your name, in that order, on four short lines. Long prose is unhelpful for something a colleague reads between meetings.

Keep the reported-speech markers even in writing. A chat message that says the deadline is Friday reads as your statement; one that says they said the deadline is Friday makes the source explicit and protects everyone if it turns out to be wrong.

When you could not take the message properly

Sometimes the line is bad, the caller speaks fast, or you simply do not follow. The wrong response is to guess and pass on a half-message; the right one is to say clearly what you did and did not get, both to the caller and to your colleague.

With the caller, asking them to slow down is entirely acceptable and expected of anyone on a bad line. With your colleague, flagging your uncertainty explicitly is what lets them decide whether to call back and check.