Do people use the ending ～まい？


I see the ending ～まい all over the place in the JLPT books and in example
phrases but I can't actually think of an example of somebody saying it or
writing in an email (from SMS style messages to work messages of varying
formality). (I live in Tokyo, to rule out dialect issues)

e.g.

> 仕方あるまい

Do people actually use the term まい in everyday speech / writing?




No, it's not really used in everyday speech. "Everyday writing" is a little
ambiguous because it's mostly the form of the writing that determines the
tone. To address your edit, it would be weird to use まい in a message to your
friend, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it in work correspondence if only
because that tends to be more formal in general. The more formal it is the
less unusual it is for a term like まい to appear. Generally it's just not a
spoken term and is reserved for more formal situations, however if you were to
use it in conversation you wouldn't be misunderstood or anything.

In my experience though it is a term that just isn't used much at all
regardless. You should be able to recognize it, of course, but I don't think
I've ever seen it used outside of writing, and even then I think I usually see
it as a line from a character with a particularly formal speaking style or
something of that sort. As the comments note, it has a very old fashioned sort
of feeling, although it does make some modern appearances in the phrase
～じゃあるまいし.




No, it's not really used in everyday speech. "Everyday writing" is a little
ambiguous because it's mostly the form of the writing that determines the
tone. To address your edit, it would be weird to use まい in a message to your
friend, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it in work correspondence if only
because that tends to be more formal in general. The more formal it is the
less unusual it is for a term like まい to appear. Generally it's just not a
spoken term and is reserved for more formal situations, however if you were to
use it in conversation you wouldn't be misunderstood or anything.

In my experience though it is a term that just isn't used much at all
regardless. You should be able to recognize it, of course, but I don't think
I've ever seen it used outside of writing, and even then I think I usually see
it as a line from a character with a particularly formal speaking style or
something of that sort. As the comments note, it has a very old fashioned sort
of feeling, although it does make some modern appearances in the phrase
～じゃあるまいし.

