どう for friends, いかが for customers and guests

Keep どう for people on your own level: friends, family, classmates, coworkers you know well. Switch to いかが when the question travels upward or outward, toward a customer, a guest, a client, or someone senior. Both words ask “how.” What changes is the distance the word puts between you and your listener.

The overlap between the two is nearly complete. いかが asks about a state or an opinion, which is exactly the ground どう covers, and of the two, いかが is the politer word. That one difference decides nearly every choice in this lesson.

Where どう does the work

どう treats how something is, or how to do something, as an open unknown. It covers three questions you ask constantly: how is it, what do you think, and what should I do. It is a common word, commonly listed at N5, and it carries most everyday conversation.

Checking in with a friend who moved last month:

Asking a teammate’s opinion:

Asking for a method, here on the phone with a dental clinic:

どう also makes quick offers and suggestions between people who can relax around each other. During a late study session:

Stretched into どうだい, the offer sounds plainly informal, the kind of line old friends trade over drinks.

いかが aims the same question at someone you respect

いかが asks about states and opinions too, and it has a use of its own: inviting and offering. When you hold something out to another person and want the offer to sound polite, いかが is the word. A client arrives early for a meeting, and you bring tea:

The same word handles careful questions in business. When you check a plan, a date, or a decision with a customer or a superior, the model phrase is いかがでしょうか. Writing to a client about next week’s schedule:

If a polite offer comes to you and the answer is no, you can decline an offer politely without a blunt refusal.

Think of the two words as the same question in different clothes. どう turns up in sneakers; いかが arrives in a pressed jacket. The outfit changes only one thing: how much respect the asking shows.

Two politeness dials

Politeness here moves on two separate dials. The first is the ending: でしょうか asks a touch more politely than ですか, so どうでしょうか sits one step above どうですか.

The second dial swaps the question word itself. Polite business speech regularly replaces a plain question word with a more formal one; the standard line for asking a visitor’s business, どのようなご用件(ようけん)でしょうか, upgrades its question word the same way. Swapping a whole word rather than an ending is a familiar move in polite Japanese, the move behind polite words for here and this. Turn both dials up and you get いかがでしょうか, the shape you will meet in shops, emails, and meetings.

When いかが casts doubt

いかが has one more job. In the pattern いかがかと思(おも)う, the speaker finds something questionable. The sentence borrows a question word, but it works as a soft objection. A shop owner overhears a careless remark about a customer:

When いかが sits inside と思(おも)う like this, the speaker is voicing a polite objection rather than asking a question, and nothing is being offered.

Spelling: expect hiragana

どう is normally written in kana. Its kanji spelling, 如何(いかが), is marked as rare, and its reading is irregular: the reading belongs to the whole word’s meaning, so you cannot assemble it character by character. いかが shares the same written form, 如何(いかが), in dictionary headwords. Write どう in hiragana yourself, and when 如何(いかが) turns up in formal or old-fashioned writing, let the sentence tell you which of the two words it spells.