"Let's dance!" If the late David Bowie had sung his 1983 smash hit in Japanese, he would have made it 踊りましょう (Odorimashō) or, in plain style, 踊ろう (Odorō).

And if the makers of the Japanese 1996 box-office hit "Shall we Dance?" had gone for a native title — no doubt they had good reasons not to — they might have used the same form with a question marker, making it 踊りましょうか (Odorimashō ka) or 踊ろうか (Odorō ka). No need for "let's" or "shall" or anything else, because Japanese verbs come factory-equipped with a special inflection just for such types of invitations and encouragements.

All of these ōs and shōs, and their English counterparts, fall into the group of what linguists call "hortatives" — forms intended to encourage someone to do something. A somewhat confusing point about Japanese hortatives is that it is not always clear who exactly that someone is. As with the English "let's," the default assumption is that both the speaker and the hearer are included in the encouragement. So when wife says to husband 帰りましょう (Kaerimashō, "Let's go home"), she (a) wants to leave and (b) wants him to leave too. Or think of the popular nursery rhyme with the chestnut tree that goes 仲良く遊びましょう (Naka yoku asobimashō, "Let's play nicely together"). Everyone who knows the full lyrics (no showing off — it's only four lines) will also know that both あなた (anata, you) and 私 (watashi, I) are explicitly part of this invitation.

Yet there are also cases in which only the speaker is supposed to perform the suggested action. For example, a common way of offering help is by using the phrase お手伝いしましょうか (O-tetsudai shimashō ka). While the best translation for this offer is "May I help you?" a more literal rendition would be "Shall we help you?" whether or not there is only one helper involved. The same applies to the semi-soliloquial どうしようかな (Dō shiyō kana), normally a reflection on "What shall I do?" rather than "What shall we do?"

But even more frequent is the opposite case: hortative constructions that include the hearer but exclude the speaker. When a teacher intervenes in an argument between two children by saying 喧嘩は止めましょうね (Kenka wa yamemashō ne, "Let's stop fighting, eh?"), she is by no means suggesting she is part of the argument herself. Similar calls to order in hortative format are common in public warnings and notices, such as 迷惑駐車は止めましょう (Meiwaku chūsha wa yamemashō, "Let's stop 'nuisance parking' ") or ごみ出しのルールを守りましょう (Gomidashi no rūru o mamorimashō, "Let's follow the rules of garbage disposal"). As a matter of fact, these messages are mainly addressed to the sign reader, not the sign writer.

Telling someone to do or not do something is a delicate social action that could easily smack of bossing around. The ambiguity of hortative forms comes in very handy here, because it leaves some room for interpretation about who exactly is the target of the "encouragement."

Of course, this is by no means confined to Japanese. Just think of the hospital nurse who wakes up her patients each day with "Shall we get up?" Likewise, a teacher may say "Let's practice" when in effect, it's only the students who are supposed to do so. The main difference is that in Japanese, such "let's" encouragements are much more commonplace than in English.

Given this tremendous popularity of hortatives in Japanese, there is now even a nativized version of the English "let's": the loan word レッツ (rettsu). If you should come across it, don't be surprised to find that it operates under somewhat more generous grammatical conditions. For instance, a rettsu encouragement to do one's best can be both レッツ頑張る (Rettsu ganbaru), with the verb in the infinitive, and レッツ 頑張ろう (Rettsu ganbarō), with another hortative, as if to double the weight of the encouragement.

Most popular, though, seem to be combinations where レッツ is paired up with a noun. Well-known is the phrase レッツポジティブシンキング (Rettsu pojitibu shinkingu), where "Let's think positive" in the corresponding katakana version has become "Let's positive thinking." Or the English language-learning column in a weekly children's newspaper that is titled レッツ英語 (Rettsu eigo, "Let's English") — maybe not the best way to start your English lesson, didactically speaking. Even combinations such as レッツイチゴ狩り (Rettsu ichigo gari, "Let's strawberry picking") or レッツ餃子パーティ (Rettsu gyōza party, "Let's dumpling party") are possible. Bon appetit!

As these examples show, Japanese is in fact a very hortative-friendly language. Saying it the "let's" way can serve a wide variety of everyday purposes, from prohibiting parking to larking about under chestnut trees.