Thank you message & Japanese lesson :)

Hitting two birds with one stone! Here's one video from Japanagos which targets two objectives: to thank you for your participation in the campaign (www.yahoo.co.jp/3.11) and to give Japanese 'thank you' lesson. Honto ni arigato gozaimashita Chika! An overwhelming thank you message and a conversational Japanese lesson you shouldn't miss.

Highlights

"Today I just wanted to thank you guys for taking the time yesterday to search 3.11 at the Yahoo Japan website."

"Another thing you might want to keep in mind is that in Japanese there is a present and past tense 'Thank you'. The present tense is 'arigato gozaimasu' and the past tense is 'arigato gozaimashita'."

"I did read somewhere that it should always be 'arigato gozaimasu' like the present tense because you are still thankful like your appreciation is still present whatever that person did for you might have been in the past but your feeling of thanks is still present so you should say 'arigato gozaimasu'. So, I read that too."

"There's you know conversational languages that are really difficult to grasp because it kinda changes and people have their own way to use it. With the casual form 'arigato' there is no present or past tense so you use it more or less like 'thanks' in English."

"I think Japanese thank you is a lot more simple and that there isn't like 'thanks a lot', 'thanks a ton', 'thanks a million', 'thanks a bunch', or 'thank you very much', 'thank you so much'. There aren't that many variation. If you say arigato gozaimasu, if you say honto ni arigato gozaimasu, I kinda covers it we don't tweak it too much unless I don't know how to tweak it."

appreciation

Noun. a feeling of grateful for something

conversational

Adjective. appropriate to an informal conversation

grasp

Verb. to understand

casual

Adjective. informal

tweak

Verb. to change something slightly in order to improve it

japanagos, 15-04-17 15:31, 15-04-23 19:51, Marz