I just wanted to thank whoever made this website... I started off learning japanese as a self… - Feed Post by chikapusan
I just wanted to thank whoever made this website... I started off learning japanese as a self taught thing and it was very hard. >< but now that I have found this website, it has helped me so much. Arigato gozaimasu!
posted by chikapusan
Comments 9
Don't wanna poop on your parade or anything... But it's ありがとうございます or in english characters, arigatou-gozaimasu. I'm so sorry but my bitch grammar-nazi side poked out and took over, please forgive me! And good luck with Japanese!
Haha nah you're fine, I appreciate corrections and grammatical errors, it helps me in my walk through Japanese. xD and thank you! ^~^
ありがと without the final う is an irregular use of the word, but perfectly valid. http://www.nihongodict.com/w/109812/arigato/ alternate link http://jisho.org/search/arigato - :P
Since you wrote it in romaji (rōmaji/roumaji/roomazi/...), spelling it "arigato" is fine. Romaji is stupid and words are written differently depending on the version of romaji you are using. Like how the word ローマ字 itself can be written "romaji" in one version even though it has a long vowel "o".
But man, saying that ありがと is perfectly valid is like saying こんにちわ, こにちわ and こにちは are perfectly valid forms of konnichiwa. Or like saying さよなら is perfectly valid for sayounara...
The がとう on the end of ありがとう comes from the adjective がたい meaning "hard/difficult"
→ がたく (continuative form / abverbial form)
→ がたう (pre-gozaimasu version of the continuative form)
→ がとう (euphonic spelling change of the a+u to long vowel "ou")
Again, it is perfectly fine written as "arigato" because that's romaji, but ありがと is ridiculous--especially before ございます anyway. What next? おはよ for ohayou (which, of course, comes from the adjective 早い)? oh wait...
http://jisho.org/search/hayo
wth xD- Haha got it, I'm still not in the sentence structuring phase yet, but thanks for the header , even though I still don't completely understand it cx
But thanks for the tips, I appreciate it ^^ - ありがと is not only in online J-E dictionaries, but in J-J dictionaries - like, paper ones, that I use in Japan, in Japanese schools. That means, regardless of whether I personally like that version of the word, it IS valid. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it not valid.
Can I say that "irregardless" and "ain't" aren't valid because they're not standard grammar? Were that I could, but no, I cannot. The most you can say is you wouldn't use it, not that it isn't valid. - @chikapusan, Sorry for going a bit over the top with the comment, lol. Getting pretty off topic (...not that I'm planning to stop yet). ^^;
If you're interested, this site was made by and is maintained by only one person, whose name is Beeant. His profile page is user ID number 1:
http://japaneseclass.jp/user/statistics/1
@Arachkid, Yeah, I realised that "ありがと" was probably in J-J paper dictionaries too.
Dictionaries written here in England most probably list "realized" as a "perfectly valid" alternative spelling of "realised", but that won't stop me saying "realized" isn't a word in our language and disagreeing completely with the dictionary. :P
As for "irregardless", there's no way that is a word! Probably American again? Ain't nought wrong with "ain't" though, 'cept that it ain't really a single word. I use similar words like "wouldn't've" all the time, and that'd better be in the dictionary too.
Anyway, back to "ありがと"...
ありがとさん is always spelt that way (without the う), which I guess is interesting-ish. Still not sure what to think about dictionaries listing ありがと as anything other than "a common incorrect spelling" though...
Okay, how about this then: Is "ありがとございます" a perfectly valid spelling? I'd like to see any dictionary of any kind which says this is okay. "arigato gozaimasu" was the actual phrase we were originally discussing. ^^ - Will check the paper dictionaries tomorrow, end of day today. Both Oxford and Cambridge include "irregardless" in their dictionaries, last I checked, they are both British.
- Still haven't gotten around to the paper dictionaries. But by the by, if a student in the Japanese school system writes こんにちわ, it passes without a mark. Same with ありがと. At least according to the schools I have worked in (about 20, some of each - ES/JHS/SHS). Perhaps they start getting nitpicky after they enter university, but that wouldn't be where I'd choose to slap them about something like that. The encounters I had with こんにちわ were all above ES... sigh... :P
