Greetings
Greetings are considered to be of extreme importance in Japanese culture. Students in elementary and secondary schools are often admonished to deliver greetings with energy and vigor. A lazy greeting is regarded with the type of disdain that would accompany a limp handshake in parts of the West.Simply walking off without saying anything is frowned upon. When parting, instead of simply saying goodbye, it is common to make a wish to meet again.
The most common greetings are ohayō gozaimasu (おはようございます?) or "good morning", used until about 11am but may be used at any time of day if it is the first occasion that day the two people have met; konnichiwa (こんにちは?) which is roughly equivalent to "good day" or "good afternoon" and is used until late afternoon; konbanwa (今晩は?) or "good evening"; and oyasuminasai (お休みなさい?) or "good night". Different forms of these greetings may be used depending on the relative social statuses of the speaker and the listener; see respectful language below.
Various Sources
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2 comments:
We're enjoying reading your blog, Sensei! Are the question marks there because you're not sure about the correct Japanese characters? Our little guy says your hiragana for ohayō gozaimasu, konnichiwa, and oyasuminasai are all correct (including the kanji in the last one). He's not sure about konbanwa,since they haven't learned those kanji yet.
Sara,
Thanks for reading ! The question marks are a computer glitch with blogger and my pc's japanese font.
GReg
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