Gengo Girls #54: There’s A Song Stuck In My Head

Gengo Girls #54: There's A Song Stuck In My Head

Interesting trivia: In Japanese you can say “thank you” in the past tense by conjugating “gozaimasu”. You then use the past tense “thank you” for favors that people did in the past. Example: If someone gave you a book you would use the present tense “thanks” because it was happening right now. But if someone mailed you a book you would use the past tense “thanks” the next time you saw them because the favor of mailing you the book was also a past tense event.

But wait! We don’t know how to conjugate for the past! I guess we’d better do something about that.

Vocabulary

ありがとう = thank you

どうも = thanks

ございま = extremely formal, ancient verb. Usually shows up in set phrases.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #54

There’s A Song Stuck In My Head

Blue: Here’s that book you lent me the other day.

Yellow: ありがとう

Blue: Did you know you can make ありがとう even more polite by adding どうも to the front or ございます to the end?

Blue: You can even be super polite by using both at once: どうも ありがとうございます

Yellow: You’re going to need to do a lot more than return a book if you want more than plain ありがとう out of me.

Yellow: Like buying me lunch.

Yellow: Let’s do that. You buy me lunch and then I can practice using どうも ありがとうございます.

Blue: I think I’ll pass.