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- "おやすみなさい。"
"おやすみなさい。"
Translation:Good night.
79 Comments
Thanks for your reply.
'お' of 'おやすみなさい' is need when you want to say 'Good night'. maybe originally the same word '休み'. But 'やすみ' without 'お' is a bit different.
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I think this is right, like in another language, in Italian we cannot say buona notte in the evening or night..because it is like a "have a good sleep / sleep well", instead we say buona sera (good evening)
please upvote miszletto again, because apparently he's right. こんばんは is used when greeting someone at evening AND night, and (お)休み(なさい); 休み = やすみ to end a conversation, to say goodnight. https://cotoacademy.com/4-basic-japanese-greetings-greeting-ohayou-konnichiwa-konbanwa-oyasumi-good-moring-evening-night-afternoon/ - "No oyasuminasai"?
@miszletto may not be factually incorrect, but there are two reasons why I will not be removing my downvote.
The first, and most egregious, is the original question they are supposedly answering is "Is おやすみ enough for informal conversation?" Not only is "no" the wrong answer, their elaboration is completely irrelevant.
Secondly, I don't know if English is their primarly language or not, but their explanation is not great.
""oyasuminasai" if you want to sleep" is a gross oversimplification of the actual usage of it, which you summarized quite well. Wanting to sleep is not the only time you might end a conversation at night.
"If you meet someone at night" is also somewhat ambiguous/potentially misleading. "Meet" could refer to meeting someone new, in which case you would still use はじめまして, even if it is nighttime. As you correctly put it, こんばんは functions as a greeting. In this day and age, you might not even be meeting up with someone, but you could still greet them with こんばんは.
Use this only when you are going to go to sleep. Not when greeting someone at night, use こんばんは, konbanwa, instead.
What exactly does the 'nasai (なさい)' stand for? I understood it is polite, but why, where does it come from?
It's actually a specific way of conjugating verbs which makes them polite commands. The -なさい conjugation is often used on other verbs by parents instructing their children, or teachers when controlling their students.
As others have pointed out, 休む（やすむ）means "to rest", and by using this conjugation, the speaker is instructing the listener to get some rest. The phrase おやすみなさい no longer carries such a direct meaning, i.e. it's just a greeting now instead of being a command, but that's where it comes from.
Wait おやすみなさい means goonight as a greeting!? Like you would say when passing by someone at 7 pm? I always tought it was more like "goodnight son" kisses his forehead
No, it is when saying goodnight to someone as you leave or they are heading to bed
As @SteveHaigh1 said, おやすみない is typically a closing greeting, rather than an opening greeting. (But it's a "greeting" nonetheless.)
So is saying "やすみ" kind of like saying "Night" like a shortened version of good night.
No, the shortened version of "good night" would be おやすみ. Without the お, it becomes the noun 休み meaning "holiday/break/rest", not a greeting.
Just a little lesson in English here: the correct translation for おやすみなさい is “goodnight”, not “good night”. When the space is present between “good” and “night”, “good” becomes an adjective that describes “night”. おやすみなさい is a phrase that is meant to be used when wishing someone a good night (the phrase is used as a farewell), so the correct translation of おやすみなさい is “goodnight”. The translation of “good night” is 良い夜 「よいよる」where 良い「よい」is an adjective (meaning “good”) and it is being used to describe the noun 夜「よる」(meaning “night”).
It is not. The greeting "good night" is short for "I wish you a good night", where "good" modifies "night".
"Goodnight" is only one word when it itself is an adjective, as in "She gave her daughter a goodnight kiss", or a noun, as in "Their goodnights were punctuated by snoring".
Also, Connor seems to be trying to translate "good night" into Japanese literally, and it just doesn't work that way. おやすみなさい is not a greeting or a farewell. It is something you say as you are literally about to go to bed, not merely part company in the nighttime. おやすみなさい is much closer to "rest now". Different languages say things in their own ways.
100% agree with your English analysis, but in my experience, おやすみなさい is a relatively common parting greeting at night as well, particularly (but not limited to) if it's understood by context that the other party is done for the day and heading home to sleep. I think it tends to be more common in more casual settings, but my point is it's not unheard of :)
Good evening is used as a greeting. Good night is used as a farewell. In particular, the おやすみ for good night means "go get some rest" or "sleep well."
Time of day.
Also, there are different ways of saying "good night" depending on whether you are merely taking your leave, or if one of you is literally about to go to bed.
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Because it's not a literal translation. It translates to 'Get rest' or as an imperative form of 'Rest'. 'Good night' just happens to be the closest thing, connotation-wise, as in, the last thing you say to someone for the day when one of you is going to bed.
Oyasumi is translated as "a break" while i recall that "nasai" is like a command, like "Have a break" Is that how it can be literally translated?
こんばんは = Good evening = konbanwa おやすみなさい = Good night = oyasuminasai
More to the point, こんばんは is for saying "hello" and "goodbye" during the evening hours and おやすみなさい is for when someone is actually going to bed. This has been discussed many times on this page already.
So since the お adds politeness and makes it somewhat formal, when i say good morning couldn't i just say はよう or is that different
That's a good question. I don't have a very satisfying answer, but you just have to treat greetings a little differently from most other words.
The phrase おはよう, also written お早う, comes from old Japanese. The original meaning is something along the lines of "how early you are".
It is never a greeting. It is only used when either you or the person you're talking to intends to go to bed to sleep.
So I hear "ma sai", but the character means "na", right? So why is that?
is this for literally laying down to sleep or just saying good bye at night? is there a difference?
Yes, there is a difference. It's only for going to bed.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/22986405?comment_id=23847824
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Is the little circle at the bottom right hand corner of the end of the phrase a period or spme other punctuation? I have seen it several rimes but never got an explanation and am confused bc they use exclamation points for some phrases but dont show the periods in the english translation. If u could help me I'd appreciate it!
Japanese and English are two entirely different, completely unrelated languages. You are not going to find easy correspondences like that (except for concrete nouns like "apple/りんご").
As explained on this page before, there are a few different phrases in Japanese that get translated into English as "good night", but they are not interchangeable.
おやすみなさい, or just おやすみ, is what you say to someone when one of you is about to literally get into bed and go to sleep. It's more closely translated as "Get some rest."
https://linguaholic.com/linguablog/oyasumi/
こんばんは is a greeting you give when you're out and about in the evening and you run into someone. It breaks down literally:
こん - this
ばん - evening
は - [topic marker]
In Japanese culture, it is polite to leave things implied. For example, you would never come right out and say that your cat is fat. Instead, you would simply remark "ちょっと。。。", which is literally "a little bit..."
Neither of these phrases directly correspond with the English "good night", and we should not expect them to. Different languages say things differently, and English and Japanese are very different.
When i tap on さ of おやすみなさい i see that the words ' year's old ' are linked to さい . So does さい mean year's old in English??? Please help me understand
The hint system doesn't work very well with Japanese because it's such a different language from English. There are a limited number of syllables in Japanese, so any given combination will be a few different homophonic words. Imagine if it gives you the word "notable" but the pop-up hints break it up as "no table".
Something like that, but only to someone whom you outrank, never to anyone who outranks you.
おやすみなさい more literally translates into a polite command: "please rest"
お is an honorific
やすみなさい is a conjugation of the verb 休む 「やす・む」"to rest, to take a break, to go to bed"
