Many people who started learning Japanese are confused when they found out that the famous Japanese greeting, Konnichiwa, is end with は (ha) not わ (wa).
First of all, no it is not a misprinted on your book, it’s truly は.
In fact, you will also find out later on that Konbanwa which means good night, is also end with the exact same は.
It doesn’t make sense at first, but it’s quite logical if you have learned about Topic marker particle .
In case that you haven’t, we recommend you to read this lessons here Topic Marker particle は.
So… the confusing は is actually a particle. In this case, as a particle, it is read as WA, not HA.
Yes, because it’s actually the contracted version of the real lengthy sentence!!
They are actually an abbreviation (a lazy version) of a long sentence. “Konnichi wa gokiken ikaga desu ka?” which means “How are you feeling today?”. so the KON NICCHI means “This day” while the は is actually being used as particle in that sentence. In the case of KONBANWA, KON BAN meaning “This night/evening”.
Long story short, time passes and the polite long sentence is being abbreviated into just KON NICHI WA and KON BAN WA.Literally, you could say Konnichiwa / Konbanwa is like saying “How is your day/night?”. But in this modern era, the usage has become more or less similar to “Hello/Good Evening/Good night”.
We hope this helps clear things up. For a more complete explanation, you could check this article about why sometimes は is read as WA
Have a great day! ｡ﾟ✶ฺ.ヽ(*´∀`*)ﾉ.✶ฺﾟ｡
Holiday is near and it’s the month of love & gifts! (more…)
Today's lesson will help you to get a topic to converse with your friend about…
Let's learn a lot of useful Japanese greetings (Aisatsu) (more…)
Let’s talk about human body in Japanese! (more…)
Below you can find a lot of useful phrase that will help you travel in…
View Comments
Both links in the article point back to the article itself, rather than the "expanded explanation" promised.
It's been fixed :D Thank you for reporting :D
I was wondering about this the other day, I'm really glad I found this article; but now I'm left wondering as to why some Japanese people do use the "wa" at the end, instead of "ha." I've seen a few videos and some posts where it's been spelled both ways, so it really baffled me, and still does so a fair bit; would you say they are misspelling it, or is there another reason for them doing so?
Could you explain the sample sentences and context ? We might able to help explain it :D
hi, the topic marker particle link you have here just takes you to this page again!
Fixed ! Thanks for reporting :D