In Japanese language, there are many words that cannot be translated into English. It cannot be translated into a word so you have to rephrase it because it just means SO much more than one word. If you try to find direct translations for these type of words, it would loose its true meaning and nuance.

These words are major headaches for Japanese-learners, but they are very important to learn because these are the words that really show our Japanese culture and customs. They are words that explain why the Japanese language is a language full of appreciation, empathy, and thoughtfulness.

In this article, you’ll learn the word OTSUKARESAMADESU.

It’s O-TSU-KA-RE-SA-MA-DE-SU.

OTSUKARESAMA-DESU is a greeting

This is not a new word. In fact it’s been used for years. However, experts have noticed that it’s usage has diversified. Nowadays, you can hear it all over the place just like ARIGATO.

If you work in a Japanese company, you would hear people saying this to each other as they start a meeting, pass by each other, take a phone call, or maybe even see each other in the restrooms!

Is it only for company workers?

Nope.

You can go for a nice drink with your friends and instead of going KANPAI! (cheers) you can say “OTSUKARE!” A mum can say to her child who’s home from school like “OTSUKARE! How was school today?”

It’s a magical word used everywhere! So what does this mean?

Showing respect & appreciation to your hardships

For those of you who can read KANJI, おつかれさまですwould be お疲れ様です. Yes, it’s actually saying O-TSUKARE-SAMA-DESU.

Let’s break it up into 3 parts. See below.

1. O is something you put at the beginning of a word when you want to make it polite. (It’s actually more complicated but let me just put it the simple way in this case)
2. TSUKARE is literally “fatigue, tiredness”
3. SAMA is a formal and polite term to put after a name, equivalent to “Mr.””Mrs.”etc.

So all together, you can see that it is using the polite form to the word fatigue to show empathy, appreciation and consideration to the person you are talking to.

But today Japanese people use it as a greeting word without thinking of this grammatical meaning too much.

From Erika

You can remember OTSUKARESAMADESU as a magical word you can use to show that you are caring for them. Oh, but there are certain situations where it would be rude to use this word, so please do be careful and choose to whom you are saying it to! I know, this nuance stuff is really hard to learn. Yep, I guess it just all comes to everyone by experience.

Let me give you some examples in my future posts:)

***