Where can I use gozaimasu?

I was wondering like can I use gosaimasu after konnichiwa or like sumimasen? would show more respect or it wouldn’t be used like this?

It wouldn’t be used like that. For the beginner it’s best just to treat ありがとうございます and おはようございます as special cases[*]. Eventually you’ll get round to learning about keigo (super polite Japanese), and ございます does have some uses as part of that system, but only along with a set of other forms and sentence patterns. Those will all make more sense if you learn them after “normal” Japanese so you can think of them as “this is the super polite variant of this more normal way to say something”.

[*] They’re kind of special cases even in a non-simplified-for-beginners sense: they’re adjectives being inflected to add this politeness suffix, but it only gets used with a small set of adjectives to form basically fixed phrases. Using the pattern with some other adjective would sound weird and archaic. おめでとうございます is the only other common one I can think of offhand.

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Bunpro’s article on the subject: ございます (日本語能力試験 N4) | Bunpro

ございます is a combination of the (special-class) verb, ござる (御座る in its kanji form), and the auxiliary verb ます. It is considered polite speech, and is directly equivalent to ある (or いる).

こんにちは and すみません are already “full” sentences, in the case of こんにちは it’s effectively a sentence fragment that became a set phrase (note that it means 今日は, “regarding today”).

すみません is already a conjugated form of 済む. In informal contexts you can see すまない instead (simple negative). ございます doesn’t make sense here for the same reason that you wouldn’t randomly stuff an ある or いる at the end.

ありがとうございます comes from 有難う, as in “having hardship” and then ございます is effectively a polite way to say “exist”. So it means “having had hardships” or something to that extent, acknowledging that the interlocutor must have gone through difficulties to do something, whence the “thank you” meaning. It’s the same idea behind お疲れ様, an other way to say thank you.

ございます is not just a sentence ender meant to turn a sentence more polite, it’s a word with a specific meaning that can only be used in specific contexts.

As @pm215 says, early on it’s better to ignore these details and just remember a few set expressions like ありがとうございます that make use of it.

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It’s gozaimasu though :sweat_smile:

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Though for a fun hobby, you too can sound like a samurai (and probably amuse any strangers you meet on the street) by replacing です in your sentences with でござる.

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I was watching きんいろモザイク last week, and for some reason they had the stereotypical westerner character pronounce it as ごじゃいます。I could see someone doing ごさいます, but I guess it wasn’t clear to the animators what kind of mistakes a English speaker would make.

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Yeah, I think they might be projecting there. In kunrei-shiki romanization (the type of romanization that Japanese students are exposed to in school, for instance in how to type on a qwerty keyboard), the sounds that we would write with “j” in revised Hepburn are written with “z.” So, in kunrei-shiki, “romaji” is “romazi.”

I wonder if they imagined that this leads to some confusion for foreigners. It certainly leads to some confusion among Japanese about how to spell some romanized Japanese words in English (like when writing about foods they like).

But maybe there’s some European accent that would make that mistake as well.

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I only refer to myself with わたくし anyway.

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People suck at dealing with foreign accents in general. Since they don’t have a good idea of the phonology of foreign languages, they extrapolate poorly and often completely misunderstand what sounds are or aren’t difficult for them to pronounce or which grammatical construction would be especially awkward.

I notice that all the time with fake French accents in American movies and shows. My favorite being when a supposedly French character fails to use the correct word in English, even though it’s literally the same word you would use in French.

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In the case of Kiniro Mosaic, they were very clear the character was from the UK :slight_smile:

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Yeah, stage oirish is also a thing, even within the same language. To the point that you used to have Irish actors have to put on a fake Irish accent to sound more Irish to American audiences in like the 70s/80s.

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I see, just wasn’t discounting the possibility that someone, somewhere could make the mistake for real, even if the creators attributed it to the wrong nationality.

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Ah what a classic. When the english characters have a better japanese accent than their english accent. I mean suspension of disbelief and all that. I should rewatch that show, all I was really able to catch when I first watched it was Karen using です too much.

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Yeah, I was gonna say that sounds like Karen. She speaks Japanese perfectly fine, if memory serves - her accent is an affectation. Unlike Alice, she’s a ハーフ.

わっし.

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Ive never watched that anime but I would assume it is just an attempt to make the character sound cute-sy. Like adding ch in place of s when saying “wakarimachen”. Again though, haven’t seen it. :woman_shrugging:

Thanks a Lot for all the details.

Thanks a Lot for completing @pm215 details.

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ございマッスル💪 is the form I usually go for

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