I was working on my Genki book, on greeting. I am confused that there some words such as こんにちは in romaji it mean konnichi[u]wa[/u], in the end of the word the hiragana character is ha and why it is in wa? Another example is こんばんは in romaji it mean konban[u]wa[/u] when i read the hiragana i thought it should be konbanha not konbanwa. Can anyone explain to me why it is wa not ha Thanks
You know about the particle は and its pronounciation as wa, right? If not: it's pronounced as wa, now you know ;) It has something to do with a change of pronounciation over time, but still keeping the old spelling, or something like that. Maybe someone else can elaborate. The は in こんばんは and こんにちは basically is the particle, contracted with the rest of the word.
Agreed with Bartleby. I've never heard the whole story as to why it's こんにちは spelled with a は, but my guess is it's a shortened version of a longer sentence. For example, こんにちは(どうですか)。
Let's break it down: こんにち : this day, today は : when used as particle (in this case the topic marker) always pronounced "wa" こにんちは : literally "as for today/this day", or "concerning today".
Easier actually when looking at the Kanji (and this helped me to understand why use these hideously complex Kanji in the first place): 今日は = こにんちは = kon nichi wa 今 = "kon" (On reading) = now 日 = "nichi" (On reading) = day は = "wa" (marker for the topic of the sentence)
There are several particles that are pronounced different from their usual hiragana syllable pronounciation: は (topic marker particle) is pronounced wa を (object marker particle) is pronounced "o" へ (location/direction marker particle) is pronounced "e"
does that help / explain? (I am a newbie too, only at Genki chapter 6, so I migt be wrong anyway)
