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It means "Hello/Good day, how are you?"

edit: Actually, konnichiwa literally means 'today' with a subject marker, so 'konnichiwa, ogenki desu ka' would mean (literally) 'How are you today?'

This is how konnichiwa became 'hello/good afternoon', by the way. People kept saying the full sentence until it just became konnichiwa.

In true formal, olden Japanese, saying konnichiwa on its own would be inappropriate, because it would leave the sentence hanging. In English, it would sound something like 'Today,'

You can tell this because the sound 'wa' isn't written わ (wa), but は(ha). The sound ha is pronounced wa when used as a marker (or particle) in a sentence, effectively working as a comma.

Hope all that ^ made sense.

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13y ago

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