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In Japanese if someone were to ask you a question like “Do you want ___?” how would you say “OK” as a response?
Would it be 大丈夫 or just はい (if there isn’t a word for it), because I thought that 大丈夫 was to describe something like: それは大丈夫だったと思う or something similar.
はい、おねがいします or ぜひ or (if you want to be more emphatic) ぜひぜひ！
Incidentally, would you really answer “Do you want a cookie” with “Ok” in English?
Anonymousはい would be better. I don’t think 大丈夫 should be used as a ‘yes’ ‘no’ response – it should be used more for current status, such as how you are feeling right now, or how you’re doing on your school grades. Of course, you could always just say OK – people in Japan would understand.
By the way Joel, I actually would say OK to that question.
… It’s not a polite response. Colloquial, maybe, but not polite. And I wouldn’t use it in Japanese either. Not as an answer to that question.
What about in the context if someone says something like “I’m going out” or “I’ll be right back” and you want to say what would be “OK” in English. Basically in a chat when you type k or kk what would that be?
いってらっしゃい
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’d never use “OK” (or オーケー) in Japanese, it’s just that its use is more restricted to sentences like “OK, let’s do this!” and “he gave it the OK” and “everything’s gonna be OK” rather than the more generic “yeah, yeah, I hear you, whatever” it’s developing in English. Even then, it’s still quite casual, so I wouldn’t use it in formal speech.
I probably should add, though, I am not a linguist. =)
If somebody makes a statement and you are just acknowledging that you heard them, just say はい or はい、わかりました.
It’s similar to saying “Okay, got it.” in English.
On a side note, I had a friend who heard me say, in response to her telling me she was going to be late picking me up, “gotcha.” She thought it was just about the coolest thing ever. I actually got tired of her saying ガッチャー！ all the time…
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