How To Say Correct In Japanese

Learning Japanese takes a while because there are so many words that you need to learn. But it’s not that big a deal as long as you take it one day at a time and slowly add to your vocabulary. Today you will learn how to say correct in Japanese.

This will be useful for communicating any time a person tries to confirm what you’re saying or asking for by feeding it back to you. Then you can let them know that you’re both on the same page with one of the words or expressions below.

In addition to that, there are some related words that I’ll go over so that you can become familiar with them.

How To Say Correct In Japanese

There are a couple of different ways to say “correct” and they kind of just depend on the situation. For example, the Japanese word 正解 (seikai) is the one you use when you get the “correct answer.”

So if you’re in class and the teacher gives you a question and it’s multiple choice, you might look over it and realize that option-A is the correct one.

1. 正解は A です！
2. seikai wa ei desu!
3. The correct answer is A!

Another situation where you might hear this word used is when someone is on a game show and they make a guess and then hear the “ding” sound which means they got it right.

1. ピンポン正解！
2. pinpon seikai!
3. *ding* correct!

Since Japanese and English are different languages, there are several words in Japanese that can mean “correct” in English. The next one we’ll cover is 正しい (tadashii) and since it’s an i-adjective it often used to modify nouns.

• 正しいデー タを用いている。
• tadashii dēta o mochiite iru.
• (He’s) using the correct data.

You might also see it used to say that something is “incorrect” or that it’s “wrong” as in the following:

• Eメールアドレスは正しくないです。
  
• imēru adoresu wa tadashiku nai desu.
• The e-mail address is incorrect.

Another word that you might come across is 正確 (seikaku) which can be understood to mean “correct” but is closer to the English word “accurate” when it’s used.

• その時計は正確ですか？
• sono tokei wa seikaku desu ka?
• Is that clock accurate?

Since this word is a na-adjective you might see it as 正確な (seikaku na) before a noun or as 正確に (seikaku ni) to change its meaning to “accurately” in a sentence.

How To Say Exactly In Japanese

If you’re talking to someone and they say something that you agree with, you might want to let them know with a response such as “exactly” or “yeah, that’s what I’m saying” to show that you’re both in agreement.

For example, perhaps you’re talking about the types of food that you like and while doing so you mention that you enjoy sushi, ramen, sashimi, and things of that nature. Your friend says “So basically, you like Japanese food.”

To which you reply “Yeah, that’s exactly right!” In Japanese you can say that as:

• その通り！
• sono tōri!
• Exactly! (I agree 100%)

If you are in a more formal situation, you can make this phrase more polite by adding です (desu) on to the end of it, but for most casual situations you won’t need to.

Another word that is similar to this, but still slightly different is the word 確かに (tashika ni) which means “surely; certainly.”

Person-1:

• 滅茶苦茶じゃないか？
• mechakucha ja nai ka?
• Isn’t that messed up (absurd)?

Person-2:

• 確かにね。
• tashika ni ne.
• It certainly is.

Two other ways to say “certainly” are 無論 (muron) and もちろん (mochiron). Both of these words can be used when saying “of course; certainly; naturally” in conversation.

The last word I want to cover in this section is ちょうどいい (chōdo ii) and it means “just right” when it comes to things such as length, time, size, etc.

Perhaps you went to get a new haircut and you were wanting a certain length so you told the stylist about it and then they went to work on it. After it’s all done, you look in the mirror and see that they got it exactly how you were thinking.

• 長さがちょうどいい！
• nagasa ga chōdo ii!
• The length is perfect (exactly right)!

How To Say Right In Japanese

If you wanted to say that something is “right” in Japanese then you could do so with some of the words that we’ve already covered in this lesson.

You could use 正しい (tadashii) to say that something is right or correct, such as the correct procedure or the right way to install something. Or if you’re talking about finding the right answer you could use 正解 (seikai).

But what if you’re just responding to someone’s question and you want tell them they are right? You can do so by saying yes in some of the following ways.

• はい。
• hai.
• Yes (you’re right).

If you wanted to add a little extra emphasis to your reply you could add そう (sō) to it.

• はい、そうです。
• hai, sō desu.
• Yes, that’s right (correct).

Or if you’re in a more informal situation you can just use ええ (ē) which is another way of saying “yes, that is correct” when someone asks you a question.

What’s interesting is how many different definitions we have of the word “right” in English. Besides the ones we covered so far that mean “correct” we also have the word right when referring to directions. The Japanese word for this type of right is 右 (migi).

And then we have right as in privileges which translates into Japanese as 権利 (kenri).

I thought I would just add these last two in there in case you were curious, but they are obviously a different kind of “right” than what we’ve been covering so far.

That’s All For Today

That’s all for today’s post, thank you for reading all the way until the end!

If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them in the section below and I’ll be sure to respond as soon as I see them.

If you’re not sure what to do next, then why not try checking out some of the Japanese courses that I’ve reviewed and recommend?

As of this writing, we are coming up on Thanksgiving quickly which means that there’s going to be a lot of Black Friday sales and you’re bound to get some great deals that are only offered once a year.