J>A>P>A>N>E>S>E

Ohio = good morning.
Or polite way: ohio-gozaimasu

What does Idaho-gozaimasu mean then?

There is no such word in Japanese (idaho).

How do you say The small brown cat looked around nervously, then twitched her tail and fled in Japanese?

Hello cicerone,
My Idaho remark was a joke. If they use a US state's name to say "good morning," maybe another name could mean something more wonderful!

Dear gustavratzenhofer,

Your sentence would be translated like this:

chiisana chairo-no nego-ga kowagowa-to mawari-o miwatashi-te, sorekara shippo-o hutte nigete-itta.

just curious, but how are you going to use such a darned sentence?

Flam, I'm a very gullible senior, so quit messing with my brain. LOL

Hey, what do you think about this language? Is it too popular? Is it too prestige? Should I become learn it? I want to connect my life and future profession with it.

Is "ohio" pronounced like the American state "ohayo," or is it pronounced more literally, "oheeoh?"

Usually when Japanese is transliterated, the vowels as represented by "a," "e," "i," "o," and "u" are roughly the same value as those of classical Latin.

Try saying, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Chicago. Now say Ohi-yo.

Ohayou (the correct spelling) is pronouncd o-ha-yo, with both o's using the approximate o sound from old (it's not a long o sound).

The polite version would be ohayougozaimasu

But most Americans pronounce every one of those Japanese place names at least slightly (sometimes extremely) incorrectly.

Monger, I know; just trying to be 'funny.'

As a third generation Japanese-American, my Japanese language skills are not very good even though I attended Japanese school for three years in my youth. Most of us have used broken-Japanese by infusing English words when we communicated to our parents. I can understand more than I can speak the language. Pretty sad, huh!

Thanks, Monger.

Cecerone-dono, watashi-wa flim-flam desu kara, amari gakkari shinaide kudasai-ne.

"Ohayou" is not so much a correct spelling as an exact transcription of Japanese syllabic alphabet. A transcription closer to the actual pronunciation would be;
ohayoo (double "o" here means the vowel is long)

Long vowels are actually two different vowels that differ from each other in openness of the mouth. Japanese invariably widens mouth opening TOWARDS the end of long vowels.

Whereas an English long vowel shifts from mid-open to mid-close (as in "close", [klouz]. has less opened mouth), Japanese long vowerls shifts from mid-close to mid-open. The long "o" is in fact spelt in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabets) as [oc] (here 'c' is to substitute a turned c, as of English talk).

Flam, Domo arigato gozaimasu.

Matako kimito quas sotto.

(hope I got lucky and said something that made sense)

Here is another good thread on the subject:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24758&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0