Gratitude Expressions

[Fehrant]

Ok, I need to express my gratitude to someone, and I already think I know how to do it, yet I'm unsure. To help understand the picture here, I'm finishing my first year of Japanese, and I would like to say to my sensei who has been great, "thank you for everything".

Now, I thought two possible choices, yet both have reasons for me to feel discontent with them.

1) いろいろ ありがとう. Ok, this to my understanding can roughly be translated into "thanks for everything". However, it seems rather generic to the point it could confuse the listener not knowing what exactly the speaker is being grateful about.

2) おせわ(は?)なりました. On the other hand, this one implies two things for me: that the speaker has been on the care of the listener, and that the speaker was somewhat of a burden. While a student is technically on the care of the teacher, I don't want to say something among the lines of "thanks for taking care of me, and sorry I might have been a burden" because that's not what I'm looking for.

Ok, just to let you know, I'm not looking for anything too fancy; I'd rather go with something curt, yet good enough to convey the general feeling here.

EDIT: Had to fix the glaring mistakes leonmarino pointed due to my sleepyness. Gomen.

 

[Torebaa]

Hello.

For the most part I would agree with all you've said.

However, when thanking my sensei the one year, I think it was okay to say something like,

Osewasama deshita
or
doumo arigatou gozaimasita
(sorry my language bar doesn't work probably on this computer so please deal with the romaji)

Hope that was any help.

 

[leonmarino]

1) いろいろ ありがおう.
2) おせわ(は?)になりした.

いろいろありがとう sounds a bit informal to me. Like Torebaa said: どうもありがとうございました is better.

おせわになりました.. I don't see a reason why you wouldn't say that to your teacher? He/she did take care of you being teaching you, preparing lectures etc. right? To make it a bit more formal, you could say たいへんおせわになりました (I have been a great burden/Thank you very much for taking care of me).

Good luck!!

 

[Elizabeth]

Fehrant, if you still want to use いろいろ but weren't sure the referent was clear enough you can always combine the two you suggested into
いろいろおせわになりました。

 

[Fehrant]

Oops, sorry. Yes, it is arigaTOu and nariMAshita; I typed that before going to sleep and didn't realize. Shame on me. I fixed it.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm considering using "osewani narimashita" because I think it is the one phrase that conveys the meaning of "thanks for being there [supporing me] the complete year" better.

 

[Elizabeth]

Oops, sorry. Yes, it is arigaTOu and nariMAshita; I typed that before going to sleep and didn't realize. Shame on me. I fixed it.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm considering using "osewani narimashita" because I think it is the one phrase that conveys the meaning of "thanks for being there [supporting me] the complete year" better.

何かをねぎらうときに、よく使います。(When you appreciate something, it is commonly used).

Great to see you back here, Fehrant, and with so much new knowledge under your belt.

 

[Fehrant]

Ah, Elizabeth, thanks for third unexpected option of "you can use both". I wasn't expecting that. おどろいた.

New knowledge under my belt? Ha, I wish. I used only two words in hiragana and somehow ended up misspelling both (carelessness, but still...). Shame, really. But yes, while I haven't been posting around the forum, that doesn't mean my interest and studies for Japanese diminished.