Sayoonara
This phrase literally means, "
In that case...", and is basically a "
goodbye".
Its
construction breaks down into two parts.
Because
sayoo is a dated word, conversations that end with
sayoonara are usually ones that have been very formal and official. This is why some people will feel that saying sayoonara is
childish--almost no conversation will have the same
old world feel as was present in the
samurai and
shogun days, and it doesn't match the
mood of the present day. That being said, everyone will still understand
what you mean.
Sayoonara incorporates the
long o sound, and is written alternately in
romaji as
sayounara, and has entered the English vocabulary as
"sayonara". This is due to some interesting
quirks in
transliterating Japanese to English, and by no means makes any of these spellings incorrect.