I have been listening very hard to my friend these past few months, and tried to mimic her pronouncing of おつかれさま | otsukaresama deshita. I had been saying it with the wrong rhythm" otsu|ka|re|sa|ma , but today I changed that. I asked about the pronunciation. I listened carefully.
She mentioned that:
o = is soft
tsu = ts
Then I picked up on the rhythm. Not ots|ka|re|sa|ma, but ots|kare|sama . Basically, the word is not six rhythms, but four.
otsu kare sama deshi ta = spaced just to see it
otsukaresamadeshita = natural
ots|kare|sama desh|ta = rhythm
おつかれさまでした = hiragana
おつかれさまでした!
