さすが・やっぱり: As expected

Introduction

If you've ever looked into giving compliments in Japanese, you may have found that it's a bit different from English. Directly translating things can leave the person you wanted to praise feeling embarrassed, or creeped out instead.

In today's lesson, I'll show you how to give the ultimate compliment in Japanese, plus a couple of bonus words that are very common and pretty handy while we're at it. Excited? That makes two of us!

さすが：It's "to be expected" (or is it?...)

さすが (sometimes written in its kanji form, 流石さすが) is an extremely powerful little word. It's often directly translated as "to be expected", or "it's only natural that...", but what さすが really expresses is a sense of inevitability. How does that relate to giving compliments? Well, stick around to find out!