速やか [すみやか] – speed

(The more experienced among my readers may notice that the character 速 can also be read はやい.)

When に is added to the end of an adjectival noun (形動 [けいどう]) like 速やか, it’s akin to adding -ly to the end of the similar word in English, turning the word into an adverb.  So 速やか (speed) becomes 速やかに (speedily).  I will go over はやい in a little more depth in my next column, as it can be a bit confusing for beginners.

So, what prompted me to write about 速やか today?  Well, I received the following message from Facebook today as I attempted to refresh my profile page:

問題が発生しました。すみやかに解決できるよう作業しておりますので、しばらくしてからもう一度お試しください。

What this boils down to is this: “A problem has occurred.  As we are working to quickly resolve the issue, please wait a while then try again.”

Here’s a vocab list to help you through the sentence.  Please use the above translation to give you a better feel for how the words work together in context.

• 問題 [もんだい] – problem
• 発生しました [はっせい] – has occurred (しました = past tense of します)
• すみやかに – speedily; quickly
• 解決 [かいけつ] – settle; resolve
• できるよう – in such a way as is possible
• 作業しております [さぎょう]  – work; operation
• ので – because of; since
• しばらくしてから – after waiting for a while
• もう一度 [いちど] – one more time
• お試しください [ためし] – please try