If you've been reading every page so far, you're probably getting annoyed that there's been no real Japanese yet. If you haven't been reading every page, then it's probably because you're getting annoyed. I don't blame you, as the prospect of memorising all those かな without actually using them is a pretty dull one. So, you are now to receive your award.

アメリカじんです。 (Amerikajin desu.) - (I am) American.

Looks like a bit of an anticlimax, doesn't it? There's hardly anything there, and half of it seems to be taken up with the word "America." It is, however, a complete sentence, although I admit I've cheated slightly in that it doesn't make much sense on its own. Don't worry, though, as we'll have built it up into something much nicer by the end of this page. For now, let's pick it apart and see how it works.

The copula

Now, this isn't a tutorial in linguistics, so there's no need to set out a precise definition here. A copula is a way of equating something, of saying that "this thing is that thing." If we were doing maths, the equals sign would work. In English, we would use an appropriate form of to be. In Japanese, the magic word is です (desu).

Which isn't to say that it's the same as the verb "to be," but it's almost there. English is a strange language in that its copula is also a verb meaning to exist. We take the concepts of "being equal to" and "existing" as being almost the same thing, but deep down, they aren't. This distinction may be a bit tricky to get your mind around at first. If so, consider the following:

The book is on the table.

The book is mine.

The first confirms the existence of a book and states it's on the table. It could be rewritten there exists a book on the table, if we so wished. The second sentence doesn't make any such claims, and doesn't even make sense unless we knew it existed already. (Note that the first sentence may also be considered "A = B" if we had been asked where the book was, but this is a side-effect of our having the dual meaning.) The philosophers among you may wish to ponder the significance of our association between "existing" and "having the property of."

On です

です was originally derived from である (de aru), essentially meaning "... is the way things are." ある is actually the verb to be, and so things aren't as unusual as they may have seemed. It conjugates to であります (de arimasu) in the polite present tense, which became the much shorter です. That information overload isn't particularly important now, but if you come back after we've done some verbs it will all make sense.

So, です is practically a verb. It has other forms, including:

Note that the は in the negative forms is actually pronounced "wa." We'll get on to why a little later. Also note that we originally wrote it at the end of the sentence. This is because Japanese puts the main information after the information on which it relies. So, the verb comes after everything else. This rule of saving the best for last crops up everywhere, so you'll soon get used to it.

Topics

Let's return to our example sentence. So far, we've determined that something somewhere is equal to something else. The remaining part of the sentence, アメリカじん, is simply America person - another example of putting the main point (person) last. But now we're stuck. Are we saying that an American is something, or that something is an American? In short, what exactly are we talking about?

Imagine being unable to string sentences together in English. You aren't allowed to use "and," or to combine adjectives, or anything like that. In this situation, you would have to keep mentioning the subject (to thing doing the verb) every time you used it in conversation. I went to the park. I played football. I set a dog on fire. It's all me, me, me. You only ever drop it when asked a direct question, such as,

A: What did you do?
B: Made a cake.

In Japanese, you don't really need person A to have asked. As long as it was clear who you were talking about, simply saying "made a cake" would be a valid sentence. This is what I meant by cheating way back at the start - it really needed to be used as part of a collection of sentences in order to convey the total meaning. Or, we could make it into a much better sentence by explicitly stating what we're talking about.

わたしはアメリカじんです。 (Watashi wa Amerikajin desu.) - I am an American.

The new addition is the exciting-looking わたしは (watashi wa). Again, the は is pronounced "wa," as it is actually the same grammatical structure as used when forming negative expressions. But why that is will have to wait.

わたし is a common formal expression meaning I, the speaker. It is followed by a particle は (pronounced "wa," remember) which marks it as a topic. There is no direct translation in English, which can make it seem a little confusing. Well, OK, it will make it seem confusing. You're likely to get its usage wrong every now and again, no matter how much practice you get. A rough translation could be as for, or on the subject of. Thus, our sentence really means, As for me, (I am) an American. This is why we could safely drop it if it were obvious who we were talking about. If someone had asked us where we were from, it would sound very strange to answer with わたしは.

Conclusion

Bearing in mind the usual hand-waviness and blurred edges of translation, we have the following sentence structures:

These are all very basic, but contain some essential building blocks for more intricate sentences. Practice the following few and make some up of your own. You'll need to, as the topic particle doesn't quite squeeze into English, and so it poses a bit of a problem.

すてきです (Suteki desu) - (It is) beautiful.^*

たなかさんはにほんじんです (Tanakasan wa Nihonjin desu) - Tanaka(san) is Japanese.

ケーキはおいしいです (Keiki wa oishii desu) - Cakes are tasty.

それはわたしのほんでわありません (Sore wa watashi no hon dewa arimasen) - That is not my book.

これはリンクです (kore wa linku desu) - This is a link.

^* The Final Fantasy X song, すてきだね (Suteki da ne) uses the informal form of the copula, だ, and the confirmation particle ね to ask, Isn't it beautiful? Politeness and other particles are big topics, so don't sweat them here. This was just bonus information because I think you deserve it.

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• Eternal Legend
  • Nihongo
    • Preparations
    • Introduction
    • Languages
    • Kana
    • Kanji
    • It Begins
    • Verbs
    
    
    • The Nihonginator