だ・です - Making your first Japanese sentences

Introduction

Welcome to your very first Beginner grammar lesson here on MaruMori! Maru has been jumping with glee ever since she heard you made it through Introduction, and are now taking your first step into learning Japanese grammar! We’re so excited to get you started and soaring with progress!

Without further ado, let’s begin by figuring out how to make some simple sentences, and talk a bit more about the different levels of politeness.

How to make a sentence in Japanese

I have good news. Making a sentence in Japanese is super simple! In fact, some sentences can be made up of only a single word. Let’s take a look!

One of the biggest surprises when starting to learn Japanese grammar is coming to the realization that there’s no verb that works exactly the same way as the verb “to be” in English.

In these Japanese sentences, I only used one word: 元気げんき, which means “well” or “lively”. When properly translating sentences like these into English, I have to use the verb to be (i.e. ”are” and “I am”) but you could even translate both of these sentences more literally and just say “Well?” “Well.”

This compactness is just one part of what makes up the Japanese language’s simplicity, and you’re gonna see it in action very often!

Although these one-word sentences are fun, of course, it gets more complicated. Let’s start to add things to our sentences by talking about two sentence-enders: だ and です.

What About the Different Levels of Politeness?

As you already know, Japanese culture values politeness a lot. A whole lot. And of course, this is reflected in the language as well!

To review the Introduction lesson you had on the topic, we can divide Japanese into casual and polite speech:

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  Casual speech is used with your friends and family.

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  Polite speech is used with strangers, people older than you, and your superiors at work.

This is where だ and です join the conversation!

These two are used at the end of sentences and attach to both nouns and adjectives, but while だ adds emphasis to what you’re saying, です is purely there to indicate polite speech.

Let’s compare!

元気げんき。- Not followed by だ/です. Casual speech, friendly tone.

元気げんきだ。- Casual speech, with a more emphatic, declarative tone.

元気げんきです。- Polite speech.

There’s one big thing to be careful of when you use だ and です. As you learned in the Introduction lesson on Parts of Speech, there are two types of adjectives in Japanese: い-adjectives and な-adjectives. One limitation of だ is that it can’t be used following い-adjectives (adjectives that often end with い), however, です can follow any type of adjective. Here are some examples:

「かわいい」is an い-adjective, and so it can’t be followed by だ!

Here are some nice and simple sentences using だ and です for you to check out!

More Simplifications!

We saw with our one-word sentences that Japanese likes to simplify things. Another way you’ll see this happen is through the omission of pronouns like “I”, “you”, “me”, etc. I haven’t used any yet, so let me show you what they look like!

Notice how both translate to the same thing, but in 3.1 we have the pronoun 私わたし, meaning “I”. What differentiates these two sentences is context. When the context is clearly about you, there’s no need to mention yourself with 私わたし as it sounds redundant to the Japanese ear. Otherwise, feel free to use a pronoun!

Scene: A conversation between two people.

Scene: A conversation between three people.

For example 4.2, John made sure to say 私わたし before introducing himself since the context wasn’t as clear as 4.1. If he didn’t use a pronoun, there would’ve been a chance that he was introducing his friend, Ken, on his behalf! And of course, after John, Ken was able to safely say his name without 私わたし.

All this “context” business might need some time to process in your head but that’s totally fine! Everyone takes a while to get used to it, but as you go on immersing yourself in the language, you’ll be able to gain magical powers the intuition to know when to use pronouns or not. 😄

Here are a couple of final example sentences for you.

You may notice that the “the”s and “a”s seem to be missing from the Japanese sentences above. In English, these words are called “articles”, and in Japanese, they’re called “non-existent”. That’s right! Japanese does not have articles like “the” and “a”. One less thing for you to worry about!

Now you know how to start writing your first sentences in Japanese! That’s a milestone! From here on out, things will only be getting more and more exciting, so get ready to board the hype train!

Until you’re ready for your next lesson, there’s a quick exercise after this if you wish to review what you’ve learned. 🌟

Summary

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  The Japanese language loves its simplicity. There’s no equivalent to the verb “to be” in Japanese, and some sentences are made up of one word only.

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  Japanese likes to simplify by omitting pronouns like “I”, “you”, “me”, etc. This happens when the context is clear in terms of indicating who it is about.

• 

  Japanese can be divided into casual and polite speech:
  - Casual speech is used with your friends and family.
  - Polite speech is used with strangers, people older than you, your superiors at work, and anyone you’re not close to.

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  だ is used in casual speech and gives a more emphatic, declarative tone. It’s more often used by men.

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  です indicates polite speech.

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  A noun/verb on its own at the end of the sentence indicates casual speech with a friendly tone.

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  だ can’t be used following い-adjectives (those ending with い). です can follow any type of adjective.

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  Articles such as “the” and “a” in English don't exist in Japanese.