じゃありません・ではありません: Super polite negators!

Introduction

You've made it to the final installment of the three-part "grand negator" series. Huzzah! This will be a quick one that covers じゃない and ではない in their most polite variation. Let's gooo!

Politeness Level Three: じゃ・ではありません

Structure

• 

  Noun/な-Adjectiveじゃありません

• 

  Noun/な-Adjectiveではありません
  Example:
  → 学生がくせいではありません。
  ”I’m not a student.”

First, ではありません

Whoa, can you feel it? We're getting really polite now. ではありません feels like a step up in both politeness and formality from ではないです, and so it tends to be the less common of the two in spoken Japanese.

The good news is, there is still no difference as far as its attachment to a noun or な-adjective goes. We can just slap it on there and be all polite and whatnot. The only step we need to take is to replace the final ない of ではない with ありません. Like so: