• Naming People and Things

• The Topic Particle wa

• The Copular Verb desu

• Negative Copular Verb arimasen/nai desu

• Indicating the Additional Item with the Particle mo

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Class Session 3a Chapter 2

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In Japanese, to say X is Y, use the form X wa Y desu:

watashi wa gakusei desuI am a (college) student.

amerika-jin wa sensei desuThe American is a teacher.

anata-tachi wa amerika-jin desu.You (all) are Americans.

Naming People and Things

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The Topic Particle wa

In Japanese most sentences begin with a TOPIC

The topic is what the sentence is about (it is not the subject, however)

Since English uses only a SUBJECT, the Japanese TOPIC is most often the subject ina sentence translated into English

The topic presents old, shared information in the sentence

The topic must be something already familiar to both speaker and listener

The rest of the sentence provides some new information about the topic

tomu-san wa igirisu-jin desu.(I am talking about Tom; the new information I am giving is that he is English.)(As for Tom, he is English.)Tom is English.

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• The Enlish copular verb (linking verb, or verb that connects a subject to a modifier complement) “is” or “to be” corresponds to the Japanese copular verb desu

maiku-san wa kanada-jin desu. Mike is a Canadian.

yōko-san wa gakusei desu. Yōko-san is a student.

watashi wa sensei desu. I am a teacher.

anata-tachi wa seito desu. You are students.

• Note that since Japanese does not normally specify plurals nor gender, in the absence of other contextual clues, you can translate a Japanese sentence into English using singular/plural words and masculine/feminine gender.

• In the samples above the contextual intent is clear (Mike is masculine, Yōko is feminine, watashi wa is gender neutral and singular, and anta-tachi is clearly plural, but gender neutral

The Copular Verb desu

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Negative Copular Verb arimasen/nai desu

• ja arimasen is the negative form of desu

• To say X is not Y, you say:

X wa Y de wa arimasen. X wa Y ja arimasen.X is not Y. X is not Y.

• The plain form of the negative copular verb is nai desu

X wa Y de wa nai desu. X wa Y ja nai desu.

• Examples:

buraun-san wa amerika-jin ja arimasen. kanada-jin desu.Mr. Brown is not an American. (He) is a Canadian.

howaito-san wa sensei ja nai desu. gakusei desu.Mr. White is not a teacher. (He) is a student.

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Indicating the Additional Item with the Particle mo

When a state or action previously said to apply to one item also applies to another item,Mark the additional item with the particle mo (also; too)

buraun-san wa gakusei desu. sumisu-san mo gakusei desu.Mr. Brown is a student. Mr Smith is also a student.

watashi wa gakusei desu. I am a student.watashi mo. Me too.