Welcome to our first grammar lesson on the site. In today’s lesson we’re going to kick things off with one of the most fundamental elements of Japanese sentence structure: the Declarative Sentence.
Declarative Sentence Basics
Declarative sentences are used to state facts in a direct manner. The following examples are declarative sentences:
Watashi wa Paul desu. I am Paul. |
Watashi wa Amerika-jin desu. I am an American. |
To change a declarative sentence into a question, add the question mark particle か (ka) to the end:
Watashi wa Paul desu ka? Am I Paul? |
Watashi wa Amerika-jin desu ka? Am I an American? |
While this set of examples may seem a bit unnatural since they’re in the first person, we can change them to the second person by changing the word for “I” (
| あなたはPaulですか。 Anata wa Paul desu ka? Are you Paul? |
| あなたはアメリカ Anata wa Amerika-jin desu ka? Are you an American? |
So to recap, the structure for the most basic declarative sentences in Japanese is as follows:
A + は + B + です。A + wa + B + desu. |
Where A is the person, place, or thing you are talking about and B is the predicate containing the attribute you wish to attach to A. です “Desu” is the polite form of the Japanese verb for “to be”.
A is followed by the grammatical particle “wa” (written as は). Particles in Japanese are used to identify the role played by the preceding word in the sentence. “Wa” is what is known as the “subject marker”. It is being used to indicate the subject of the sentence in a broad sense. We’ll cover more on this topic in a later lesson.
Declarative Sentences with Verbs Other Than Desu
Declarative sentences aren’t limited to using です “desu” for their verbs. Any verb can work here. Let’s look at the following two sentences:
| Raphaelは Raphael wa Nihongo wo benkyou shimasu. Raphael studies Japanese. |
Sensei wa sushi wo tabemasu. The teacher eats sushi. |
Many times when using a verb other than です “desu” there is a direct object involved, which is affected by the action being performed. In the first sentence, Japanese is what is being studied; in the second sentence sushi is what is being eaten.
Answering Yes/No Questions
Questions derived from declarative sentences often lend themselves to yes/no answers. While a simple はい “hai” works for “yes” and いいえ “iie” for “no”, sometimes we want to restate the sentence for clarity or to make a correction.
Continuing the theme of introductions, one question that might come up during an introduction is one’s nationality. Consider the following question:
| Johnはフランス人ですか？ John wa Furansu-jin desu ka? Is John French? |
If John is French, then we’d reply as follows:
| はい、Johnはフランス人です。 Hai, John wa Furansu-jin desu. Yes, John is French. |
As you can see, we dropped the question particle か (ka) at the end of the sentence and added はい (hai, “yes”) to the beginning. If someone were asking the question about me (e.g. “Anata wa Furansu-jin desu ka?”) then we would also change the pronoun as appropriate (in this case, “Hai, watashi wa Furansu-jin desu.”
If John is not French, however, then we have two choices.
Option 1: Add いいえ (iie, “no”) to the start of the sentence and negate the verb:
| いいえ、Johnはフランス人ではありません。 Iie, John wa Furansu-jin de wa arimasen. No, John is not French. |
We’ll cover how to negate verbs in a later lesson once we’ve established more of a foundation. For now, let’s look at our second choice.
Option 2: Add いいえ (iie, “no”) to the start of the sentence and restate the question using the corrected fact:
| いいえ、Johnはアメリカ人です。 Iie, John wa Amerika-jin desu. No, John is American. |
Side Topic: Nationalities!
Nationality in Japanese is fairly straightforward. If you know the name of the country, all you need to do is add the -person suffix
Most country names in Japanese are direct borrowings from English, however the names of some of Japan’s neighbors and a couple of the countries that Japan interacted with heavily up through the Meiji period (1868-1912) have forms that are different from what we’re used to seeing in English. Here are some of the most common ones:
| Country (English) | Country (Japanese) | Nationality |
| Japan | Nihon |
Nihon-jin |
| America | アメリカ Amerika |
アメリカ Amerika-jin |
| England/Great Britain | イギリス Igirisu |
イギリス Igirisu-jin |
| France | フランス Furansu |
フランス Furansu-jin |
| Germany | ドイツ Doitsu |
ドイツ Doitsu-jin |
| China | Chuugoku |
Chuugoku-jin |
| South Korea | Kankoku |
Kankoku-jin |
| Brazil | ブラジル Burajiru |
ブラジル Burajiru-jin |
Did we miss your nationality? Mention it in the comments and we’ll add it to the list!
Vocabulary
In order of appearance
私 (watashi) I- です (desu) to be
- アメリカ
人 (Amerika-jin) American - あなた (anata) you
日本語 (Nihon-go) Japanese (language)勉強 する (benkyou suru) to study先生 (sensei)鮨 (sushi) sushi食 べる (taberu) to eat- フランス
人 (Furansu-jin) French (nationality) - はい (hai) yes
- いいえ (iie) no
- アメリカ (Amerika) America
- イギリス (Igirisu) England/Great Britain
- イギリス
人 (Igirisu-jin) English/British (nationality) - フランス (Furansu) France
- ドイツ (Doitsu) Germany
- ドイツ
人 (Doitsu-jin) German (nationality) 韓国 (Kankoku) South Korea韓国人 (Kankoku-jin) South Korean- ブラジル (Burajiru) Brazil
- ブラジル
人 (Burajiru-jin) Brazilian
Thanks!
Thanks for checking out our first lesson! If you have any suggestions on how to improve things or topics you’d like us to write about, please feel free to mention them in the comments!
Be sure to check back in next week when we discuss how to talk about “this” and “that” in Japanese!
| Jouyou | 中、人、先、勉、国、強、日、本、生、私、語、韓、食 |
|---|---|
| Jinmei-You | |
| Hyougaiji | 鮨 |
