Part III: Identifying People and Things + Particles I
III-A: Identifying People and Things
Identifying things in Japanese is a fairly straight-forward process. In it's most simple context, it will only involve a noun and the being marker です (desu).
Grammar Point:
~です ー＞ It is . . .
Ex. 私はりゅうがくせいです。
(Watashi wa ryuugakusei desu.)
I am a college student.
(Note: Despite the fact that the word ends in す, native speakers typically drop the う sound on です, so it sounds more like "dess" than anything.)
What is important to note, though, is that if the speaker believes what they are referring to is clear to the listener, the subject for the sentence will be omitted. Thus, it is not uncommon to come across sentences like this:
Ex. 本です。
(Hon desu.)
[This/That is] a book.
Easy as pie, right? Right.
III-B: Particles I
You may remember particles being mentioned in Lesson 0. Particles are basically what guide a sentence to be translated correctly from Japanese to English (or just make sense in Japanese in general). There are several particles, each with subtle nuances, that I will cover as they become important.
The first particle that we're going to take a look at is the subject marker は, which we've already come across quite a few times. Obviously, this particle is already a little weird, as it is written as "ha", but pronounced "wa". For many beginning Japanese students, it is often confused with わ. Don't let this happen to you (like hunger).
は, as has been stated, is used to mark the subject in a sentence. There are other particles that can be used to mark a subject (namely the ever-confusing particle が), but that comes later.
Another particle that we'll be looking at shortly is の. It is typically used to denote something that belongs to someone, but it also has other uses that will be discussed in later lessons.
As a side note, one thing to mark in your notes is that there are no articles ("a", "an" and "the") and nothing that denotes plurals in Japanese (that is, there's no -s for nouns). Articles are typically lumped in with the particle を, while plurals are implied through numbers and counters.
Before we move on to fun with の, let's learn how to ask questions (since a dumb question is one that's never asked).
