Lesson 2

Part III: The Particle も + What Something is Not: ~じゃありません

III-A: The Particle も

The particle も, in its general context, is used to say "X is something. Y is something, too."

Ex. クールさんはアメリカじんです。ケイさんアメリカじんです。
(Kuuru-san wa Amerika-jin desu. Kei-san mo Amerika-jin desu.)
Cool-san is an American. Kei-san is an American, too.

Did you notice how the two sentences were almost exactly the same? The only difference here is that the second sentence had the particle は replaced with も. It's really that simple to construct this type of sentence.

も is used in some other methods, but that will come into play during a later lesson.

III-B: What Something is Not: ~じゃありません

In order to say what something is not, we use ~じゃありません. To construct a sentence that says such, you only have to make a simple ~です sentence and replace that with ~じゃありません.

Ex. スパイキくんはアメリカじんじゃありません。
(Supaiki kun wa Amerika-jin ja arimasen.)
Spikey is not an American.

What is important to note here is that this is the way to negate noun-based sentences (like the example above). It is grammatically incorrect to negate adjective-based sentences in this manner.

Ex. X やすいじゃありません。
O やすくありません。
(Yasuku arimasen.)
It's not cheap.

As we haven't really covered adjectives yet, we'll talk more about proper adjective negation in a later lesson.

Let's learn about some new sentence enders, namely ね and よ.