I’ve just starting learning Japanese and I’m having some trouble with the grammar. My teacher keeps telling me the I need to end my sentences with a verb which she say’s です is. The thing is most places I look at define です as I’m, He’s, She’s, which are pronouns. Japandict defines it as be, which is a verb. I know the topic is often dropped from the sentence, so is ですlike a replacement for わたしの?
Also can anyone recommend a good book that teaches grammar from the ground up?
6 comments
です is a verb. It translates am/is/are.
X は Y です。
(speaking of X it is Y.)
I’d recommend:
Genki, or any other elementary Japanese textbook
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
if you google “japanese what is です” you will find a massive article about it
It is actually a verb. Specifically it is the verb “to be” in English.
So, you are forgetting some pretty basic English grammar. I’m, he’s, and she’s are contractions that include “am” and “is,” or rather, conjugations of “to be.”
です is “to be.”
本です。－ “It is a book.”
use something like genki or tae kim’s guide
if you really want the brutal low level linguistic explanation, then [imabi.net](https://imabi.net) but it’s not for everyone at least at the beginning
です is listed as a *copula* in a lot of places but it’s debated as to whether this is the case
the one, most important, critical thing that you need to know about it is:
***you cannot translate it***
japanese is extremely different from english and word-by-word translations just don’t work, and です is probably one of the worst offenders and biggest red herrings for newcomers
it doesn’t mean “is”, though it can serve as the word in some situations
learn by sentence pattern. a particular phrase or pattern means a phrase or pattern in english. but other than understanding the grammar of what kinds of words connect with others, nothing else is helpful to translate word-by-word. maybe “dog”, like literally a crystal clear physical noun, but not much else
also please look at the wiki and do searches before asking things, this question is asked a dozen times a day and then deleted because it’s been asked and answered thousands of times