starting to learn Japanese, but I’m confused by a simple sentence.
First off I apologize if this question is hard to understand due to using the Roman alphabet, however I haven’t learned katakana yet.
So far in my learning my understanding has been “de su” can be translated to mean roughly “it’s” or “a”. For example “ka sa de su” can be read as it’s a umbrella. However now I’ve run across material which states the the sentence “gakusai de us” means I am a student.
I’m confused on where the I am is coming from, and if it’s coming from “de us”, then how do you distinguish between saying “a student”, and “I am a student”?
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It’s all about context, japanese is a very contextual language.
You should probably learn hiragana and katakana before doing anything else.
In Japanese, it’s normal to omit pronouns when they’re understood from context. The sentence “gakusei desu” can mean “I’m a student” or “you’re a student” or “he/she is a student” depending on context. By default, if you said it out of nowhere, the default assumption would be that you were talking about yourself.
If you get a decent textbook (like Genki) and go through it in order, it will explain this kind of stuff to you.
This is a very long topic but to make it simple and short for an absolute beginner, in Japanese the subject of the sentence is omitted whenever humanly possible unlike in English.
In the sentence, “gakusei desu”, this is a complete sentence in Japanese but in English it would be a sentence fragment. It literally translates to something like, “is/am student”.
It COULD mean , “I am a student”. But depending on the context it could also mean, “It’s a student”, “he’s a student”.
The entire sentence would be, “Watashi wa gakusei desu”. The “Watashi wa” is “as for me”. “As for me, am student”. But the “Watashi wa” part is omitted if it is clear from context.
Because Japanese likes to leave out as much as humanly possible, context is extremely important. Many sentences cannot be understood precisely out of context.
Part of the reason Japanese likes to do this is because it is considered very rude to be too direct. Being indirect is an extremely Japanese trait. If you keep talking about yourself and using “Watashi” (“I”) over and over again in Japanese you sound like a self-important jerk, or just an unnatural foreigner.
Same thing when you were talking to somebody else, you don’t use the second person pronoun “you” (anata) whenever possible because it is considered too direct. You could use their name but you try to avoid using a subject at all whenever humanly possible.
First of, there is a pinned thread for such beginner questions, so please use that in future 🙂
desu can be roughly translated as “to be”.
Japanese is a very contextual language, so you have to always consider that.
Generally you try to say I (watashi) not too often and it is often omitted if it’s clear who you are talking about.
kasa desu = it is an umbrella.
Watashi wa maery desu. Watashi wa Gakusei desu. Watashi wa America-Jin desu. = I am Mary. I am student. I am American.
You see even in English it’s getting odd and repetitive, so it’s normal to just let the watashi out, because it is clear Mary is talking about herself. Without any context, Gakusei desu can just mean that. I am student or its a student.
Later in the lesson you get to words that point, like kore (this). These can be used to make statements over other people or to make clear, that you are not talking about yourself.
A lot of people here explain it quite better than me. I truly advise you learn hiragana and katakana, the language is so much more fun knowing it.
Advice: PLEASE LEARN HIRAGANA AND KATAKANA. Maybe even learn basic Kanji.
Minimum learn Hiragana.
There will barely be anything in Romaji. Mostly only stuff like station names. Menu items will typically be in Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji.
As everyone has explained, Japanese eclipses pronouns pretty much whenever and wherever possible. I would add that, therefore, kasa desu does not necessarily mean “it is an umbrella”. It could mean “that is an umbrella”, “this is an umbrella”. Heck, supposed we’re talking about a fairytale, a character could even say watashi wa kasa desu, “I am an umbrella”.
Desu means is/am/are (Note: it’s pronounced ‘des’). Gakusei desu means “[Is/am/are] student”. As you can see, the subject is removed because it’s usually clear from context.
So if you say ‘watashi wa ____ desu. Gakusei desu.’, it’s pretty obvious that you’re talking about yourself – I am ___. I am a student.
But if you say ‘john wa ni kyuu sai desu. Gakusei desu.’, it’s also obvious that you’re talking about John – John is 19. He is a student.
So, it’s largely contextualised. If you point at a person and say ‘gakusei desu’, you’re saying something along the lines of “they’re a student” or “it’s a student” also depending on context.
If you are starting a conversation with ‘I am a student’, you have to add ‘Watashi/Boku wa’ to mark you was the subject.
japanese is all about context.
if it obviously that you are taking about yourself you don’t have to say “watashi ha gakusei desu” to implement that you are a student it is enough to say “gakusei desu”. if you both know who you speaking about you don’t have to say he/she/me/you.
And also i would recommend to learn hiragana and katakana even if you are only interested in speaking. i was not able to read any hiragana/katakana during my first trip to japan. Only to be able to read the street signs and some food from the menu would feel like an accomplishment
Like everyone says, learn hiragana and katakana. You can learn it in a day if you really want to, it’s simple.
Now about your question, there’s no great way to translate JP to ENG, so really depends on context, like “gakusei desu” could be a response to someone asking about your sister, or maybe it’s about you. The thing about this sentence is it’s omitting the beginning, so alone, it’s basically implying the full “Watashi ga gakusei desu” Japanese omits a lot of things, and I find that context changes everything, so differentiating between “A student” and “I am a student”, again, is all on the context, and both of those could be said as “gakusei desu”
Also about “Desu” try not to think about it being “Is”, it’s just a add on to make things formal. The regular way would be “Gakusei da”, however when you want to be formal, and you as a a complete beginner probably don’t know which situations is ok to use what, so it’s fine if you stick to being formal with “Desu” but please keep in mind that “Desu” doesn’t give any meaning to a sentence, it’s purely to sound polite. A lot of textbooks teach things in a way for the English speaker to understand and always default to the polite manner. I’m not a fan, it kind of keeps you in an English mindset rather than thinking of terms in a separate Japanese way.
But ultimately, you don’t have an interest in learning long-term, so it doesn’t really matter to you, just want to make sure you know that “Da” and “desu” are the same sentence enders, but “Desu” is polite.
Keep in mind the omitted details part though, so with what I told you basically the only word in that sentence is “Gakusei” which just means student, however if you think of the context and what the omitted details could be, maybe “Watashi ga” or maybe “Anata ga” then you will know what the sentence means.