I’m not sure if I missed something somewhere that explained this clearly or if it’s just the struggle of being a beginner and learning grammar little by little without seeing the bigger picture yet, but I’m quite a bit confused about when です can be added for extra politeness or if that’s even how that works.
I’ve been learning with Genki & Tokini Andy’s videos, and I remember he mentioned that you can for example add です to じゃない or じゃなかった for negative sentences, eg. あめじゃなかったです. You can also add it after adjectives in present tense, eg. たのしいです. But can you also add it in the negative & past conjugations? eg.
* たのしくないです
* たのしかったです
* たのしくなかったです
?
As far as I understood, you can’t add it to verbs though..?
Basically, I’m just confused as to when you can & would add “です”. The conjugation app that I use (Japanese Conjugation City) doesn’t list any extra です, so that doesn’t help me with this question and I just can’t seem to find an overview that explains this clearly.
For those also familiar with Korean, I initially thought です worked a bit like 이다, but also worked as a sort of -요 ending for increased politeness, but I’m not sure if trying to find an equivalent works here..?
In any case, my worry is just using the right formality/politeness level when I go to Japan. As far as I understood, using -ます/です would be the right level, but I’m not totally sure about using in practice as you can see from this post.
I’d really appreciate any help! Thank you!
**Edit:**
for anyone finding this post with the same question (if this sub ever comes back :’)), I just had a look at my French textbook and their explanation is much more clear:
they refer to i-adjectives as variable adjectives that are conjugated and to which you add です for politeness.
na-adjectives are invariable on the other hand and for those you conjugate the です.
1 comment
This is one problem of teaching the です form first. It is both a copula and a politeness marker. When the head (end) of a sentence ends in a noun or na-adjective then a copula is grammatically **required**. A copula should not be added to sentences that end with a verb or an i-adjective.
However, you can add です to an i-adjective as a **politeness marker**. In such cases is it **not** acting as a copula.
Your examples all end with i-adjectives (or conjugations thereof) so です as a politeness marker is ok. You can not use the plain だ copula though.
**Note**: Since the です added to conjugated i-adjectives is just acting as a politeness marker, the です itself is not conjugated to indicate negative or past tense – the i-adjective before it contains the conjugation.