starting to learn Japanese, but I’m confused by a simple sentence.

7 comments

1. You don’t, you just tell from context

   > “de su” can be translated to mean roughly “it’s” or “a”

   That’s a very weird interpretation. First of all Japanese doesn’t have articles, so there simply is no “a”, secondly desu (you usually write it without a space btw) can mean much more than “it is”

   Which grammar resource are you using to learn that tells you something like that?

2. “Desu” is pronoun neutral. You can usually put it at the end of any statement. It can “it is”, “I am”, “you are”, “we are”, “he/she is”, “they are” etc. How do you tell? Context is king.

3. “desu” itself is like a “be” verb. That does not include pronoun.
   It’s just Japanese can omit subject in sentence and people understand what the sentence mean by context or situation.

   In your exaples, if you wanna add subject it will be like this.

   “Kore wa kasa desu.” This is an umbrella.
   “Watashi wa gakusei desu.” I am a student.

   Now if the speaker was talking about himself and say “gakusei desu.” Then it means he is a student, but if he was talking about his little sister, “gakusei desu” means his sister is a student.

4. “desu” is untranslateable. it’s listed as a *copula* in a lot of learning material, but this is debated. it most certainly is NOT “is”. it’s a good idea to not translate word for word in japanese, it’s just too entirely different from english. the tenses don’t line up, the parts of speech don’t line up, there are no cognates. at the beginning yes that’s hard, but try to learn by phrase instead. a particular phrase or sentence pattern has a certain meaning that’s translateable, but each and every word cannot be mapped to english directly. “desu” is one of the worst offenders and biggest red herrings for new learners.

   in a sentence-ending position, “desu” merely converts a noun or noun phrase into a polite noun statement, that’s all it does. just “kasa” alone confers all the data the sentence needs, the “desu” doesn’t have any meaning beyond politeness level.

5. The first thing that I would say is that it is very expected that you aren’t going to really understand Japanese sentences if you haven’t learned how desu is used/can be used. Like you are right at the beginning of a journey that is going to take you years. 😅 Japanese is really fun, but it’s quite different than English and it’s going to take a little bit of time to get used to thinking in japanese.

   I’m not sure what learning resource you are using, but I would honestly stay away from things like Duolingo and Rosetta Stone for japanese. Duolingo would probably work great for a child that has no other preconceived notions of grammar or language, but for adults with a really refined understanding of English grammar they’re just doesn’t seem to be enough direction on things like particles (desu, Kara, made, etc..). There are also just a ton of concepts that don’t translate over from Japanese to English.

   Japanese grammar is heavily reliant on things called particles. Desu is a particle. Particles are like markers in a sentence that convey some sort of concept of how the other words should be interpreted. As such, desu can be used a lot of ways that take on the same sorts of roles that other words in English sentences would. That is why kasa desu is most easily translated to “umbrella it is” but I can also say “Matthew desu” when someone asks me who I am and it will mean “Matthew am.” (Because in this example the person is asking who I am, we don’t have to include the Japanese for “I” since the subject is already understood.)

6. desu declares something/makes a statement/declaration. i wouldnt translate it into a separate word.

   the “i am” is implied by context. in japanese, you get to omit unnecessary information a lot.

   for example,

   “tabemasu.”

   could mean he eats, i eat, she eats, she will eat, i will eat..

7. I tend to think of “desu” as “it is” however Japanese is a highly contextual language.

   If we see a dog, we say “inu desu” (literally “dog, it is” or “it is a dog”. We know we’re talking about the dog.

   If we’re having a conversation and getting to know each other, I can tell you my name by saying “Kenshi desu” (Kenshi, it is.) Through context you know that I’m telling you that my name is Kenshi, because your name is not Kenshi, so I’m obviously not referring to you in that context.

   Or if we’re talking about our jobs, I could say “sensei desu” (teacher, it is) you know I’m telling you that I work as a teacher, because you are not a teacher. So again you can discern that I’m speaking about myself and not you.

   I hope that helps. Also, casual Japanese will drop the usage of “desu” entirely but since you’re just starting out I wouldn’t worry about casual speak yet.