Nihongo: Desu desu desu. Apple apples.

Ohaiyou reader. Today’s mini adventure into Japanese is about: nouns, verbs, and one very special verb in particular, desu!

Consider the following English sentences:

  • The dog.
  • Tommy anime.
  • OSYM beats. (the noun music beats)
  • Mike beer.

These sentences are incomplete thoughts! The dog what?

  • The dog flies? The dog swims?
  • Tommy hates anime?
  • OSYM makes beats?
  • Mike dreams beer?

By inserting a verb into these sentences we get a clear message.

But what about Japanese? Something interesting happens. We can remove almost all parts of the sentence when understood through context, except for the verb and the verb always goes last.

 

Let’s take a look at desu, the verb “to be”. In other words desu functions as “is/are/am”.

Consider the following English text Japanese (Romanji) sentences:

  • Inu desu.
  • Tommy desu.
  • Konpyuutaa desu.
  • Neko desu.

When we put together the translation literally we get:

  • Dog is/are/am.
  • Tommy is/are/am.
  • Computer is/are/am.
  • Cat is/are/am.

These are completely understood messages when the context is understood.

WHOA, WAIT ,WHAT?! How can one verb represent three verbs? In a sense Japanese verbs are simple yet flexible. What I love is that this shows how Japanese culture has a consideration and awareness characteristic. When speaking Japanese one must be politely paying attention during a conversation to understand what is going on.

Taking the 2nd sentence, it could mean: “This is Tommy”, “They are Tommy”, “I am Tommy”. Depending on the context.

Lastly take the last sentence; it could mean: “This is a cat”, “These are cats”, “I am a cat”. Take notice that neko (cat) could be both singular and plural.

Nouns have no singular or plural forms. This means one can be talking about an apple or apples, a beer or beers, a goose or geese. You get the picture. Japanese nouns are akin to English nouns like fish or deer which represent both singular and plural ideas.

 

The takeaways:

Desu is the verb “to be”. This means is could mean in Ego (English) is/are/am.

Every complete Japanese sentence always has a verb and the verb always goes last.

Japanese nouns can be either singular or plural. These are no specific spelling forms for singular and plural and to understand the difference is by knowing the context.

 

Thank you very much for reading, until next post! Mata ne! DESU!

-Mike

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