The Beginnings of Grammar

“Make Sure to Call Your ‘Grammar’ on Mother’s Day.”

Grammar is the glue that holds any language together. Without it, language speakers would just be vomiting nouns and adjectives at each other. This lesson, you will be introduced to the most basic grammar point used in Japanese sentences, and one that you can easily build off of to form even more useful sentences. Let’s get started!

Vocabulary!

Kanji	Kana	English
私	わたし	I
彼	かれ	He
彼女	かのじょ	She
学生	がくせい	Student
	です	It is
	はい	Yes
	いいえ	No
	そうです	That’s Correct
	そうですか	Is that so?
	すみません	Excuse me
	ありがとう（ございます）	Thank you

”Insert Complex Grammatical Words Here”

The first grammatical pattern on your plate is the noun-predicate copular sentence. Of course, since this is Katsukats, we won’t be referring to it with such linguistic technical jargon. We’ll just call it the です pattern for now.

Using this tiny little grammar point you’ll be able to say things similar to “It’s a cat” or “It’s water.” It is this grammar point that the whole first episode of Katsukats is build around.

Okay, but what does です mean, and how do you use it? It’s generally translated into English as “is” or “are,” and is set at the very end of a sentence. It’s set at the end because verbs have been banished to the end of sentences in Japanese, and です is a verb. If you’d like to know more about the word です, click here.

Examples:

Kanji	Kana	English
学生です。	がくせいです。	I’m a student.
三時です。	さんじです。	It’s 3 o’clock.
水です。	みずです。	It’s water.

Side Note: the subject is often omitted from the sentence entirely if the speaker can assume that the listener knows what they’re talking about. For example, if someone asks you, “are you a student?” you would usually just say “am a student.” It sounds a bit odd in English, but in Japanese it’s normal to omit assumed sections of sentences.

The Particle は

Particles?! Particles, in Japanese, are a class of word that are attached to a word to let you know what that word is doing in a sentence. The particle は (pronounced “wa” instead of “ha” as the hiragana would have you assume) is the first particle you will learn. は points to what comes before it and alerts the listener to the topic of the sentence.

Example	Explanation
わたし　は。。。	(This sentence is about me!)
がくせい　は。。。	(This sentence is about a student!)

If you’d like to know more about the は particle or see more examples of its use before moving on, click here.

AはBです

With knowledge of です and は, we can now form an even more “complex” sentence. AはBです is a pattern that has a simple purpose, you’re saying A is B. As for A? It’s B. Get it? Easy-peasy. Basically, any time you need to relate one thing to another, you can use this pattern. 

Let’s look a little closer. You start off the sentence with your topic, what you want the sentence to be about. The particle は points to this topic and is followed by what you want to relate to that topic. Finally the sentence is capped off with です to give relation to the two previous points.

Since this is such an important point, let’s spell it out with some examples. Let’s assume you want to say “the cat is black”. First figure out what the topic of that sentence is, the cat, right? Next, what are you relating to the cat? The fact that this cat in particular, is black. Finally you need to cap off the sentence with a verb that means “it is”. In this sentence, if we’re following the AはBです pattern, the cat is A, は points to the cat, black is B, and です is: です, if that wasn’t clear. Watch the sentence take form using the AはBです pattern down below.

Example	Explanation
1. The cat is black.	Start with English.
2. Cat は Black it is.	Mark the topic with は.
3. Cat は Black です。	です is pretty directly translatable in this simple a sentence.
4. ねこはくろいです。	Change the noun and adjective into their respective Japanese words.
BONUS STEP: 猫は黒いです。	Fancification with kanji.

Side Note: That bonus step in the example above shows the sentence written with kanji (the way you would actually see it written if a Japanese person needed to tell you that the cat is black.) We won’t be touching on kanji until Episode 3, so don’t worry about it right now. It’s just important that you see it in use even if you can’t read it so kanji doesn’t surprise you when it’s introduced.

Adjective use will be explained later, right now just be aware that any time you need to say one thing is another thing, you use the pattern AはBです. Below are some more examples if you need a bit more time with this pattern before moving on.

Examples:

Kanji	Kana	English
私は学生です	わたしはがくせいです。	I am a student.
彼は中国人です。	かれはちゅうごくじんです。	He is Chinese.
玉は赤いです。	たまはあかいです。	The ball is red.
彼女は可愛いです。	かのじょはかわいいです。	She is cute.

Need to Ask a Question?

Forming questions is extremely straightforward in Japanese. Remember the hiragana か? If you attach か to the end of a sentence, you will have made it a question. We can combine this with the AはBです pattern you just learned to make useful sentences. Check out some examples below!

Examples:

Kanji	Kana	English
彼は学生ですか。	かれはがくせいですか。	Are you a student?
五時ですか。	ごじですか。	Is it five o’clock?
先生ですか。	せんせいですか。	Are you a teacher?

Pass the Conversation Ball!

You can now have a very basic conversation with someone, you have all the tools! For example, you know that if someone asked you: Aさんはがくせいですか you would know they were asking you if you were a student. You could then respond with がくせいです．Look at that! Very cool stuff.

But, there’s one small issue with your speech: it’s a bit robotic. If someone asked you “Are you a student” and you just responded with “I am a student” you may get weird looks, it’s the same in Japanese. Let’s grease those robo-bolts and learn some ways to make your speech more fluid.

Let’s take the example sentence from above. What would you say in English to make that sentence flow better? You would say “Yes” or “No” before your answer since it’s natural to say yes or no when responding to a yes or no question. You can do that exact thing in Japanese by adding はい or いいえ to the beginning of your phrase like: はい、がくせいです. It’s equivalent to saying, “Yes, I am a student”.

Side Note: いいえ can also be used as an equivalent to “no problem” or “don’t worry about it.” For instance, if you help someone with something and they say “thank you,” you can reply with いいえ. This is the more common response in Japanese over their equivalent of “you’re welcome” since the phrase “you’re welcome” can make it seem like you think you deserve to be thanked and it can come off rude if used in the wrong situation.

Next, we’ll equip you with some ways to respond to people giving you information or just saying things to you in general. Let’s say you’re asking a question to someone, and they respond in a way that surprised you. You wouldn’t just stare awkwardly at them, (you could, but please don’t), you would want to say something in return to the information they’ve given. That’s where a phrase like そうですか comes in. It translates to English as “is that so?” Similarly to English, it’s a rhetorical question. Another phrase that’s similar to そうですか is そうです and it translates to “that’s correct” or “I see.” It can be used as filler speech, or to tell someone what they have asked or said is true.

Finally, you need to know about すみません. Arguably, if you could only learn one word in Japanese, it’s this one. It’s one of those words you can use in a ton of different situations so you get a lot of bang-for-your-buck by learning how to use it properly. If you’re ever in a situation where you find yourself wanting to use the phrase “excuse me” in English, すみません would probably work nine times out of ten. It plays just like a greeting phrase, so you don’t need to worry about any grammar around it, just say it! すみません!

Examples:

• You walk up to a local to ask for help, open with すみません.
• You accidentally bump into someone on the train, すみません.
• Someone does something nice for you すみません.

Side Learning

Something that is important to keep in mind as you’re learning Japanese. You should make sure to seek out and incorporate vocabulary that is important to you and incorporate those new words into the sentence structures you learn here on Katsukats. It’s up to you to figure out what words you’ll need in your day-to-day life. Language learning—at a basic level—is just learning why things work and then plugging in vocabulary around those patterns.

Before Moving On…

First, understand the function of です, the は particle, and then how you can combine those two points into AはBです. From there, understand how to add か to make those AはBです sentences into questions. And finally, be comfortable with words like そうですか and すみません.