Patriciples, September 10, 2007

[Hina_Haruhara]

English has it's particles, and so does the Japanese. The first you should know is the particle "wa". It marks the topic of a sentence. In a way, it's like the word "the", except it comes in a different place in the sentence.

English:
The dog

Japanese:
Inu (dog) wa

Got that so far?

Okay, next step. The second part of the sentance. when you're describing the subject you use the particle "desu", "deshita", "dewaarimasen", or "dewaarimasen deshita"". This is the particle that means "is", "was", "is not", or "was not".

English:
The dog is brown.

Japanese:
Inu wa chairo (brown) desu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
English:
The dog was brown.

Japanese:
Inu wa chairo deshita

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
English:
The dog is not brown.

Japanese:
Inu wa chairo dewaarimasen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
English:
The dog was not brown.

Japanese:
Inu wa chairo dewaarimasen deshita.  

[UndeadChocobo]

About to cross-reference this, but I think dewaarimasen might be separated into three separate words, "de wa arimasen". This link shows it used that way (under polite forms of the word keiyodoshi, neg. polite past), but I'm about to check for more references.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adjectives

This may just be a different way to say it (dewaarimasen might be a contraction), but I just wanted to mention it in case something's wrong.

Edit: New link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar

Use Ctrl + F to search for "De wa arimasen", or just scroll down to the second chart (big chart) under adjectives (or just press "4.3 Adjectives" under contents, then scroll down to the second chart).

Edit2: Also noticed that alot of sites use "dewa arimasen" also. Haven't come across "Dewaarimasen" much though.