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As a general note, I will warn beginning students that some basic grammar terms will be used in these lessons from time to time so if you have a good knowledge of English grammar terms, it might be to your advantage, if not, you will learn just as much grammar about your own language as it pertains to Japanese.

To start, I will say that the first major difference between English and Japanese is the order of Subject, Object, and Verb. Every language has a defined order of these three and how they differ can effect how your learn a new language. English (in any dialect) is always a Subject, Verb, Object (SVO) order. the best way to see this order is through simple sentences:

The cat eats the fish.
__S____V____O___

Japanese, however, is in a Subject, Object, Verb (SOV) order and is the main reason why most Western speakers will call is "backwards". This is a common fallacy though, it is not that the language is backwards, it is just how it differs from what we are used to. So to begin we will start with basic noun sentences, keeping this difference in mind.

X　は　Y　です。　--->Noun is Noun.

This is one of the most basic structures and by far the most versatile among noun sentences. When using this, please note that X and Y are both nouns (including pronouns). The most common example of this sentence is telling others who you are:

わたし　は　えつこ　です。 ---> As for me, I am Etsuko.
watashi [wa] Etsuko desu.

わたし (watashi) is the pronoun for I, myself, me. は (pronounced wa) is the topic marker and states that the word or phrase before it is the topic of the sentence, the best translation for は [wa] is "As for...". えつこ (Etsuko) is another pronoun, being a name. And です (pronounced DEH-s or DEH-sue) is the auxiliary verb which coincidentally has the same meaning as the English auxiliary verb "is". This includes "is, am, and are" as well, just like the English equivalent.

A note about particles.
In English, we are used to articles or the fillers in the sentences that defines meaning, setting, spacial relationships, and time such as "a, the, of," etc. The Japanese have something similar to this called particles some of them include "は、が、を、へ、に、で、" etc. The major difference between the two languages is English is a "pre-position" language where as Japanese is a "post-position" language. This means that our article patterns (and most other patterns) go before the word or phrase it is describing or enhancing, whereas the Japanese particles will go after the word or phrase.

Not only can this be used for pronouns but nearly any two nouns that can be related this way:

すし　は　さかな　です。 --->As for sushi, it is fish.
sushi [wa] sakana desu.

たけしさん　は　がくせい　です。 ----->As for Takeshi, he is a student.
Takeshi-san [wa] gakusei desu.

Let's try it out! Try to come up with more sentences using X は Y です。
がんばります！(ganbarimasu) Do your best!

Thanks! I'm starting to get it...