The Teeming 10 of you who know Japanese may remember me from a month back or so, when I asked about “doomo” and its connotations…ah, what simple times those were! I have now been thrown headlong into the world of “arimasu”, and having heard nothing but “desu” since class begun, I am quite confused. This must seem boring and simplistic to many of you, but I hope one or two of you can remember the beginner’s anguish and help me out.
My biggest problem right now is knowing when to use “desu” and when to use “arimasu”. I think in class we have used both to ask the location of something, and that’s really throwing me off!
My second biggest problem is mixing up “wa” and “ga”, especially when it comes to using them with “arimasu”. I’ve heard my professor say both “wa arimasu” and “ga arimasu”, and maybe I’m just too thick to notice the differences in context, but I don’t get it. Which one do you use when?
As always, Dopers, I appreciate your tireless efforts in educating the language-deficient. Arigatoo gozaimasu in advance.
The basic rule of thumb, if I remember correctly, ‘arimasu’ is for non-living things. ‘imasu’ is for living things
And as for ‘wa’ and ‘ga’, welcome to the wonderful world of WA GA insanity! lol I’ve heard many different ways of explaining the differences (such as ‘ga’ is for when referring to something that was already part of the conversation or something like that and ‘wa’ was use to introduce something new). That makes no sense. I’ve also been told that non-native speakers will never truly understand the differences and when to use and when not to. To be safe, use ‘wa’, it’s expected of foreign speakers, per my old sensei
Okay, here’s what I remember of wa/ga and desu/arimasu/imasu from last semester. I must warn you, I haven’t even looked at my Japanese textbook since the middle of May, so this might be a bit fuzzy.
Tatsuzawa Sensei told us that “wa” is used as a “topic marker,” while “ga” is a “subject marker.” We used “wa” to introduce something in a conversation, and “ga” in the sentences following it. I realize Yuki doesn’t think this makes sense, but it worked for my understanding of it, so I’m happy.
“Desu” is the verb meaning “to be.” So if I wanted to ask you what your name was, I would say, “Onamae wa nandesuka.” You would then reply, “Nevermore desu.”
“Arimasu/imasu” are verbs for inanimate or animate objects, respectively. They both are “existence” verbs. When these sentences are translated into English, they contain “to be” verbs and are pretty confusing. The sentence, “Koko ni neko ga imasu” would be translated as “Here is a cat.” If it makes it easier for you to remember it, you can think to yourself, “Here exists a cat.”
I hope this helps. Thanks for starting this thread, BTW. It reminded me that I need to start looking over my Japanese again before I forget it all at the start of the next semester
I don’t know anything about Japanese language, but it seems to be that -jin means “of.” Amerika-jin means “of America.” So i’m curious in terms of Dragon Ball Z, does Saiya-jin means “of Saiyaland”?
This is the more accurate explanation of wa/ga. Too often, you’ll run into textbooks and teachers that introduce both as “subject markers”, which is wrong.
One of the most famous Japanese grammar textbooks is titled Zô wa hana ga nagai. Structurally, this is the ultimate Japanese sentence. If I replace the Japanese words with their English equivalents and leave only the particules, we get:
Elephant wa nose (trunk) ga long.
The verb, or more accurately verbal adjective, is “long” and its subject is obviously “nose” - it’s not the elephant that’s long. “Elephant” here is the theme.
Think of the theme as aiming a spotlight at something. That’s what I’m talking about. Elephants: nose is long.
People kind of thematise in colloquial English too. “Elephants, ya know.” “Elephants, dude, they got long noses.”
Wa also often implies exclusion. Boku ga ikimasu and Boku wa ikimasu don’t quite mean the same thing. Again, it’s easy to understand the difference by translating to slighty colloquial English: “I’m going” vs. “Me, I’m going.” The second sentence in both Japanese and English implies that either someone’s not going, or “I don’t know about other people but…”
The only reason that many foreigners don’t understand the wa/ga difference is because it’s often badly explained. There’s really no reason to be confused, especially since you very rarely hear people complain about telling wa and wo appart, even though pairs like: O-sushi wo tabemasu vs. O-sushi wa tabemasu are as common as wa-ga pairs.
And, Muldoon III, the suffix jin means person. You append it to the country name to get the nationality. It’s dead easy: Amerika-jin, Kanada-jin, Nihon-jin, Kankoku-jin, Furansu-jin, Doitsu-jin, etc. I haven’t read any Dragonball, but Saiya-jin would mean “person of Saiya”.
Muldoon III, I learned that the -jin ending indicates a person from that region. Amerika-jin, furansu-jin, itaria-jin, and nihon-jin mean American person, French person, Italian person, and Japanese person. I had never thought about it before, but Saiya-jin might indeed mean a person from Saiya.
The way I always had wa/ga explained was that wa was kind of like saying “As for…” or “regarding”. Ga indicated that the verb applied directly to the object.
So wa: “As for me, I’m going to the store”
And ga: “The store is big”
nevermore, at least you have a teacher. I’m teaching myself.
It’s possible to feel confused about “desu” and “arimasu/imasu” because in some sentences you can use either one to say the same thing. For example:
Kuruma wa koko desu.
Kuruma wa koko ni arimasu.
to mean “The car is here.”
or
Inu wa koko desu.
Inu wa koko ni imasu.
to mean “The dog is here.”
In these examples the verbs “arimasu” and “imasu” are stricly correct, and require the use the particle “ni”. The verb “desu” can be used as a substitute when the precise verb can be inferred.
