Lesson 2 - Negative sentences and nationalities

In the previous lesson, we learnt that the word "desu"（です）, must be placed at the end of the sentence.

We studied affirmative sentences such as "I'm John".

How would you say it again?

1) I am John

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Good job! Remember to scroll down at the bottom of this page to check the answers.


What about if someone calls you John but your name is actually James. Who the hell is John?

What you need to do is to turn the word "desu" into its negative form.

Now, there are a few ways to express "desu" at the negative way. Today we are going to learn three ways.

1) dewa arimasen　ではありません
2) ja arimasen　　　じゃありません
3) ja nai desu　　　じゃないです

They are all polite way of expressing the negation. However, the first one is very standard. The second one is almost the same but the "dewa" is contracted in a "ja". The third one is more spoken language but it is still polite.

Note that in Okinawa you will rather hear "ja nai desu"

2) How would you say "I'm not John! I'm James!"

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Did you get it correctly?

If you added "san" after John, it is a mistake, because you are referring to yourself in this sentence. You will use "san" only when addressing other people.

One more important thing that you need to remember. In most of Japanese sentences, the subject "I" or "you" is omitted.
You don't hear Japanese people say "watashi wa, watashi wa, etc" as we would use "I" in English.

Japanese people understand the subject out of context. Most part of the time, if you don't have any indication of subject in a sentence,  it means that the speaker refers to himself/herself.

Let's take an example from our sentence above.

"I'm not John! I'm James!".
This sentence in a more natural Japanese way would be as follow

"John ja nai desu! James desu yo!"　ジョンじゃないです！ジェムスですよ！

The "yo" at the end of the sentence emphasizes the fact that you are James and not John.
What I want you to understand here, is the fact that the interlocutor will understand naturally that you (the speaker) are referring to yourself.

Why? Probably because he/she is the one who made the mistake to call you John in the first place. Then, because it wouldn't make any sense to translate this sentence using "you"

"John!
- You're not John! You're James!"

Right? it doesn't make any sense. Therefore, we understand naturally that the speaker refers to himself/herself

"John!
- I'm not John! I'm James!"

3) How would you say "I'm not a student. I'm a teacher"

Student= gakusei　がくせい　学生
Teacher= Kyooshi きょうし　教師

(if you want to use Sensei instead of Kyooshi, it's fine. I will explain the difference between these two terms in a different post)

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Let's talk about nationalities now.

The names of countries  in Japanese are for the most part spelled with the "katakana" alphabet.

The "katakana" alphabet....what is that?

There are three writing systems in Japanese.

The Kanji, the Hiragana, and the Katakana. I will explain about them in a different post.

Briefly, the Kanji are the Chinese characters, the small complicated drawings that look cool on a t-shirt or in a tattoo. There are thousands of them.

The Hiragana and Katakana alphabets are simplified alphabets. They have each about 50 characters.
The katakana alphabet is mainly used to write words that have a foreign origin.

Soccer =　サッカー　=Sakkaa
Table=　テーブル　= Teeburu

and so on.

The name of the countries are therefore a transliteration of the English word (or another language) in the katakana alphabet.

For instance

The United States of America=　アメリカ　=Amerika

Note that I spell "America" with a K, not because I am a complete illiterate (don't leave me now!), but because it is actually the way you would write the Japanese pronunciation of "ka" in the Roman alphabet.

France=　フランス　= Furansu
Spain= 　スペイン　=supein
Italy=　イタリア　＝ itaria

Same here, I'm using R instead of L. It is not a mistake.
And note that the Japanese use the term Italia and not Italy. Not all countries' names are expressed with their English equivalent.

For instance, Germany would be Doitsu　ドイツ
based from the German word Deutschland

Brazil, Burajiru　ブラジル. Russia, Roshia　ロシア. Canada, Kanada　カナダ　 United Kingdom, Igirisu　イギリス... yes, this last one is weird.

To state your nationality, just add "jin"（じん、人） after the name of your country.

If you are French, you are a Furansu-jin　フランス人
If you are from Germany, you are a Doitsu-jin　ドイツ人


4) How would you say "I am American"?

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Good job!

There are a few countries that do have a Japanese name. These are the countries that have a deep History with Japan.

I'm thinking about China.
China is Chuugoku　 ちゅうごく　中国

As you can see, China is written in Kanji.

It is also the case for

Korea= Kankoku　かんこく　韓国
North Korea= kita choosen　きたちょうせん　北朝鮮

The last thing we are going to say in Japanese in this lesson is

5) John is not Chinese. He's American!

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Did you guess correctly?

Note that in this sentence we must specify the subject as we are referring to a third party. However, if John were the topic of the conversation and we had talked about him in the previous sentence, I would not need to say "John san wa..."

Look up in the English Japanese dictionary to find how to say your nationality!

In our next lesson, we are going to talk about how to make questions in Japanese, and by the way, if you have any, please feel free to contact me at

japanese.lessons.okinawa@gmail.com

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Answers

1) Watashi wa John desu

　　わたしはジョンです。

2) Watashi wa John dewa arimasen. James desu.

　　わたしはジョンではありません。ジェムスです。
　　
    or Watashi wa John ja arimasen.　わたしはジョンじゃありません。
    or Watashi wa John ja nai desu.　わたしはジョンじゃないです。

3) (watashi wa) gakusei dewa arimasen. Kyooshi desu.

　　わたしはがくせいではありません。きょうしです。

　　わたしは学生ではありません。教師です。

   or Gakusei ja arimasen.
    or Gakusei ja nai desu

4) Amerika jin desu.
　　
　　アメリカじんです。

　　アメリカ人です。

5) John san wa Chuugoku-jin ja nai desu. Amerika-jin desu yo!
　
　　ジョンさんはちゅうごくじんじゃないです。アメリカじんですよ！
　　
　　ジョンさんは中国人じゃないです。アメリカ人ですよ！