—　 は　—　です。

— wa — desu.

 

私は田中です。 Watashi wa Tanaka desu. I am Mr. Tanaka..

田中さんは学生です。 Tanaka san wa gakusei desu. Mr. Tanaka is a student

 

Stucture: In a Japanese sentence, the subject is located at the beginning and the verb is always located at the end.

 は is a particle, it's role is to mark the topic of the sentence.

The Japanese sentence is structured like this:   Subject + は + information + Verb

The politeness suffix さん is never used when one speaks about oneself.

Pronunciation:

- See the basic pronunciation here
- は as a particle is pronounced wa and not ha.
- The “u” in desu is mute, pronounced dess. Everytime a verb is finished by “su”, the “u” is silent.

• Possessive form with の

To express the possession, Japanese uses the subject followed by the particle の (no) which means “of”.

Example:

私の本です。
Watashi no hon desu.
This is my book (literally: of me book is)
These are my books

Caution: the concept of singular / plural doesn’t exist in Japanese. The meaning of the sentence is determined by the context.

田中さんの猫。 Tanaka san no neko. Mr. Tanaka's cat(s)

日本の本 Nihon no hon Japanese book(s)

私のです。 Watashi no desu. It's mine / they’re mine

田中さんの日本の本。 Tanaka san no nihon no hon. The Japanese book(s) of Mr. Tanaka