Expressing State-of-Being
漢字「かんじ」- Kanji
- 人 JLPT N5 Grade 1
- person
- Kun: ひと、 -り、 -と
- On: ジン、 ニン
- 学 JLPT N5 Grade 1
- study, learning, science
- Kun: まな・ぶ
- On: ガク
- 生 JLPT N5 Grade 1
- life, genuine, birth
- Kun: い・きる、 い・かす、 い・ける、 う・まれる、 うま・れる、 う・まれ、 うまれ、 う・む、 お・う、 は・える、 は・やす、 き、 なま、 なま-、 な・る、 な・す、 む・す、 -う
- 元 JLPT N4 Grade 2
- beginning, former time, origin
- Kun: もと
- On: ゲン、 ガン
- 気 JLPT N5 Grade 1
- spirit, mind, air, atmosphere, mood
- Kun: いき、 き
- On: キ、 ケ
- 友 JLPT N5 Grade 2
- friend
- Kun: とも
- On: ユウ
- 達 JLPT N3 Grade 4
- accomplished, reach, arrive, attain
- Kun: -たち
- On: タツ、 ダ
言葉「ことば」- Vocabulary
- 人
- person
- 学生
- student
- 元気
- healthy; lively (Used as a greeting to indicate whether one is well)
- 友達
- friend
Declaring something is so and so using だ
One of the trickiest part of Japanese is that there is no verb for the state-of-being like the verb “to be” in English. You can, however, declare what something is by attaching the Hiragana character だ
to a noun or na-adjective only. (We will learn about na-adjectives in the section on adjectives later.)
Declaring that something is so using だ
Attach だ
to the noun or na-adjective
Example: 人 ＋ だ ＝ 人だ
Examples
-
人だ。
Is person. -
学生だ。
Is student. -
元気だ。
Is well.
Seems easy enough. Here’s the real kicker though.
Warning
A state-of-being can be implied without using だ
!
You can say you’re doing well or someone is a student without using だ
at all. For example, below is an example of a very typical greeting among friends. Also notice how the subject isn’t even specified when it’s obvious from the context.
Typical casual greeting
A: 元気？
A: (Are you) well?B: 元気。
B: (I’m) well.
So you may be wondering, “What’s the point of using だ
?” Well, the main difference is that a declarative statement makes the sentence sound more emphatic and forceful in order to make it more… well declarative. Therefore, it is more common to hear men use だ
at the end of sentences.
The declarative だ
is also needed in various grammatical structures where a state-of-being must be explicitly declared. There are also times when you cannot attach it. It’s all quite a pain in the butt really but you don’t have to worry about it yet.
Conjugating to the negative state-of-being
In Japanese, negative and past tense are all expressed by conjugation. We can conjugate a noun or adjective to either its negative or past tense to say that something is not [X] or that something was [X]. This may be a bit hard to grasp at first but none of these state-of-being conjugations make anything declarative like だ
does. We’ll learn how to make these tenses declarative by attaching だ
to the end of the sentence in a later lesson.
First, for the negative, attach じゃない
to the noun or na-adjective.
Conjugation rules for the negative state-of-being
Attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective
Example: 学生 ＋ じゃない ＝ 学生じゃない
Examples
-
学生じゃない。
Is not student. -
友達じゃない。
Is not friend. -
元気じゃない。
Is not well.
Conjugating to the past state-of-being
We will now learn the past tense of the state-of-being. To say something was something, attach だった
to the noun or na-adjective.
In order to say the negative past (was not), conjugate the negative to the negative past tense by dropping the い
from じゃない
and adding かった
.
Conjugation rules for the past state-of-being
-
Past state-of-being: Attach
だった
to the noun or na-adjectiveExample: 友達 ＋ だった ＝ 友達だった
-
Negative past state-of-being: Conjugate the noun or na-adjective to the negative first and then replace the
い
ofじゃない
withかった
Example: 友達じゃな
い→ 友達じゃなかった ＝ 友達じゃなかった
Examples
-
学生だった。
Was student. -
友達じゃなかった。
Was not friend. -
元気じゃなかった。
Was not well.
Conjugation summary
We’ve now learned how to express state-of-being in all four tenses. Next we will learn some particles, which will allow us assign roles to words. Here is a summary chart of the conjugations we learned in this section.
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Non-Past | 学生（だ）** Is student | 学生じゃない Is not student |
| Past | 学生だった Was student | 学生じゃなかった Was not student |