Taking です, Making It Negative

“Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.” – Richard Bach

We’re going to use another noun-based vocab list to study these grammar points. Once again, don’t focus so much on the vocab, that part is pretty unimportant. Focus on the grammar and how it works – I don’t care if you can copy sentences word for word. What I do care about is whether or not you’re about to make your own sentences using the grammar with different vocab later on. Use the chart as reference for what you’re studying, but don’t spend time on it. Vocab study will come soon enough, once you have enough of a base to study off of.

Let’s take a look at a couple of sentences using です. This is something you should already know:

ねこです　＝　It is a cat

いぬです　＝　It is a dog

These sentences should be pretty easy for you. You should be able to switch the vocab words (dog and cat) out with anything else to say “it is a ____”, etc. Now, what if you wanted to take these same sentences, and turn them into “it is not a _____.” First of all, let’s think of Yoda. How would he say it?

English: It is not a cat

Yoda: Cat, it is not

English: It is not a dog

Yoda: Dog, it is not

Now, since you know that じゃありません is “it is not,” you can just replace “it is not” with じゃありません.

Cat じゃありません (it is not a cat)

Dog じゃありません (it is not a dog)

Then, if we translate the actual vocab to Japanese…

ねこじゃありません ＝　It is not a cat

いぬじゃありません ＝　It is not a dog

It’s as simple as switching です out with the new grammar じゃありません. So easy, right? Let’s continue to practice, this time you’ll be more hands on. We’ll also start integrating questions into the lesson, that way you’ll be able to practice everything you’ve learned up until now!

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