A Is B
“The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.” – Blood of the Martyr
In terms of a direct “translation” for は, the best words would probably be “am,” “is,” “was,” & “are” depending on the tense of the sentence (i.e. whether it’s past tense, negative, etc.) We’ll be practicing this more in the next chapter when we develop our sense of identity, but let’s take a look at the following pattern, which only uses things we’ve gone over already.
Aです ＝ it is A.
Bです ＝ it is B.
A は B です ＝ A is B
A は B でした ＝ A was B
A は B じゃありません ＝ A is not B
A は B じゃありませんでした ＝ A was not B
If we replaced A and B with actual vocabulary, you’d get something like this:
a ぶどう は くだもの です ＝ Grapes are fruits
Now, this is where Yoda grammar starts to fall apart a bit. Yoda grammar got you to this point, though, and hopefully helped you to learn です and the others, which means we can start building upon that knowledge to learn something more advanced!
Really, things like です, でした, じゃありません, and じゃありませんでした just modify (noun) sentences to become a different tense. By adding じゃありません to a sentence, for example, you’re making the sentence negative (i.e. an “it is not” sentence). The same goes for です (makes a sentence present positive), でした (makes a sentence past tense), and じゃありませんでした (makes a sentence past tense negative). Let’s take a closer look at the above patterns and go through them one by one.
A は B です
In this sentence, we have AはB (A is B) and です on the end. “A is B です” essentially means “A is B.” So, where did the です part go? If we take a look at another sentence, we’ll see that the です doesn’t go anywhere. It just shows that the sentence is both positive and present (or future) tense.
A は B じゃありません
In this sentence, we once again have “A は B” (A is B), but this time we have じゃありません instead of です. This sentence translates to “A is not B.” The じゃありません placed at the end of this sentence makes the “A is B” part negative, making the sentence mean “A is not B.” If we translated this literally, it would be something like “A is B is not” – you can see how that doesn’t work very well in English, but that’s basically what’s happening with the above sentence.
A は B でした
“A was B.” In this sentence, we have “A は B” which means “A is B.” At the end, we have でした, which makes the sentence past tense. So, all you have to do is take “A is B” and turn it past tense, which gets you “A was B.” Can you figure out the last one?
A は B じゃありませんでした
“A was not B.” If AはB is “A is B” and じゃありませんでした makes the sentence into a past negative one, then “A is B” becomes “A was not B.”
I think it’s time to look at some real sentences.