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Originally Posted by [Titan]
based on the first post (and watching too much anime) I would say
"Watashi wa" means "I am" (but wasn't this the female form, and wasn't the male form something like "Boku wa"?)
"desu" would imply the end of a sentence
"desu ka" implies a question
"kore wa" means you're talking about a thing or object; "this is"
"anata wa" means "you are"
so that's what I've "learned" from just the first post. But... is it correct? 
questions I still have after the first post:
-Is it really necessary to end a sentence with "desu"?
-are there differences when the person who's talking is male of female?
-if you are talking to a person, does it matter if that person is male of female?
-Do I sound like a three year old girl when I say those sentences to a japanese person?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not being negative about your thread, but I think providing more information on grammar, sentence structure and meanings of words would make this thread a lot more usefull. |
Um.. 'watashi wa' is simply a phrase saying that one of the subjects in the sentence is 'watashi' or 'I'. The wa is particle denoting that the word/phrase in front of it is the subject of the sentence (in the sense that it would be a subject in an English sentence, but the predicate is much more important that what the subject was, AFAIK).
boku is a masculine first person pronoun, whereas atashi is a feminine first person pronoun. You'll notice in Kanon that Ayu uses 'boku' and hence is more of a tomboy.
The closest correlation to the 'am' in 'I am' would probably be the 'desu' (polite form of da, the copula). However, that's not a totally correct description, since I believe the copula da is just used to indicate a statement. A 'ka' appended to the end of a sentence implies a question, and can be appended to verbs as well as the copula.
If you used subjects in all of your sentences, you'll probably sound more like a student learning Japanese than a three year old. I think in everyday speech, people tend to omit subjects (which is why translation can be so annoying at times).
And yeah, there's definitely differences in speech between masculine and feminine people. For example, there was this navy guy who married a Japanese girl. For a while everyone thought he was gay because he picked up his Japanese from her. Thinks like appending 'wa' after a sentence like 'Atashi wa sugoku nemui desu wa' implies some sort of feminity, though probably more in the regal sense. Also things like watakushi, instead of watashi, etc. Males tend to use rougher speech and use subjects like ore (which is kinda egotistical). And I was told to not use 'ja ne' too much since I was a guy ~_~
Seriously though, if you're really interested in Japanese, pick up a book, or better yet attend classes. Getting indirect tutoring from someone still taking Japanese runs the risk of contracting his/her bad habits. Then when you really decide to take Japanese, you'd have to unlearn all of those.
Quote:
: "Sore wa kechappu desu ka?" ("Is that ketchup?")
: "Iie, kore wa chi desu. Atashi no chi desu." ("No, this is blood. My blood.")
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Is it just me, or does that remind people of Hyatt from Excel Saga?