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Updated on
20 Jan 2017
- English (US)
- Portuguese (Brazil)
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Japanese
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French (France)
Question about Japanese
Why sometimes you use "desu", and sometimes "masu" at the end of a sentence? In the sense of roughly translating to the verb "to be" (i.e. Onaka ga suitei masu - why not use desu here?) What's the difference?
Why sometimes you use "desu", and sometimes "masu" at the end of a sentence? In the sense of roughly translating to the verb "to be" (i.e. Onaka ga suitei masu - why not use desu here?) What's the difference?
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- Japanese
- English (US) Near fluent
- Filipino
ます is only for verb
search for ますform of the verb for further info
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- English (UK)
- English (US) Near fluent
masu is the polite non-past ending of a verb.
Here it's suite imasu.
imasu is the verb to be.
Desu is different. It's an auxiliary that comes after nouns and adjectives. The word that comes before it is the predicate of the sentence.
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- Russian
"Desu" is the short form of "de arimasu" (to be). The "-masu" form of the verb is the polite form. Example: taberu -> tabemasu. Japanese sentence has the Subject-Object-Verb word order, so mostly sentences end with a verb.
Here is an example of "I am a student":
watashi wa gakusei desu = watashi wa gakusei de arimasu (polite form), watakushi wa gakusei de gozaimasu (extremely polite form)
watashi wa gakusei da = watashi wa gakusei de aru (simple form)
watashi wa gakusei de gozaru = I've used to be a samurai of the Edo period, but now I'm a student
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