Comments on: Ways to say です (desu)

By: Jacob Hansen

Jacob Hansen — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:46:00 +0000

the reason desu, sounds like des, is because of something extremely common in japanese (and pretty much every other language on earth) called devoicing, in it’s most basic forms it’s putting more emphasis on the consonant and little to no emphasis on the vowel. It’s hard to hear but the “u” sound is there.

By: donkan

donkan — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:29:00 +0000

don’t think like that. it’s just like you say “doumo arigatou gozaimashita” when you want to be overly polite ;)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:14:00 +0000

You cannot use だ in a question because it makes an assertion.
Although です and だ are present tense, and polite and causal, respectively, です is not a polite equivalent of だ. だ is used to make assertions, whereas です is not; だ can be used in sentence fragments, whereas です can only be used at the end of a sentences or in direct quotes; and だ cannot be used in questions, whereas ですcan.You can only use だ at the end of sentences and sentence fragments which end in な-adjectives, nouns, or sentences and sentence fragments which end in explanatory の or ん. You can use です only in sentences which end in な-adjectives, nouns, or sentences which end in the explanatory の or ん. You can only use です in these cases, and only in these cases can you replace です with だ, with the exception that です can be used in these cases if the sentences are questions, whereas だ cannot.

By: Annie Öhlén

Annie Öhlén — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:32:00 +0000

Gozaimashita is past time and gozaimasu is present time.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:01:32 +0000

IT”S DES PEOPLE!
(How do u rit in Jap on dis site)

By: Tyler

Tyler — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:01:32 +0000

IT”S DES PEOPLE!
(How do u rit in Jap on dis site)