Hello Everyone!

Welcome to this new series of articles around the Japanese language.

In our first lesson we will see one quite useful Japanese sentence, and learn some vocabulary.

What’s This?

The way one asks about objects he/she doesn’t know the name of is by asking a question like:

これ　は　なん　です　か。 [kore wa nan desu ka] / What is this?

Taking a closer look at the question, we find the following elements:

これ	This	Demonstrative for things close to the speaker.
は	{topic}	Particle indicating that what precedes is the topic of the sentence.
なん	what
です	to be, to exist
か	{question}	Particle indicating that the sentence is a question.
。	.

Because これ indicates a thing close to the speaker, when the interlocutor answers the question he/she will use それ which is the demonstrative for things close to the interlocutor (the initial speaker for those who did not follow ^^) and translates as That.

Let’s imagine the object pointed out by the initial speaker is a book, then the answer will be:

それ　は　ほん　です。[sore wa hon desu] / That is a book.

Now if there is a pen close to our interlocutor and we want to know how it is called in Japanese, we will ask:

それ　は　なん　です　か。[sore wa nan desu ka] / What is that?

Now based on what was indicated before and knowing that pen is えんぴつ, let’s guess what the answer will be…

Finally, when one wants to speak of a thing that is both far from the speaker and his/her interlocutor, he/she will use あれ which basically means “that (over there)”.

あれ は なん です か。[are wa nan desu ka] / What’s that over there?
あれ は たいほう です。[are wa taihou desu] / That (over there) is the sun.

Nouns

We will now have a quick look at Japanese nouns before we go toward some more practice.

To make it short: Japanese nouns are invariable in gender (like in English) and number.

くるま	car, cars
いぬ	dog, dogs, be it male or female.

Also, note that definite or indefinite articles (the, a, an…) do not exist in Japanese.

From now on, to make things simple, we will only indicate the singular form of the nouns.

Exercises

Let’s first have a look at some vocabulary:

くるま	romaji [kuruma] [collapse]	car
じてんしゃ	romaji [jitensha] [collapse]	bicycle
バイク	romaji [BAIKU] [collapse]	motorbike
でんしゃ	romaji [densha] [collapse]	train
ひこうき	romaji [hikouki] [collapse]	aircraft
たいほう	romaji [taihou] [collapse]	sun
つき	romaji [tsuki] [collapse]	moon
ほし	romaji [hoshi] [collapse]	star
くも	romaji [kumo] [collapse]	cloud
いぬ	romaji [inu] [collapse]	dog
ねこ	romaji [neko] [collapse]	cat
とり	romaji [tori] [collapse]	bird
うし	romaji [ushi] [collapse]	cow
うま	romaji [uma] [collapse]	horse
ほん	romaji [hon] [collapse]	book
スマホ	romaji [SUMAHO] [collapse]	smartphone
ギター	romaji [GITA~] [collapse]	guitar
しゃみせん	romaji [shamisen] [collapse]	shamisen
ピアノ	romaji [PIANO] [collapse]	piano
くつ	romaji [kutsu] [collapse]	shoes
くつした	romaji [kutsushita] [collapse]	soxes
ぼうし	romaji [boushi] [collapse]	hat
かさ	romaji [kasa] [collapse]	umbrella

Now let’s make some questions and answers using this vocabulary and what we learned earlier on:

A: What’s that? B: This is a bicycle.

A: What’s this? B: That is a cat.

A: What’s that over there? B: That (over there) is a shamisen.

And now, let’s translate the following sentences:

A:　これ　は　なん　です　か。B:　それ　は　ギター　です。

A:　あれ　は　なん　です　か。B:　あれ　は　ほし　です。

A:　それ　は　なん　です　か。B:　これ　は　バイク　です。

Here it is. If you want more, train yourself by looking around you and training with the vocabulary provided above.

See you soon for a new lesson.

Stéphane

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