ですTo be, Is

Most Recent Replies (6 in total)

• 

  Jake

  to be/is

  Structure

  • Noun + です
  • Adjective + です

  [polite present tense]

  View on Bunpro

• 

  Talos

  I recommend the following article for those feeling unsure about how acceptable (or not), です attached to the end of い-Adjectives is.

  https://www.dunwell.me/archives/2020/desu/

  A few quotes:

  However, unlike [である, だ, and でございます], です is used after adjectives. The acceptance of this usage dates back to 1952, when it was formally approved by the National Diet.

  A full-text search of the fifth edition of Kōjien will return no examples of です used after an adjective, except for the one in the entry on です. It seems that although Kōjien acknowledges that such usage is considered correct, it neither employs nor actively recommends it.

  Foreign writers of Japanese may sometimes wish to eschew the adjective+です construction to avoid sounding foreign or childish. Although it is widely ...

• 

  nekoyama

  I think there are several problems with this article.

  Most importantly, “incorrect according to the rules of traditional grammar” is technically correct, but how traditional is that grammar if even the National Diet was ok with it 70 years ago? To put this in perspective, if we apply the same principle to English:

  • We can’t use “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun
  • We can’t split infinitives as in “to boldly go”
  • We can’t start sentences with a conjunction (this rule is still taught, but professional style guides accept it)
  • We can’t use stative verbs in continuous form such as in “I’m loving it”
  • We’d say “I like to eat” much more often than “I like eating”
  • We’d say “I’m serious” but never “I’m being serious”
  • We’d primarily use the ‘s genitive with animates (paralleling “whose” etc.) and use “of” with inanimates
  • The “get passive” would be uncommon (as in “I got robbed”)

  I also feel li...

• 

  Talos

  I appreciate the detailed analysis, and I agree that we shouldn’t let what’s “traditional” grammar too strongly affect our judgements on how language can/should be used today.

  It seems though, like you read the article as having a little more of a prescriptivist tone than I did? I read it more as a timeline of the acceptance of い-adjective + です, plus some additional context around how people tend to feel about its usage today, rather than any sort of damnation of its use.

  It’s possible the quotes I chose above did a poor job of conveying my point - but my intended reading was really more like this:

  Foreign writers of Japanese may sometimes wish to eschew the adjective+です construction to avoid sounding foreign or childish, [despite the fact that] it is widely accepted as proper Japanese.

  In fact, I linked the article specifically because I wasn’t a fan of how strongly ...

• 

  nekoyama

  I just read it as half-baked I think, just throwing around a few random quotes from dictionaries.

  I agree on bunpro’s wording being a bit too strict, in particular the claim that it doesn’t appear in literature is just incorrect. And people use it in other writing too, in particular informal channels that are close to spoken language anyway like Twitter.

• 

  coffee126

  Pretty late jumping in here, but if い-adjective plus です is considered incorrect, what is considered correct?

• 

  Fuga

  Hey @coffee126 !

  To make い-adjectives polite, people used ございます. For example, 楽しいです was 楽しゅうございます, and 美味しいです was 美味しゅうございます. However, because people thought this was too long and exaggerated for daily conversation, people started to use い-adjectives + です instead. Due to this, in 1952 the Japanese Language Council stated that い-adjective + です is acceptable. However, because this is a recent change, some people still consider it incorrect and think that it sounds unnatural.

  I hope this answers your question!