Hello!

I am now working through KO and am actually eagerly awaiting my copy of "Intermediate Japanese Grammar"--but yet this question is bugging me so much currently, I have to ask you guys: What does だ mean at the end of a sentence?

Example:
これはスフインクスの写真。この写真は上面、これは左側、これは右側だ。
(These are the photos of the Sphinx. This photo is of its front. This is of its left side and this of its right.)

How would the meaning of the last sentence change if one were to omit the だ and eg use です instead?

Thanks!

gogglygogol Wrote:Hello!

I am now working through KO and am actually eagerly awaiting my copy of "Intermediate Japanese Grammar"--but yet this question is bugging me so much currently, I have to ask you guys: What does だ mean at the end of a sentence?

Example:
これはスフインクスの写真。この写真は上面、これは左側、これは右側だ。
(These are the photos of the Sphinx. This photo is of its front. This is of its left side and this of its right.)

How would the meaning of the last sentence change if one were to omit the だ and eg use です instead?

Thanks!

"He has to know what the word 'is' means, he's the president of the United States!"

だ is the copula, so it links the subject of the sentence to the predicate (note that the subject is pretty often missing in a Japanese sentence, but it still links the unmentioned subject). It's basically the word 'is' in English, although you have to be careful because in English 'is' is both the verb for existence and the copula. In Japanese, existence is expressed by ある,　いる, and variations on them.

The pen is blue. (Here 'is' functions as the copula, linking pen to the word blue).
This is a pen. -or- A pen is. (A pen exists).

The difference between だ and です is that です is distal style and だ is direct style. You can use だ to talk to people you are familiar with, your friends and family, because you don't have to create (virtual) distance between yourself and them. です, on the other hand, creates that polite distance, so you would use it with people you don't really know very well, in business situations, to people older than you, to people higher in rank than you, etc.

だ is dropped much more often than です is. It's especially noteworthy that だ is always dropped after an い adjective, and to include it is incorrect.

Tzadeck Wrote:だ is dropped much more often than です is. It's especially noteworthy that だ is always dropped after an い adjective, and to include it is incorrect.

Another way to look at it is that です after an -i adjective does not add any meaning, it just changes it to distal (more polite) style (whereas the です after nouns is the copula), which is why だ doesn't go after them.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:だ is dropped much more often than です is. It's especially noteworthy that だ is always dropped after an い adjective, and to include it is incorrect.

Another way to look at it is that です after an -i adjective does not add any meaning, it just changes it to direct style (whereas the です after nouns is the copula), which is why だ doesn't go after them.

Yeah. i-adjectives already include the copula meaning and since da is nothing but a copula, it can't be placed there. Desu however is both a copula and a honorific, so it works.

Dropping da is indeed very common, but I would recommend males to use it as often as it feels correct since it's easy to start sounding like a girl if you omit it too much.

I virtually never use だ.

I drop or use や instead. It's one of the few bits of 関西弁 that I still use consistently.

FYI, I have that sentence in my KO2001 deck and it says この写真は正面、not この写真は上面。

Thanks for all the informative replies. Kainzero: Yeah, I've made a typo; it's 正面 not 上面.