I found this sentence on the 丁寧語 lesson by taekim:

昨日、時間がなかったんです。
Yesterday, time did not exist (explanatory).

It seems wrong to me in many ways:

1) This sentence ends with a VERB (「ある」, conjugated into casual past-negative「なかった」). however, taekim clearly states that this sentence is in 丁寧語 (polite), and that's obviously why he added です. However, you only add です to make a sentence into 丁寧語 if the sentence does NOT end with a verb! (i.e. it ends with a noun or adjective). If it DOES end with a verb, ~masu form tells you that it is 丁寧語! But taekim is not using polite form, he's using casual!! I thought this sentence should have been written as:

昨日、時間がありませんでしたんだ。
Yesterday, time did not exist (explanatory).

2) That leads me to my second problem. Tae kim indicates that the sentence is using the explanatory suffix, which he himself stated as being の, のだ or んだ (sorry about having recently posted another thread focussing on these explanatory suffices, if this is creating an overlap). But in this sentence, tae kim is flat out just using ん by itself! How can he do this?
(he himself says that です is not the polite form of だ, so he couldn't argue that んです is somehow a "polite" form of んだ.)

I deleted this sentence from my tae kim deck because I just can't get my head around how it works at all.

Thanks if anyone can help me understand how it works, and how it can violate rules which tae kim explained only a few lessons before this one.

Japanese is a very flexible language. んです is the polite substitute for んだ. You can hear/see this used an uncountable amount of times. "でしたんだ。" just sounds plain wrong and googling it gets virtually no results indicating it's not correct at all.

昨日、時間がなかったんです。
Yesterday, time did not exist (explanatory).

The explanation "time did no exist" makes this sound odd/ridiculous but you know it just means that there wasn't any time. It's right though.

I just write the translations as literally as possible, but I know what it actually means in proper english.

so apart from adding desu or using ~masu form with verbs, another way to make a sentence into Polite Language is to add the polite explanatory suffix? I find it annoying that tae kim failed to mention this, and yet uses it in an example and expects me, a total novice, to figure it out for myself -.-"

So ways to make casual speech into polite:
- use ~masu form for sentences ending in verbs
- add desu to sentences ending in nouns or adjectives
- add the polite explanatory suffix to any casual sentence

are there any more ways I should be aware of?

vinniram Wrote:I just write the translations as literally as possible, but I know what it actually means in proper english.

so apart from adding desu or using ~masu form with verbs, another way to make a sentence into Polite Language is to add the polite explanatory suffix? I find it annoying that tae kim failed to mention this, and yet uses it in an example and expects me, a total novice, to figure it out for myself -.-"

So ways to make casual speech into polite:
- use ~masu form for sentences ending in verbs
- add desu to sentences ending in nouns or adjectives
- add the polite explanatory suffix to any casual sentence

are there any more ways I should be aware of?

It's not another way to make the sentence polite - it carries meaning. です is still making the sentence polite, ん has its own function. There's a thread explaining it in the recent topics if you're still unclear on how to use のだ.

yes, but isn't desu only used if a sentence ends in adjective or noun (i.e. not verb)? this sentence does end with a verb, "nakatta" (from "aru"). are you saying that adding the explanatory particle makes it OK to add desu to a sentence that would otherwise end with a verb?

Google it and you'll see millions of examples of verb+んです

edit: google the same verb+んだ and you'll see the same thing.

Think of it as turning a sentence with a verb into a noun. Inside a sentence it is just a noun clause (subordinate clause + の), but when it is at the end, the sentence gets an explanatory tone.

Casual:
毎日勉強するのは大変。 - The thing of studying every day is tough.
--
毎日勉強する?- Study every day? (Question)
毎日勉強する。- Study every day. (Statement)
--
毎日勉強するの? - Study every day? (Seeking explanation)
毎日勉強するの(だ)。- Study every day. (Explaining)

Polite:
毎日勉強するのは大変です。 - The thing of studying every day is tough.
--
毎日勉強しますか。- Study every day? (Question)
毎日勉強します。- Study every day. (Statement)
--
毎日勉強するのですか。- Study every day? (Seeking explanation)
毎日勉強するのです。 - Study every day. (Explaining)

vinniram Wrote:yes, but isn't desu only used if a sentence ends in adjective or noun (i.e. not verb)? this sentence does end with a verb, "nakatta" (from "aru"). are you saying that adding the explanatory particle makes it OK to add desu to a sentence that would otherwise end with a verb?

Er, it doesn't end with a verb, it ends with the explanatory-no. Think of the plain-form sentence here as 昨日、時間がなかったんだ; the polite form just turns the だ into です, as usual.

vinniram Wrote:yes, but isn't desu only used if a sentence ends in adjective or noun (i.e. not verb)? this sentence does end with a verb, "nakatta" (from "aru"). are you saying that adding the explanatory particle makes it OK to add desu to a sentence that would otherwise end with a verb?

Yes. The sentence no longer ends in a verb, it ends in ん, which is a contraction of の. This の is a noun, and so it can have です or だ after it.

Furthermore, なかった is itself the past form of an adjective, so 時間がなかったです would be fine as well. Modern Japanese has a peculiarity where negative forms of verbs actually become adjectives (from a grammatical standpoint). This is because the old negative form of the verb was replaced by the "mizenkei form" of the verb + the adjective ない. This is why you see 分からないです as an alternative to 分かりません.

(なかった does not "come from" ある; it's used in modern Japanese as an irregular negative of ある, replacing the old あらぬ which rarely appears outside of fixed expressions, and in the あらずに form.)

Do not delete this sentence; んです is extremely common so it's important to understand it.

でしたんだ as form of でした + の +だ sounds weird for me too.

I can see it working as で +した (する past form) + の + だ.

Well, でした (being past です) + んだ is totally impossible because you don't use -masu forms inside a sentence and then plain at the end.

でしたんです is theoretically possible but I can't say I've ever heard or seen it used. Having -masu forms modify nouns occurs only in very formal/polite speech and writing, and even then でしたのです seems unlikely to me. It's hard to search for this on google because of the interference of で + した as mentat indicated; I found some genuine でしたのです hits but it was hard to tell whether the writer was being serious or not in using it.

I think the moral of this story is: buy a copy of A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. I only tried Kim's guide a few times, but I found it to be confusing and lacking detail. I used to find that reading different perspectives on grammar gave me a better overall understanding as well.

From your recent thread:

Tobberoth Wrote:...it's ん turning 飲む into a noun

yudantaiteki Wrote:Right; if you break it down it's just the nominalizer の plus the copula だ, so what you're basically doing is taking the entire sentence and turning into a noun phrase + だ, ending up with something like "The fact is that X" or "It's the case that X".

Vinniram Wrote:It's become so much clearer to understand when broken down into: [Nominalizing の/ん] + だ

[edit: Ask the questions you need to, just don't forget to carefully read the answers. You sometimes re post questions that have already been answered. :-)]

yes, sorry about posting so many threads recently. it is just hard for me to accept that "ndesu" is the polite form of "nda", after having just read on tk that desu is not a polite form of da.

I think I will have to buy that book you suggest Javizy. I just need something without all the little, nitty gritty inconsistencies which are in tk.

Thanks to everyone for giving good explanations though.

It's really not worth struggling to understand a grammar explanation you are having trouble with. If it doesn't click very quickly, just find another one, preferably with less weird example sentences (the more examples of actual use, the better). I found Tae Kim helpful but quite confusing at times.

On the other hand, there are many aspects of Japanese grammar that are just plain weird from an English way of thinking. At some point, you do have to get over the idea that Japanese should work like English. The deeper you get into it, the less weird it all seems.

vinniram Wrote:1) This sentence ends with a VERB (「ある」, conjugated into casual past-negative「なかった」). however, taekim clearly states that this sentence is in 丁寧語 (polite), and that's obviously why he added です. However, you only add です to make a sentence into 丁寧語 if the sentence does NOT end with a verb! (i.e. it ends with a noun or adjective). If it DOES end with a verb, ~masu form tells you that it is 丁寧語! But taekim is not using polite form, he's using casual!! I thought this sentence should have been written as:

昨日、時間がありませんでしたんだ。
Yesterday, time did not exist (explanatory).

Be careful, the above paragraph sounds a bit like you're trying to make the japanese grammar seem way more simple than it is. Especially when it comes to keigo, it's really hard to make any clear-cut rules like "desu can only be used here" and "in this situation, it's better to use -masu", it depends on many different things and until you understand all the aspects of keigo, you can never really be sure if something is correct or not. For example, one would generally say that -masu isn't used in the middle of sentences, yet it's used in the middle of sentences in several situations, often when it's very polite or formal. One could also say that orimasu is humble language, yet it can also be used as a simple teinei word.

I would recommend that instead of thinking of it like "this is casual, this is teinei, and I use this thing to show what I mean", think of it more like a scale. It can be more or less polite depending on situation and because of this, the "rules" might very well change.

So, first off, the sentence does not end in a verb. ん and の are both nouns. Therefore, the sentece ends in a noun, so it's completely normal for this sentence to end in です.

Actually, what's really going on in sentences that end with ん or の is that the whole sentence is modifying the noun at the end of it--that is, the ん or の. 　This is the same way you modify all nouns. The way you make a noun into distal style (丁寧語） is to add です.

Most importantly, the most important part of the sentence in determining whether it is 丁寧語 or not is the END of the sentence. If the last non-verb has です after is, or if the last verb has ます after it, then the sentence is at least for the most part 丁寧語. Except in really really polite language (which you will NEVER use unless you work in a service position), you ALWAYS modify nouns with plain form. So, in this sentence, we see that the noun ん is modified with 昨日、時間がなかった (in Japanese, nouns are modified by what comes before them). As expected, the なかった verb is not ありませんでした (since this isn't super-polite language). And, the noun ん has a です after it to make the sentence 丁寧語.

Note that the sentence
昨日、時間がありませんでしたんだ。
is absolutely incorrect. You cannot modify a noun with long form and then NOT end the sentence in 丁寧語. Once again, that's because the most important part of the sentence in determining politeness is the END of it. 　In this sentece you're switching between super-polite language and casual language in the space of only three words, which is why it's incorrect.

It is possible to say something like
昨日、時間がありませんでしたんです。
However, you will never be in a situation where you need to be this polite--it's be weird to say this even in most polite situations, like speaking to someone you just met, or to your boss. If you were working in a very nice restaurant, however, you might say something like this when speaking to a customer.

vinniram Wrote:it is just hard for me to accept that "ndesu" is the polite form of "nda", after having just read on tk that desu is not a polite form of da.

I'm not a fan of the way TaeKim teaches the copula and polite forms or his grammar explanations. (Note that 'rules' effective for teaching will not always be the same as the 'rules' you might see in grammar references. That's normal, so try not to get bothered by that.)

But... if someone wants to follow the TK way, the points you ask about are both covered on that page:

Tae Kim Wrote:For any sentence that does not end in a ru-verb or u-verb, the only thing that needs to be done is to add 「です」 or 「でした」. You can also do this for substituted nouns (both 「の」 and 「ん」) by just treating them like regular nouns. Another important thing to remember is that if there is a declarative 「だ」, it must be removed.

na-adjective/noun (might have to remove だ) 静か（だ）→　静かです

So if の is treated like a noun, の（だ）→ のです　(or ん（だ）→んです)

*Edit* btw,　TK might have been excluding verb forms actually ending in ru or u (ie. plain present), but not their past, neg forms. It's not the best wording.

vinniram Wrote:yes, sorry about posting so many threads recently. it is just hard for me to accept that "ndesu" is the polite form of "nda", after having just read on tk that desu is not a polite form of da.

It is correct that you cannot simply say that "desu is the teineigo form of da" because you can use "desu" in some places where you cannot use "da", so that does not work as a complete description of the uses of "desu".

However, it is fine to say that if you have "noun + da", you can replace that "da" with "desu" to make the sentence more polite.

("polite" is a vague word, but I don't know of any standard English label for this -- I like JSL's "distal style" but it's not standard.)

Quote:So if の is treated like a noun, の（だ）→ のです　(or ん（だ）→んです)

EDIT: I have to retract what I wrote here because it doesn't explain the occurence of でした after nouns; I will just leave my note that explaining the two uses of です is always problematic and I've never found a really easy way to do it.

vinniram Wrote:I just need something without all the little, nitty gritty inconsistencies which are in tk.

Have a look at this book; you may like it. It's way more technical than Tae Kim's guide, and has fewer examples, but it explains the Japanese grammar in a more logical way, in my opinion. It also uses proper terminology (連体形, 終止形, 一段, 五段, etc) and categorization (eg. だ, です, れる, せる, たり are treated as verbs).

that looks like a great resource iSoron - thanks for linking me~!

When it comes to Japanese grammar, Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar are as good as it gets. Loads of example sentences and detailed explanations.

There's also the idea that Tae Kim and such online resources were made by amateurs and might contain errors or misleading information. DBJG and the others are very reliable.

Tobberoth Wrote:When it comes to Japanese grammar, Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar are as good as it gets. Loads of example sentences and detailed explanations.

There's also the idea that Tae Kim and such online resources were made by amateurs and might contain errors or misleading information. DBJG and the others are very reliable.

I find one of the most useful things about the series the "Related Expressions" section. Especially as a beginner, it can be confusing to distinguish between the different conditionals, conjecture expressions, and whatever else.

vinniram, have a look at my last post in the other thread about のです. As others have said, this sentence does end in a noun. The noun is ん (aka の). の "contains" everything that is said before it. Think of の as meaning "it". What does "it" mean in English? Well it means nothing by itself. The meaning of "it" changes constantly depending on the context. In your example sentence ん/の "contains" the clause 昨日、時間がなかった. So really the sentence is simply:

んです。

That is of course nonsense, until we realise that ん = "昨日、時間がなかった".

The sentence literally means:

"It's that I had no time". Or "It (the reason why I am late, the reason why I couldn't do my homework, the reson why whatever) is that I had no time"

Another point that you need to consider...your translation was "Yesterday, time did not exist." This is incorrect because in your sentence you have "time" as the topic. i.e. you're talking about time. But what do we know about topics in Japanese? They are marked by は. Your example sentence doesn't have anything marked by は so there is no way you can know who or what the sentence is about. That's why this is not a good sentence to be learning from. This is also an example of why context is so important in Japanese. The "topic" (thing you're talking about - the thing marked with は) could have been mentioned ages ago and not brought up again. This is because in Japanese you rarely need to repeat the topic. Your sentence could mean "it's that I had no time", "it's that she had no time", "it's that the garbarge collectors had no time (and that is why my rubbish bin is still full)". "Time" in your sentence is marked by が, which is simply a grammatical subject marker. It tells us nothing about what the sentence is "about".

Anyway, these things take a long time to sink in. Sometimes several years. Japanese is a weird language in many ways, especially the way it uses topics (in English the topic は and grammatical subject が are almost always the same) to bring focus onto the thing being talked about.

Good luck!

One more thing. Be careful when you hear about "politeness" talk in Japanese. The ます/です form isn't really "polite". It just indicates that you are more conscientious of the listener and want to make your words easier to the ear. Real politeness (when you're constantly concerned about social heirarchies) starts when you get into keigo. The だ form is "normal" language. Newspapers, business reports, and everyday speech is in this だ form. Japanese people talk to themselves in the だ form.