- Forum >
- Topic: Japanese >
- "Vegetables are cheap."
"Vegetables are cheap."
Translation:野菜は安いです。
36 Comments
tongue twister*
tongue-twisters use homophones
latin:
homo = same
phone = sound
puns are words which have the same / similar meaning, while tongue-twisters are many words with similar sounds which are hard to say quickly
196
pedant (n.) 1580s, "schoolmaster," from Middle French pédant (1560s) or directly from Italian pedante, literally "teacher, schoolmaster," a word of uncertain origin, apparently an alteration of Late Latin paedagogantem (nominative paedagogans), present participle of paedagogare (see pedagogue). Meaning "person who trumpets minor points of learning, one who overrates learning or lays undue stress on exact knowledge of details or trifles as compared with large matters or general principles" is recorded by 1590s.
- 455
Don't forget that paedagogare is actually a loanword from ancient greek!
Sorry, I will leave now :P
How come you can omit です in some places but not here? (It marked やさいはやすい as wrong)
Desu is still needed after adjectives, its only really replaced by verbs like to go (iku)
です isnt a verb. If there is a verb, you use the ます version and it makes it polite. In the absence of a verb you use です to be polite. You can omit です without changing the meaning but you will sound rude. Ive read that だ is masculine casual です but i dont know all the stigma with actually using it.
In an audio book course I was listening to before, they explained that だ is simply the informal version of です, and didn't denote it as masculine. Perhaps it's more common for men to use the casual form? You hear it a lot in anime in any case, where they use casual form much more extensively than what is accepted in normal society.
I've read that "da" is a more masculine way of phrasing from both Nihongoshark and Japanammo if I'm recalling correctly.
だ can be used by both men and women. It's just the casual version of です。Duolingo is probably just trying to teach the formal desu and masu verbs before introducing the plain/casual forms of the verbs.
But です is a verb. It is a variant of であります which is "to be" (and there you see the ます form you were talking about)
Although it descends from a verb, and it can generally replace a verb in most constructions, it is not considered a true verb because it can be used in certain situations where a verb cannot (particularly after na-adjectives). Also, while it is hard to see because Japanese doesn't have spaces, it is enclitic while other verbs aren't.
I read that you can write sentences like これはかなしい or ねこはすばらしい without です, but maybe it's slang.
You CAN, but in begining level Japanese like this teachers tend to discourage impolite Japanese
Yep, you can do that. It's not slang. Just normal spoken Japanese. Using です and ます is just the formal way of speaking.
Adjectives don't work like english actually, ーい adjectives mean "is X" like おいしい means "is delicious", the です is only to add politeness to the phrase. Thus, you cannot say おいしいだ cause the だ already exists in the ーい form
Im learning too but i think it puts more emphasis on the vegetables. Downvote me if wrong
Rather the version with は puts more emphasis on the vegetables, since it sets them as the topic. When you use が the topic remains whatever it was before.
あります means "to exist" and wouldn't work here. There is nothing existing in this sentence, just a state being described.
安い is an い adjective, meaning that it already acts as a verb "to be cheap" so 野菜は安い alone is a completely valid structure.
です can also be added here to make it more polite and is required with non-い adjectives in order to complete the "X wa Y desu" "X = Y" sentence structure. Equating two nouns/a noun and adjective together.
If you wanted to say cheap vegetables exist you would have to place the adjective in front of the noun it is describing to link them together
安い野菜があります - "There are cheap vegetables"
This has a different meaning to the one for this question though.
either 野菜は安い or 野菜は安いんだ、ending i-adjectives predicates with だ is ungrammatical. This is an exception.
I'm pretty sure that Duo accepts 野菜は安い in this case.
I got the phrase "meat is expensive" before where i don't need は. Why do i need it here? Or is there a way to say it without は？
