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- "Yes, I am a student."
"Yes, I am a student."
Translation:はい、私は学生です。
74 Comments
It isn't considered correct to add the Watashi to your answer as they have not provided the additional character for it to be a complete sentence using that. To say "Yes, I am a student" using watashi would require you to lengthen out the sentence. It would end up something like "Hai, watashi wa gakusei desu" (pls excuse the awful romaji.)
I wrote "hai" in katakana it didn't get accepted, is it because katakana is only used for foreign/borrowed words?
The pronoun 私 isn't necessary, but you have the topic particle は in the wrong place.
You can't place a particle directly before the copula です,
In an A=B sentence, to say "something is something", the structure AはBです is used. A is your subject marked with either は or が (depending on the emphasis you need; here it is best to stick with the topic 'contextual particle' は), and your description of A, (B) is marked with です to form the predicate. "...is X"
Your sentence has "Student" marked as the subject with は "On the topic of students...." but it has no description connected to です, nothing you are actually saying about the subject, so the predicate is incomplete. "The students are.....???"
Duo's sentence has the subject 私は "I" being equated with 学生です "is/am a student"
You can drop the subject if it is understood through context, but the predicate is the important new information you are trying to convey and can't be dropped. Changing what word is the subject to something else also changes the meaning of the sentence.
There will always be enough tiles to make a correct response, but it might not be the response that you wanted to make. Without “wa”, then you do not put “watashi”. “Hai, gakusei desu.” is enough, since you are answering a question someone has asked you, that person knows who is being talked about. Japanese usually omits subjects when it can.
737
Ok, since someone asked ME the question, i wouldn't need watashi because i am answering the question. The watashi is redundant? Is that how this is working?
Although the topic is known out of context, we could write this sentence as はい、私は学生です. But technically, even if we translate it as such, は doesn't always make the noun before it a subject right? So couldn't this mean "Yes, the student is me." as well? Maybe it doesn't matter and maybe I have got it totally wrong.
Well, lets say that 私は in this case also is the subject. From what I know, which isn't much, を is the object particle. So my second question is: If 私 needs to have は in order to function in the sentence, why doesn't 学生 need を so we know it is the object. Or is this known out of context?
I was just wondering if someone could clarify this for me. Thanks in advance!
Duo's sentence is pretty much the same so I'm not sure what you're talking about?
はい、私は学生です would also make sense, but you've got a わ in yours rather than the topic particle は.
Japanese very rarely uses pronouns though. Since this is a question being asked to you it is already heavily implied that the person responding is talking about themself, so adding "watashi wa" is both unnecessary and unnatural sounding. So the pronoun is dropped to just はい、学生です and still completely understood through context.
Over-use of pronouns can even come off as rude sometimes as it would put more emphasis on yourself when it is unneeded, and it could also imply you think that the listener needs clarification as if they wouldn't be able to keep up with the conversation if you didn't remind them.
134
I got it wrong and the correct answer shows "watashi". I'm not sure if this question has changed, but surely it's clear I'm talking about "me", because it sounds like someone just asked me and I'm answering their questions. Surely it's clear and watashi shouldn't be needed?
Japanese doesn't use spaces so writing it that way, instead of seeing the answer as a single block of text as it would typically be written, the computer sees a bunch of individual blocks of text. It sees them as a bunch of random extra [empty] characters. It's lik eadd ingspa cesi ninco rrectplace sinEng lish. All the letters are there, but it isn't how it is normally done. Spaces are only really used in childrens books that don't contain any kanji to make them easier to read.