｜霜の狼｜人面獣心」🐺❄️
(what I'm attempting to say: "we are beasts of the forest.")
(not all of us are wolves, and "beasts" is mighty poetic!)
(watashi-tachi ha mori no kemono da.)
sentence breakdown
「私たちは森の獣だ」
「私」= I/we
「たち」= explicit plural to make it 'we' (note: can only be used for people)
「は」= (topic marker)
「森」= forest
「の」= (like 'of' but backwards)
「獣」= beast(s)
「だ」= explicit "is/are" (it would be implied otherwise, but being explicit gives it emphasis)
sentence breakdown
@frostwolf strictly speaking, in statements of identity like this ("noun x is noun y"), だ (or the politer です) is grammatically necessary to include
sentence breakdown
@frostwolf the rules surrounding when you should use だ and です are complicated, because they serve a couple different functions... for instance, many adjectives function as verbs on their own - if you wanted to say "i'm cute", 「私はかわいい」is correct in its own and does not take だ at all, and you'd only add です for politeness
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion So だ is only just for emphasis when there's already a different verb there?
... and is かわいい an "is-cute" verb in Japanese /instead/ of an adjective, or somehow both? Like the thing we're reading said liking things is an adjective (like you'd say "the thing is likable") instead of a verb, I'm wondering if this is like that but the other way around, or more complicated than that.
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion we've seen "kawaii" romanized before and it's weird and cool seeing the hiragana and going "oh hey it's that word we know, I can READ THIS". =^.^=
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion also I didn't have to use the chart, for once!!
re: sentence breakdown
@frostwolf だ is the copula, which means it's the verb for "to be" (as in, saying one noun is another noun). です is the polite version of the copula, but it's also used to mark politeness in some cases when it's otherwise not grammatically necessary
かわいい is an adjective that functions as a verb in certain circumstances. most adjectives ending in 〜い behave this way
re: sentence breakdown
@frostwolf 「私はかわいかった」means "i was cute", and the polite form is 「私はかわいかったです」which uses the です word for politeness even though it doesn't make sense grammatically otherwise
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion Oh neat!
re: sentence breakdown
@frostwolf https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/desu/ this page has a good deep dive on です if you're curious to know more
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion *perks ears, wags tail, pokes!*
re: sentence breakdown
@typhlosion *blinks* Oh /huh/, I thought I had a handle on it after your first comment but nope. x3
(ooh, more critters around us know Japanese! =^.^=)