Checkpoint: Saying Who You Are

Four sentences carry the whole unit

A statement, a question, a denial and a link. わたしはがくせいです states; adding か asks; replacing です with じゃありません denies; and の between two nouns builds the phrase that fills either slot. Everything else in this unit is vocabulary poured into those four shapes, and every later unit will add pieces to the same frame rather than replace it.

What Japanese leaves out

Three things are missing from these sentences compared with most languages, and none of them is an accident. There is no word for “a” or “the”. There is no change of the verb for person or number. And the topic disappears as soon as it is understood, so a whole conversation can run without anybody saying わたし once. Read a Japanese sentence for what it does say, not for what a translation would need.

すみません、おなまえをおしえてくださいExcuse me, please tell me your name.

あにはいしゃで、わたしはがくせいですMy elder brother is a doctor and I am a student.