*I’ll talk about what a na-adjective is later.

For example, let's take two nouns: ビール and 日本人 (にほんじん)…

ビール ＝ “beer”
ビール ＋ です = “is beer”

日本人 ＝ “Japanese (person)”
日本人 ＋ です ＝ “is Japanese”

Remember how I said that we can remove words that are clear from context? Because of that, the two phrases above are actually complete sentences:

ビールです。
ビール です。
It's a beer.
Literally: "beer + です."

日本人です。
にほんじん です。
She's Japanese. // He's Japanese. // I'm Japanese.
Literally: "Japanese (person) + です."

That second sentence is a great example of how the meanings of sentences can change based on context.

Easy, yeah?

Speaking of "easy," while the words ビール and 日本人 are nouns, the word for easy, 簡単 (かんたん), is a na-adjective.

How, then, do you think that we would say "It's easy"...?

That would be...

簡単です。
かんたん です。
It's easy.
Literally: "easy + です."

What about だ?

At the beginning of this lesson, I wrote that we can express state-of-being by snapping だ or です onto the end of a noun or na-adjective. But we only saw examples with です. Why?

First, here's the version that I was taught in my early days of Japanese-learning:

だ is the casual version of です. When speaking formally, use です. When speaking casually, use だ.

↑ That explanation got me into a lot of trouble. Based on that information, we should be able to conclude that these are casual sentences, because they're using だ and not です:

ビールだ。
ビール だ。
It's a beer.
Literally: "beer + だ."

日本人だ。
にほんじん だ。
She's Japanese. // He's Japanese. // I'm Japanese.
Literally: "Japanese (person) + だ."

簡単だ。
かんたん だ。
It's easy.
Literally: "easy + だ."

I was making sentences like the ones you see here for years because I thought that these were accurate examples of casual sentences, and I saw them being used as casual sentences in all of my learning materials. But Japanese people don't talk this way.

In most cases, native Japanese speakers will put nothing after nouns and na-adjectives when speaking casually. So, they'll say:

ビール。
ビール。
It's a beer.
Literally: "beer."

日本人。
にほんじん。
She's Japanese. // He's Japanese. // I'm Japanese.
Literally: "Japanese (person)."

簡単。
かんたん。
It's easy.
Literally: "easy."

Keeping all of that stuff about casual sentences in mind, note that you still need to know that だ is the plain-form version of です. We'll talk a lot about the plain form as we progress through this course. For now, just know that the plain form is used (1) in casual language and (2) when working with a lot of complex sentence structures.

For example ー and note that we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here ー you would put a word in the plain-form before the sentence-ending phrase ～と思う (とおもう // [I] think ):

〇 簡単だと思う。
〇 かんたん だ と おもう。
〇 I think it's easy. // I think it'll be easy.
〇 Literally: "easy + だ + と + think."

× 簡単ですと思う。
× かんたん です と おもう。
× I think it's easy. // I think it'll be easy.
× Literally: "easy + です + と + think."

We'll have an entire lecture on ～と思う later in this course. So don't worry about memorizing it just yet.

If everything on this page is confusing you, just try to remember the following: だ and です express state-of-being (i.e. are similar to the English verb "to be"). They attach to the end of nouns and na-adjectives.

With this single construction, you can already form thousands of sentences in Japanese.

↑ That is not an exaggeration.

I'll show you how in a little bit, but first I'd like to dismantle a simple, common Japanese sentence formation. This next lecture might make our heads spin for a bit, but bear with me, please…