![]() Instead of the grammatically correct “ Watashi ha Chugokujin desu” (“I am Chinese”), you’ll often hear Chinese characters saying “ Watashi ha Chugokujin arimasu.” Fuji is beautiful” is “ Fujisan ha kirei desu,” and, if you’re confident enough to make the same boast about your own fetching good looks, it’d be Watashi ha kirei desu.”īut in the world of anime and manga, if the scriptwriter or author is creating dialogue for a Chinese character who’s supposed to be less than fluent, there’s a better-than-even chance the character will completely bypass imasu and desu and just use arimasu, or it’s more casual version, aru, for everything. So for “I am in Japan,” it’d be Watashi ha Nihon ni imasu.” And finally, desu is used with adjectives that describe the condition of things or people. Fuji is in Japan,” you’d say “ Fujisan ha Nihon ni arimasu.” Imasu, on the other hand, is for the existence/location of people and animals. ![]() While they all more or less translate into English as “be,” they’re used for different situations in Japanese.Īrimasu is for showing the existence or location of inanimate objects. If you’re studying Japanese, three of the first words you’ll learn are arimasu, imasu, and desu. Linguistics professor explains the centuries-old background of the omnipresent anime and manga verbal tic.
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