I am having the biggest problems understanding when to use です and when to use ます in a sentence. I did pore over japanese grammar books and the internet but still are stumped. Are other japanese learners having the same problem or am I just overthinking this.
The other ones in a sentence that I am having problems too are では and でド which are used in place of を. If I understand でど correctly it is used when one can not do something,
です is just a polite declaritive usually when you end a sentence with noun or adjective such as今は雨です and そのビルは高いです。Use ~ます in the polite form of verbs at the end of a sentence such as 晩ご飯を食べます or マラソンで高速道路を走ります。 There’s also the negative forms.
では does not replace を. The later marks objects that have action done to them. Not sure what でど is.
Anyway, consider Tae Kim’s Guide to Grammar. You’ll find it among this series of courses I created for Japanese literacy.
Thank you, that helps a lot.
Then why is … わたしはしあわせですがかれはつかれています(I am happy but he is tired) both happy and tired are adjectives yet happy uses desu (しあわせです) and tired uses masu (つかれています).
That is because しあわせ is an adjective (a ‘na-adjective’) in Japanese and also translates as an adjective “happy” in English. But つかれます (literally ‘to get tired’) is a verb in Japanese. You would usually translate つかれています as “am/is/are tired”, using an English adjective “tired” but in fact it’s a form of a verb. So it’s just that the English translation of your sentence is misleading about the grammar of the original Japanese sentence.
Hope that helps.
yes thank you that helps a lot.