ABSTRACT
One of the basic Japanese structures is X wa Y desu. This is equivalent to the English X is Y. The word order is different between English and Japanese. The topic marker wa is the indicator of what the sentence is talking about. The negative form of desu is dewa arimasen. The past affirmative and past negative forms of desu are deshita and dewa arimasendeshita respectively. Japanese name has the surname first, followed by the first name. Unlike English, the Japanese sentence does not change its word order when it becomes interrogative. This chapter explains in Japanese once the topic is introduced and shared by the speaker and the listener, it is often omitted in subsequent sentences. In the case of Miss Honda's introduction of herself, she used watashi wa the first time but after that, left it out for the second and third sentences.
