Nah, don’t worry about it. である[noun] is still the standard form, unless I’m quite mistaken. だ is a 終止形 (terminal form), so it can only appear at the end of sentences. Its 連体形 (adnomial/noun-modifying form) counterpart is な, which only appears after な-adjectives and after nouns in specific structures like のだ. である is both a 終止形 (terminal form) and a 連体形 (adnominal/noun-modifying form), so である[noun] is acceptable. It’s more a matter of whether or not its meaning makes sense in context. It’s true that である at the end of sentences is mostly reserved for formal documents (e.g. research studies) nowadays, however.
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Smell or scent would not be my words of choice when translating.
About green tea, it has a nice aroma.
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もちろんだね。ヨとノが違う。
I am a bit ashamed of the error, and of not having noticed it . Thanks for pointing it.
(I have typed yomitai instead of nomitai… Interestingly, if I had drawn by hand I would have used the right kanji, but not noticed that I need more phonetic drilling)
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You’re overthinking it.
です here just makes the sentence polite. It’s not required for the sentence to be grammatically complete.
So the core message is
いい におい。
Nice smell/aroma (need context for a more precise meaning)
And extra context is
りょくちゃ
green tea
To connect the context to the core sentence you use a particle は which let’s the reader/listener know we are talking about green tea. That’s why は is called a topic marker.
Without りょくちゃは it’s impossible to know what smell you’re talking about. However if you were talking abour green tea already, then normally you would omit りょくちゃは because it’s clear you mean grean tea. Note that in Japanese if you are talking about a topic then all sentences without a topic would relate to the currently one. So if you want to switch to a new topic that’s when you use は again.
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Doesn’t です function as the copula here though? I’d expect りょくちゃはいいにおい to be an incomplete sentence (though I can imagine it being acceptable in colloquial contexts)
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It’s not really necessary to think about translation here as you will confuse yourself. The meaning is very clear and understandable in Japanese, and you also seem to have have grasped it. Think about it like that rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Even with a basic concept like です you can see English is not adequate enough.
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Indeed it does although におい sounding like an adjective is probably why it can sound complete.
I’d honestly be less inclined about that because いいにおい as a set phrase is so prevalent that it feels stilted to me when it’s separate. Could just be a stylistic thing though.
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Technically you don’t need a copula to make a complete sentence. You will find sentences in formal writing that end in a noun or na-adjective without a copula. It’s a choice of the writer whether to use no copula or だ, である, です, etc. Each one has slightly different nuances.
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Interesting, do you happen to have a source on that? I’ve been searching but Google’s usually helpful tendency to reorder search terms makes it a bit hard… Everything I find (which is, admittedly, very little) does seem to suggest that ending a sentence in a noun is common enough, but technically results an incomplete sentence because a complete sentence requires a verb clause (the copula being a verb in that sense).
Further, it seems to suggest the omission of a verb clause to be informal, so I’m a bit surprised to read it’s common in formal writing - but maybe being informal to an extent in formal writing is okay?
That’s a very good point. I think I got a bit too hung up on some grammar points and forgot about some more natural ones to use in this case.
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It’s a bit hard to find any good explanations about very minute details of Japanese grammar written in English, but here is an article written about it in Japanese. The first full paragraph on page two (starting with 日本語では) says that the copula is not needed in Japanese. It basically says that because all of the sentences below the paragraph (a, b, c, d) are possible in Japanese, Japanese falls into the “b-2” category of languages listed above the paragraph, where the copula is sometimes not used.
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Interesting, thanks! I’m gonna have to sit down with a dictionary and stuff because my Japanese is very much not at a level where I can just read that as-is. In the meantime I’ll take your word for it 
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I came onto this thread in order to run through the final posts that had been added to it since my last visit and to remove it from my ‘Tracking’ list, but I couldn’t resist responding to this:
Perhaps I’m nitpicking, but in my opinion, that’s not quite what the article puts forward with regard to the usage of だ. I’d just like to point out that the paper contains this sentence at the beginning of that paragraph:
My translation:
(Additional emphasis mine)
By adding the words ‘at least in speech’ early on in the paper, the author is alluding to the fact that these sentences may not be considered ‘possible’ in all contexts (i.e. they may not always be correct, or at least, they may not be considered acceptable).
As an example of this, I’d like to quote this blog post:
https://bibuntai.jp/2019/03/14/だの脱落からみる日本語の未来/
My translation:
In essence, it’s not necessarily correct, and may shock the sensibilities of people particular about grammar. However, disregarding the fact that this is a blog post, meaning that sentence fragments might be used informally for effect, one might say that the author of the post ends the first sentence without だ after こと in spite of said sensibilities. Fair enough. Also, such copula-less sentences also exist in ancient writing, like in 枕草子:
春 は 曙
For summer, the dawn
is a sentence on its own, and this fact is discussed among other examples of nominal predicate sentences in this 1993 paper. However, in a footnote, the author concedes that
7 但し，これらの文は断定を形として表わす要素(ナリ，ダ)を欠くため，統語論レベルでは「文相当名詞」と解釈されなければならない.
However, because these sentences lack elements (ナリ，ダ) that explicitly express an affirmative meaning, on the syntactic level, they must be interpreted as ‘nouns equivalent to a sentence’.
In short, what I’m saying is this:
Technically, sentences that end in a noun exist. According to Tofugu, in the context of a conversation or ‘casual written text’, these sentences are ‘grammatically acceptable’. Historically, their existence is also well documented. However, they nonetheless remain a special case and do not seem to be acceptable in all contexts, and are certainly not of the default form put forward by the 1993 paper mentioned earlier:
名 詞 述 語 文 と は 述 語 が 名 詞 + ダの構造を持つ文のことである.
‘Nominal predicate sentences’ refer to sentences of the form ‘noun + ダ’.
As such, I personally am going to continue to avoid using them in formal writing, particularly since the nuance of omitting だ in formal writing is not clear to me. However, what everyone else does with the information I’ve just presented, which may seem to be much ado about nothing, is entirely up to their discretion. Nonetheless, if you do have examples or information relating to these sentences
(which I’ve most probably seen on occasion), I’d be happy to hear more about them.
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My mind translated the sentence as “The smell of green tea is good.”
you could use あります which would mean mostly the same thing but more like “Green tea has a good smell.”
you could use だ instead and it would be more like “Green tea smells good.”
They all mean roughly the same thing with minor nuances between each.
Specifically だ is considered more casual so you wouldn’t say it to strangers that way. Also beginner books tend to stick to mostly polite forms of sentences. That’s just what they teach children first cause speaking casually to people you aren’t close with is considered rude.
About the omitting copula thing. It is very common the omit copula and particles when speaking casually, Mostly it is to make sentences shorter and easier to say. It is very rare for those same sentences to make the same omissions when in writing.
Also note that in a lot of cases です is added to the end of sentences that don’t end with verbs because it makes them sound more polite. You can also add です after a plain form verb to make the sentence go from casual/plain to polite. So です can function strictly as a copula signifying politeness.
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Would that not sound very strange though, as opposed to using the 〜ます form? I’d feel very weird saying リンゴを食べるです at least.
Also
I’d argue it’s not a copula in those cases, just a politeness marker. It doesn’t seem to really be the polite copula anyway, since it’s not appropriate everywhere a copula is, and doesn’t function as a copula everywhere it’s appropriate.
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I’d say that the versions with だ and です mean exactly the same thing, with the only difference being politeness. Picking a single translation is hard because nothing in English uses the same sentence structure, and there are probably multiple valid translations. I think all of yours capture the meaning of the sentence. In any case, I chose not to tackle the original sentence in my post because I felt its meaning that been made clear by all the posts above.
I’m aware, and I don’t speak to strangers that way.
This is not true. Japanese children all learn the plain form first, and learning to use respectful language is apparently seen as a rite of passage that allows them to reach adulthood. Keigo knowledge is reportedly a source of pride for Japanese teenagers, at least initially, just like how many of us are often overjoyed the first time we’re able to do something ‘like an adult’. This is also the reason some Japanese working adults prefer to avoid keigo once they’re out of the office, because they find it tiring to use: the first forms they learnt were all plain forms, so polite language isn’t as natural for them and requires extra effort. You can see evidence of this just by spending time around young Japanese children: be it in Uniqlo in Tokyo or at the airport in Paris near the waiting area for a Japanese airline, none of the sentences I heard coming out of children’s mouths were in the polite form, and the children I’m talking about were seven years old at the most. Similarly, some people with at least one Japanese parent who were raised outside of Japan lack keigo knowledge even though they speak very fluently, most likely because they’ve never had to use their Japanese outside their family. From all this, it’s pretty clear that Japanese children learn the plain form first, with the major exception being learning to say お父さん and お母さん. The reason we are taught the polite form first is that most of us learn Japanese as teenagers or adults, which means we might be socially expected to be polite.
I am equally aware, and that’s part of why I’m reluctant to make such omissions when writing formally. The examples I quoted above include a reference to a Tofugu page discussing this very phenomenon.
This is the case for い-adjectives. What we were trying to determine in the most recent part of the discussion is whether or not with a noun, だ or です would be necessary for the sentence to be technically correct. As far as I know, the default form everyone learns includes だ or です. I’m not so sure that leaving them out results in a sentence that’s considered complete by most Japanese people, particularly since it might just be assumed that the copula is implied (i.e. the copula is expected by default, and native speakers’ brains just fill in the blanks while being aware that the sentence would not be acceptable in a formal/technical setting).
Not quite. This is fairly widely accepted after negative forms like 〜ない (probably because ない is a helper verb that’s treated as an い-adjective), but is generally considered incorrect with affirmative plain form verbs (e.g. 行くです). Such usage does exist, and is often assigned to characters in anime as a speech tic, but from a ‘standard language’ standpoint, it’s considered incorrect. For example, in this study, we see that
(1)〔動詞+です。〕の用法は認められていない。
(1) The ‘verb + です。’ usage is not recognised.
The raw data of the study shows that 99.5% of the 377 university students surveyed in 2017 did not use such a structure because they felt it was strange.
However, the details mentioned above notwithstanding, I completely agree that です can sometimes simply be a politeness indicator.
I don’t mean to come across as gatekeeping because I know you want to contribute to the discussion, and what you said is helpful for people relatively new to だ and です usage, but I don’t understand why your reply was directed at me, especially since almost all the ideas about だ or です you mentioned were touched on in some way by my post, aside from the ideas in the first and last paragraphs of your post. After all, what I was examining was technical correctness, and I repeatedly made the distinction between writing and speech in order to be able to use formal writing as the context in which I would attempt to assess technical correctness. However, maybe you intended your reply to be part of the general discussion and not specifically directed at me.
You made a good point that I didn’t consider when I started writing this post. Thanks.
However, to return to the question of whether or not some form of ダ is needed, here’s another study I found:
Resolution of Verb Phrase Ellipsis in Japanese Sentences using Surface Expressions and Examples
(The study is written in Japanese, but an English title and abstract are provided.)
In English, the authors say they propose methods to ‘resolve’ verb ellipsis, but if you read the Japanese, you’ll notice that the words used are more telling: the verbs concerned are ‘restored’ (復元) and ‘made complete by adding what is lacking’ (補完). Notably, they mention the omission of ダ using the example 「わたしは学生」, and then say,
この種 の解析 は文が名詞で終了 しているか否 かを調べた り,主 語が存在 しているなどの文構
造 を利用 した りして行 なえばよい.
The analysis of this type can be [satisfactorily (word chosen based on the presence of ばよい)] carried out by checking if the sentence ends with a noun, by using sentence structures like those with a subject present and so on.
Granted, the context of discussion seems to be natural language processing, but the very first sentence of the abstract refers to this absence of a verb as an ‘omission/shortening’ (省略), and not just an alternative form, showing that at least to some researchers in this field – who also happen to be native speakers – だ ought to be present at the end of such sentences as a matter of principle/defaults, even if that isn’t always the case.
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sorry I shoulda been a bit more specific. adding desu to casual forms of verbs is not common on the present/future tense cause it can be hard to say. It’s is common on the other 3 tenses though.
リンゴを食べないです feels natural to say though.
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Yeah, and it’s common enough, even if the ません version is probably more common/correct. The study I linked to about です says that over 90% of respondents used it.
You’re right that my example says at least in speech, so that paper doesn’t exactly prove that it’s acceptable in formal writing. However, just by looking in actual Japanese formal writing it clearly is acceptable. I literally just searched random Japanese patents online to find this but look on page 7.
作図の際には，次頁の（例）に倣い，切断面には平行斜線を付すこと。
I will say it does seem to depend on the type of writing. Like on Wikipedia I see である a lot, while in news articles I see だ a lot. I still don’t exactly understand the nuances of each one, but it clearly is some kind of choice by the writer to convey a particular feeling for the sentence.
Also, for your example of the だ being dropped before と, it’s not really the same thing I’m talking about. I definitely agree that you need だ before と when using that grammar structure in order to sound correct, at least in most dialects of Japanese. My post was about whether or not you can drop the copula at the end of the sentence (before the “。”).
i’ve been told by a few people that ないです sounds softer/warmer and ません sounds more rigid/formal. So it is mostly a tone of voice type of thing. Seems like younger people prefer ないです because it comes across as friendlier while still being polite while ません is the preferred thing in office places.
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I remember seeing a chart somewhere that suggested that ないです is between ない and ません in terms of politeness, so that’s personally how I see it, and it’s not surprising given that ‘い-adjective + です’ constructions were considered technically incorrect until about 50 years ago. (I do have a source: it’s a study I linked to on these forums some time in the past year, very possibly the one above about the usages of です, the problem being that I’m not certain if that’s the one.) At that time, these constructions were regularised via a decision on the part of the Japanese ministry of education, if I remember correctly.
As for whether or not younger people prefer ないです… I guess it does seem more casual and friendly? However, the survey I cited earlier was conducted on university students (i.e. young people), and of the 90+% who used such constructions, about 10% (i.e. around 1/9 of those who used them) felt the construction was a little strange even though they employed it. It probably is still considered a little less standard than ません in polite speech.
Fair enough. As I said in another post, however, it seems that some people see this as an omission of something that’s normally present:
But the matter is hardly cut and dried, as you showed with your example:
Inspired by that particular sentence, I did a little searching, and I came across a few articles on the phenomenon, the most complete one so far being this one:
In essence, this phenomenon is called 体言止め (literally ‘substantive stopping’), and refers to ending a Japanese sentence with a noun, which gives it a lingering feel. It’s studied in the second year of middle school in Japanese class. According to the article, the positive effects that this stylistic choice has are
- Making writing easier to read
- Giving writing a (more interesting) rhythm
- Drawing a reader’s attention
However, this stylistic choice is often considered incompatible with business writing because its interpretation is left to the reader, though it can help to make writing clearer when used in the context of listing information, like the time, venue and participation fee for a particular event. Some of the other problems it may bring are
- Destroying the rhythm of a piece of writing if it’s overused
- Appearing disrespectful as it can come across as an old-fashioned or pressuring manner of speaking
- Reducing the elegance of writing because while it can appear profound, it can also be vague
In short, these sorts of expressions can be considered sentences in Japanese, even if they’re still a special sort of sentence. As the article I just cited says,
通常、 日本語で文章を書くときは「ですます」または「だである」という文末で終わります 。日常的な文章表現のほとんどはこちらに該当するはずです。
Ordinarily, when writing in Japanese, sentences end with 「ですます」or「だである」. Almost all everyday expressions in writing should fall into this category.
There are certain things to keep in mind when using them, but they are a possible form of writing in Japanese.
Ultimately, I think this just reflects the fact that the Japanese definition of ‘sentence’ is much wider than what we’re used to in European languages, possibly because there isn’t as much of a need for a ‘sentence’ to follow a specific grammatical form. To us, these sentences are just fragments by Indo-European standards, but as one of the dictionaries on Kotobank says, a ‘sentence’ in Japanese is
⑧ 文法上の言語単位の一つ。文章・談話の要素。単語または文節の一個または連続で、叙述・判断・疑問・詠歎・命令など話し手の立場からの思想の一つの完結をなすもの。定義には諸説ある。西洋文法では、主語・述語を具えることが文成立の条件とされることがあるが、日本文法では必ずしもそれによりがたい。文章。センテンス。〔広日本文典（1897）〕
one of the units of language in grammar, an element of writing or speech. A thing that realises the completion of a thought from the standpoint of the speaker, such as a narration, judgement, question, exclamation or command, using a single word, a single phrase or a series of phrases. Many definitions exist. In Western grammar, possessing a subject and a predicate is sometimes treated as the condition for sentence formation, but in Japanese grammar, it is difficult to follow that definition. [synonyms untranslated]
So thanks, @davidh3. I didn’t know Japanese was so much more flexible about sentences, and I also didn’t know that these things were formally studied in Japanese schools. I learnt a lot today. 
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