It’s just linking two sentences, and often it gets translated ‘and’. You can stick a comma in if you like in many cases.
京都に行った。ラーメンを食べました。
京都に行って、ラーメンを食べました。
京都に行ってラーメンを食べました。
As in English:
this happens when the two sentences are related in some way (two actions that happen one after another, reason-and-cause, contrast of two things, etc, etc)
using two separate sentences is not grammatically wrong, but feels odd: (compare “I went to Kyoto. I ate ramen.” vs “I went to Kyoto and ate ramen”)
the linking of the two sentences doesn’t say anything specific about the relation between the two sentences
If your textbook is unhelpful on the subject, try the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar’s entry for ‘te’.
(NB that this is not the only use of the -te form!)
“だまれ” is imperative form, not te-form. “だまって” would be the te-form version. The te-form version of the imperative is a bit softer and sounds more like a request, compared to the regular imperative, which sounds harsh and rude.
And like the others said, the te-form is used for a lot of other things, not just as an imperative. Most of those uses are covered by textbooks so as long as you keep studying you’ll eventually learn them.
The way I’d explain it in a more general manner is that <question word>でも in Japanese is essentially equivalent to <question word>ever or any<question word> in English - as in, the encompassing concept of “any possible answer to this question” in a sense.
So
どう = how
どうでも = however or anyhow/anyway
どこ = where
どこでも = wherever or anywhere
だれ = who
だれでも = whoever or anyone (considering anywho is not a word)
なん = what
なんでも = whatever or anything (considering anywhat is not a word)
どれ = which
どれでも = whichever or any (being… kind of “anywhich” I guess)
And so on.
As such, どうでもいい = “however is fine” or “any way is fine”.
Similarly, なんでもいい = “anything is good”, だれでもいい = “anyone is okay”, and so on.
For this kind of thing you really need something that discusses the grammar, rather than a dictionary entry. That might be a textbook or an online grammar site. Googling for “japanese grammar ” often works; here’s a random page I found on ‘no da’, for instance.
Without context, you can’t say for sure (though the 僕は kinda rules out ‘interpretation’), but ‘reason’ is the most straightforward, especially with the よ.
Those are two separate and surprisingly unrelated questions.
A copula can be thought of as a word (or phrase) that connects a bit of information to a subject. So if I say “cats are cute”, “are” is the copula, linking the information (cute) to the subject (cats).
です is not just “to be” first and foremost because it’s not the Japanese copula. だ is the Japanese copula. です is more of a politeness marker that replaces だ in some cases, taking on the function of the copula, but is also used in other cases - for instance, 猫は可愛いです. There’s no copula in that sentence, です is just there to make the sentence more polite, the plain-form sentence is 猫は可愛い. i-adjectives are, in essence, verbs, and as such don’t need a copula (or, if you will, it’s baked into them by virtue of being i-adjectives).
Also, keep in mind that “to be” is not just the copula in English, it’s also the “existence verb” (think “to be is to do” and “I think, therefore I am”), which is not like だ but like ある and いる.
I’m Mexican, so “to be” is “ser y estar” to me, which are いる and ある.
If you say “to be” is the copula that links “cute” to “cats” in “cats are cute” and therefore is “are” in this case, in Spanish it would be “los gatos son lindos”, where “son” is a conjugation of “ser”.
That’s mostly what I meant when I said “to be”.
I understood (kinda) what a copula is, but I think I’m more confused about だ and です now…
Though what you said explains why you can drop です in casual sentences and not change the meaning.
です is a politeness thing that gets tacked onto sentences, and if the sentence you’re tacking it onto ends in だ, it replaces だ. Similarly to how は replaces を and が but gets tacked onto に, と, etc.
The implied subject. Japanese omits a lot. It’s not really possible to say without context what that implied subject is, but it’ll be situational.
Yup!
Just a politeness marker. You can think of it as a particle if that helps (though it technically isn’t one, as far as I know - just saying it has a similar function here), like the よ in that same sentence. よ makes it stronger, です makes it more polite.
Yup!
Exactly! In fact, adding だ on is ungrammatical - it’s like saying “The dog is walks down the street”.
Don’t get too hung up on the verb thing though. That’s mostly a linguistic concern, i-adjectives don’t act the same as verbs in all respects, that’s just the underlying reason why they don’t need a copula and na-adjectives do. The important thing is, they don’t need a copula.
Na-adjectives are nouns, actually. The English terminology for them (in some works) reflects that too: adjectival nouns (na-adjectives) and adjectival verbs (i-adjectives). But you can just consider them adjectives with different rules applying to them.
Not quite - or maybe I’m misinterpreting. “To be” has two functions: the copula and the existence verb. いる and ある can only ever be the existence verb meaning of “to be”, です (or だ, rather - remember, です isn’t the copula, だ is) can only ever be the copula “to be”. They’re the same word in English, but not in Japanese.
(I’m ignoring that depending on the sentence, いる and ある may not be translated as “to be” at all - that’s not really relevant to the discussion here)
This is one of those cases where one word in English has multiple uses, but those uses have separate Japanese equivalents.
Yes, だ and いる/ある are the same in that respect. So while both “ser” and “estar” may be translated as “to be”, they are distinct meanings of “to be”, and they’re not interchangeable. Likewise when translating the other way, you need to be aware of which meaning “to be” has in English so you can pick whether you should use “ser” or “estar”.
Since the original would be 本当だ.