Nouns

I have had a little bit of a fit with trying to get my words sorted... so I'm kinda behind on posting, though I have several ready to post... forgive me.

With nouns, you can express present/future* and past, and positive and negative.
*note that there is no "future" tense in 日本語; you specify the time, if you need to.

These are "is" "isn't", "was", and "wasn't".

	Positive	Negative
Present	だ	じゃない
Past	だった	じゃなかった

Note that だ can be pronounce all kinds of ways in different parts of Japan... an alternative that is used more often is です。

(It) is water.
水です。

(It) isn't (a) mountain.
山じゃない。

(It) was (a) fish.
魚だった。

(It) wasn't (an) apple.
りんごじゃなかった。

If it's not used at the end of a sentence, you don't use だ or です after it.

A fish can swim.
(fish swims, it can.)
魚は泳ぐことはできる。

(I) want some water.
水が欲しい。