日本語のおしゃべり

Japanese Language
「Sentence Structure」
「Part 2」

「Mr Oda is a teacher of Japanese.」
小田さんは日本語の先生だ/です。
Oda-san wa Nihongo no sensei da/desu.


-San is a Japanese honorific suffix that is applied to a person's family name or given name, and certain occupational titles. This can roughly correspond to the English "Mr.," "Mrs.," "Miss.," "Ms.," but markedly less formal. The Japanese tend to prefer addressing one another by family name with "-san." With Japanese names, the family name will precede the given name (Yamamoto Yumi), though foreign names pronounced or written in Japanese are not required to be reversed to follow this cultural precedent. -San should not be used when mentioning your own name, or when in reference to a member of someone else's family. 
「Cultural point: When in casual conversation among friends, you can address to them by their given name without using -san. However, this is dependant on the relationship of the speaker to the listener. In general, male speakers do not address Japanese females by given name alone, but female speakers do, in certain situations, or they use -chan rather than -san. 」

A noun followed by the particle no forms a phrase that modifies the noun that follows it. No can be variously translated as "'s" (possessive), "of," "for," or can be used to express apposition. The particle can also be used with pronouns: watashi no ("my"), anata no ("your"), kare no ("his"), kanojo no ("her"), karera no ("their"), etc. However, pronoun forms in general are usually avoided in Japanese since they can sound wordy.

Examples:
ブラウンさんは私のボスです。
Buraun-san wa watashi no bosu desu.
Mr. Brown is my boss.

リンダは学校の看護師だ。
Rinda wa gakkō no kangoshi da.
Linda is a school nurse. 

久保秋子さんは弁護士の秘書です。
Kubo Akiko-san wa bengoshi no hisho desu.
Ms. Akiko Kubo is secretary to a lawyer.

友達の信子さんはでデパートの店員です。
Tomodachi no Nobuko-san wa de depāto no ten'indesu.
My friend Nobuko is a clerk at a department store.

( •˓◞•̀ )　こゆうきあいはら　( •˓◞•̀ )