to be/is
Structure
- Noun + です
- Adjective + です
[polite present tense]
I recommend the following article for those feeling unsure about how acceptable (or not), です attached to the end of い-Adjectives is.
https://www.dunwell.me/archives/2020/desu/
A few quotes:
However, unlike [である, だ, and でございます], です is used after adjectives. The acceptance of this usage dates back to 1952, when it was formally approved by the National Diet.
A full-text search of the fifth edition of Kōjien will return no examples of です used after an adjective, except for the one in the entry on です. It seems that although Kōjien acknowledges that such usage is considered correct, it neither employs nor actively recommends it.
Foreign writers of Japanese may sometimes wish to eschew the adjective+です construction to avoid sounding foreign or childish. Although it is widely accepted as proper Japanese, it is not considered formal or sophisticated.
I think there are several problems with this article.
Most importantly, “incorrect according to the rules of traditional grammar” is technically correct, but how traditional is that grammar if even the National Diet was ok with it 70 years ago? To put this in perspective, if we apply the same principle to English:
- We can’t use “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun
- We can’t split infinitives as in “to boldly go”
- We can’t start sentences with a conjunction (this rule is still taught, but professional style guides accept it)
- We can’t use stative verbs in continuous form such as in “I’m loving it”
- We’d say “I like to eat” much more often than “I like eating”
- We’d say “I’m serious” but never “I’m being serious”
- We’d primarily use the ‘s genitive with animates (paralleling “whose” etc.) and use “of” with inanimates
- The “get passive” would be uncommon (as in “I got robbed”)
I also feel like given that modern teaching materials actively teach い-adjective + です and modern dictionaries all acknowledge it, it’s unhelpful to refer to a dictionary from more than 30 years ago as if its definition still meant something. I once read an old textbook that said I should address my employees with お前, that doesn’t mean much anymore today either.
In a way, this use of です is about as strange as ませんでした was (instead of ませんかった or something), but ませんでした was commonly accepted about 100 years before い adjective + です, and now nobody even remembers the other past polite forms anymore.
Using 全然 with positive meaning is a similar case. It was historically used like that, then briefly fell out of favor, and for the last 30 years we’ve now been using textbooks that say things like “young people started doing this again”. But those “young people” might have grandkids now.
Finally though, if you do want to make something ending on an い adjective polite without using です, rather than messing around with grammatical but unused forms like 美味しくあります, I recommend rephrasing so the sentence ends on a noun or a verb. For example:
- 美味しいです → 良いお味です
- 仕事は面白いです → 面白い仕事をします/しています
No 70 years outdated rules need to be violated while we also don’t have to resort to grammar from 150 years ago to be polite…
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I appreciate the detailed analysis, and I agree that we shouldn’t let what’s “traditional” grammar too strongly affect our judgements on how language can/should be used today.
It seems though, like you read the article as having a little more of a prescriptivist tone than I did? I read it more as a timeline of the acceptance of い-adjective + です, plus some additional context around how people tend to feel about its usage today, rather than any sort of damnation of its use.
It’s possible the quotes I chose above did a poor job of conveying my point - but my intended reading was really more like this:
Foreign writers of Japanese may sometimes wish to eschew the adjective+です construction to avoid sounding foreign or childish, [despite the fact that] it is widely accepted as proper Japanese.
In fact, I linked the article specifically because I wasn’t a fan of how strongly worded Bunpo’s warning is on the grammar point:
Caution: Although です is often attached to the end of い-Adjectives, this is actually incorrect Japanese, and would not be used in writing/literature. In daily ‘spoken’ language, however, it is considered completely normal.
- 暑いです。
It is hot. (Common, but technically incorrect)
The above example should not be used in formal writing.
This seems pretty excessive to me, especially if we’re arguing “technically” (as opposed to “traditionally”) correct. “Technically correct” only exists insofar as so-called “official” sources say it does – and those sources have been accepting い-adjective + です for a long time now.
I just read it as half-baked I think, just throwing around a few random quotes from dictionaries.
I agree on bunpro’s wording being a bit too strict, in particular the claim that it doesn’t appear in literature is just incorrect. And people use it in other writing too, in particular informal channels that are close to spoken language anyway like Twitter.