What the the Japanese word "Dewa" mean? eg. watashi no nihongo wa jouzu dewa arimasen.?

Question

The sentence means "My Japanese skills are bad." But i cant quite pinpoint "dewa" 's purpose in the sentence. THx in Advance^^

Answer 1

CB400 and kaori m have the correct answer but for the wrong reason. 'De wa arimasen' is simply the negative form of the copula 'desu.' It works not only for 'na- adjectives,' but for nouns and any kind of phrase which could have 'desu' attached to it.

英語が上手です。日本語は上手ではありません。

eigo go jouzu desu. nihongo ha jouzu de wa arimasen.

I'm good at English. I'm not good at Japanese.

アメリカ人です。日本人ではありません。

amerika jin desu. nihon jin de wa arimasen.

I'm an American. I'm not a Japanese.

そういうことではありません。先生の言うとおりです。

sou iu koto de wa arimasen. sensei no iu toori desu.

It's not like that. It's the way the teacher said.

Hope that helps.

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Good point, CB400. I think what you said is basically true, so I shouldn't have said it was 'for the wrong reasons.'

But now that I start thinking about it, I have heard people say, for example,

正しくないではない

and things like that. In English we like to think that 'i-adjectives' and 'na-adjectives' are really the same thing with just an insignificant difference in the way they are conjugated. But I think in Japanese they are viewed as completely different classes of words. 'I-adjectives' can be conjugated in the true sense of the word (the base form of the word itself changes) whereas 'na-adjectives,' like nouns, are not ever really conjugated. Therefore they use the copula and its various conjugations to show tense.

In short, I agree with your clarification as the clearest way to describe this case in English, but I think I'm still correct about 'de wa' still being part of the negative copula when used with 'na adjectives, and I don't think the example of 'i-adjectives' changes that. The 'de wa' goes with the copula, and has nothing to do with the root of the word being described. 'I-adjective' simply don't need the copula to be grammatically complete, therefore we don't normally see 'de wa' used with an 'i-adjective.'

Answer 2

"Dewa"'s purpose in your sentence is to help negate the "na" adjective, which is "jouzu". It is the particle to be used before "arimasen".

If you have "i" like 正しい (tadashii), you will use "ku" instead of "dewa". Example: 私の日本語は正しくありません。 (watashi no nihongo wa tadashiKU arimasen.)

Add:

My answer above is to address Kortnei P's question which is to pinpoint "de wa"'s purpose in the given sentence. Todd is right about the usage of "de wa".  However, incidentally, the sentence given has a "na" adjective (jouzu) in it. If the sample sentence has "i" adjective like in 砂糖は甘いです (satou wa amai desu), you cannot apply "de wa arimasen" to simply negate the copula "desu". You wouldn't say 砂糖は甘いではありません (satou wa amai de wa arimsen), but instead you will say 砂糖は甘くありません (satou wa amaku arimasen).

Of course, "de wa" has also some more usage like では、始めましょう (de wa, hajimemashou) which can be translated to "ok, let's begin" or "well, let's begin". But the original question is not asking for the varied usage of "de wa", so I only addressed its usage with reference to adjectives which happens to be the main reason why "de wa" appeared in the given sample sentence. In this sense, I believe I provided the correct answer with the right reason.

Add2:

Yes, Todd, you're right about that "de wa". Unfortunately, we only realize this when we become really familiarized with the language.

Re: 正しくないではない

You're right here again. Double negation which is actually more like 「正しくない」ではない where the「正しくない」to negate is preconceived. It's like saying "It is NOT not right".  I think this is because when you say 正しくなくない, it sounds confusing. I actually have to count how many "kunakuna" there are (believe me, there are some people who use more than 2 kuna's) before I could decide if it's a simple negation or double negation. Anyway, I guess Nihongo teachers decided (well, not actually by them) to categorize things such as "i" adjectives and "na" adjectives to make it easier to teach and understand when to use "kunai" and "de wa nai" for example.

Answer 3

it is used to negate the adjetive.

it depends if it is a nakeyoshi or a ikeyoshi (na adjetive or i adjetive)