Is and to be?

[netta1029]

I was wondering, is using 'aru' and 'iru' at the end of sentences,the same as saying that something is what it is? Is it always the same as with adjectives? For example, the car is red. *knows that I worded the question wrong*

[Mukade]

To say "X is Y," you use desu, like in your example, "The car is red," or when you say "I am an American."

Kuruma wa akai desu.
Watashi wa amerikajin desu.

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Iru and Aru are more akin to the English "to exist." So you would say something like "There is a teacher" or "There is a computer" using Iru and Aru, respectively.

Sensei ga imasu.
Conpyuutaa ga arimasu.

Iru and Aru can also mean "to have," as in "I have a chihuahua" or "I have a new computer."

Chiwawa ga imasu.
Atarashii conpyuutaa ga arimasu.

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**Remember that Iru is only used with living, animate things (people and animals) and Aru is used with non-living and inanimate things (objects and plants).

Does that make sense?

[netta1029]

Yes 、that does make alot of sense to me. ども　ありがとう。:D

[sakura]

I have a question. What if something was dead? Like if a cat was 'not living' anymore. Would I say that it is now inanimate and then use aru?

[DragonKore]

I think it would still be imasu because it was once an animate thing.

[Diggity]

Well i am only taking a stab in the dark at this but I know that there is a present-negative verb tense (though I haven't gotten to verb conjugations yet to give an example.) I believe that you would use the same sentence but change the verb to that tense...

Sensei ga "Living"-past negative.

Anyone want to clarify (and hopefully tell me that my theory is correct.)

[Spaztick]

Well, you'd use the negative present to show that the cat was dead (just like in English):

The cat is not alive.

Or you could use past tense:

The cat was alive.

[toryn]

sakura wrote:
I have a question. What if something was dead? Like if a cat was 'not living' anymore. Would I say that it is now inanimate and then use aru?

Do you have an example of the sentence you want to make?

Watashi no neko ga shinde imasu.
My cat is dead.

Watashi no neko ga ikite imasen.
My cat is not alive.

Other than these, you probably won't have much to say about your dead cat, unless your dead cat's corpse is involved, but this is getting a bit macabre.

Diggity wrote:
Well i am only taking a stab in the dark at this but I know that there is a present-negative verb tense (though I haven't gotten to verb conjugations yet to give an example.) I believe that you would use the same sentence but change the verb to that tense...

Present-negative - do you just mean imasen?

[Diggity]

If imasen is the present-negative tense then yes....

Like I said... I haven't gotten to any kind of verb conjugation... I just knew that that one particular conjugation existed in japanese.

[Spaztick]

toryn wrote:

Other than these, you probably won't have much to say about your dead cat, unless your dead cat's corpse is involved, but this is getting a bit macabre.

Oooo, macabre (mac-cob ), getting complicated on us simpletons are you?

[toryn]

You can blame my English texts for letting that slip into my language.

[KRed]

To the best of my knowledge te iru and te aru vairy into 2 versions

FIRSTLY in the sense of referring to alive or dead objects.
eg Neko ga iru (there is a cat)
otooto ga iru (I have a brother)
ringo ga aru (there is an apple)

SECONDLY they vairy in the sense of reffering to the condition of an object.
te iru is used with intransitive verbs and te aru is used with transitive verbs.
eg Doa ga aite iru (the door is open)
Doa ga akete aru (someone has left the door open).
Both indicate an object is in a certain condition but te aru points to the fact that someone has left it like that.

I find the second version harder to fully understand. But there are probably many more I haven`t encountered yet.