Breakdown of kyou wa ame desu. sorede, ie de nihongo o benkyoushimasu.
はwa
topic particle
ですdesu
to be
をo
direct object particle
今日kyou
today
Questions & Answers about kyou wa ame desu. sorede, ie de nihongo o benkyoushimasu.
Why is 今日 followed by は?
は marks the topic of the sentence. Here, 今日は means something like as for today or today....
So the sentence is not just naming today; it is setting today as the thing being talked about:
- 今日は雨です。 = As for today, it’s rainy / it is rain today.
This is very common in Japanese. Weather, time, and general situations are often introduced with は.
Why does Japanese say 雨です instead of something that literally means it is raining?
Japanese often describes weather with a noun + です pattern:
- 雨です = It’s rainy / It’s rain
- 晴れです = It’s sunny
- 曇りです = It’s cloudy
This sounds a little strange if translated word-for-word into English, but it is natural Japanese.
If you specifically want to say rain is falling right now, you could say:
- 雨が降っています。 = It’s raining.
So:
- 今日は雨です focuses on the weather condition.
- 雨が降っています focuses on the ongoing action of rain falling.
Why is there no subject like it in ?
