New lesson #5 (Introducing people #3 - At a party)

GRAMMAR
1. PARTICLES (show relationship of a word, phrase -whatever- to the rest of the sentence)
They often cannot be translated into English and they always come after nouns.
They can be compared to the English prepositions(voorzetsels), but those always come before nouns.

- 'wa'
'wa' tells you that the noun before it ('watashi wa', so 'watashi' is the noun) is the topic of the sentence. What comes after it is the comment. Literally 'wa' means: 'as for'.
Watashi wa gakusei desu.
I'm a student.

- 'no'
'no' indicated possession or attribution and comes after the noun it modifies. It's like the English apostrophe ('s). As in: Karen's book.
Watashi no tomodachi.
My friend.
Kimura-san no senmon.
Kimura-san's field of study.

- 'mo'
'mo' means 'also', 'too' or 'as well'. It's used in both affirmative as negative sentences.
Anata mo gakusei desu ka.
Are you a student too?


2. QUESTIONS
add 'ka' at the end of the sentence, the word order does not change:
Kimura-san wa gakusei desu ka.
Is Mr. Kimura a student?