Desu

Linda-san, Konnichiwa!
Welcome to Rocket Japanese. It's great to have you with us.

~desu is an essential component of the Japanese language - specifically, it marks the ending of sentences. It is a copula - and can act like the English "to be".

So, in a sense, ~desu is used to explain who or what someone/thing is.

For example, your name is Linda. To say "I AM Linda" you would say
"Watashi wa Linda DESU." (わたしはリンダです。）
My name is Sayaka, so you would say "She IS Sayaka" or in Japanese
"Anata wa Sayaka DESU". (あなたはさやかです。）

So, for example to express "This is [noun]" you would say "Kore wa [noun] desu". In colloquial language, the ~desu part either changes to short forms such as ~da or is simply omitted.

-Hope that helps! Sayaka

Linda-san,

You're very welcome!

Let us know if you have any other questions.

- Sayaka

@Keyatta B,

No, you can say "Hai" as well

Minnasan konnichiwa,

Yes - in most cases (as in, when someone calls your home) you would say "MOSHI MOSHI" - but when you call a business/shop, they would answer with "HAI (followed by the name of the company) + de gozaimasu"

For example:
You: Calling a shop called "Sushi Taro"
Someone picks up...
"HAI, SUSHI TARO DE GOZAIMASU"

-Sayaka

I got a question on the copula desu....so when you are using desu is it put always at the end of a sentence and only used after a noun???

Arigato gozaimasu.