Japanese grammar point: to be or to be, that is the question.

ですかあるか、それが問題だ。

To be or to be, that is the question.

Sometimes, learning Japanese means discovering a lot about your own language. Here's one such discovery: when we use the verb "to be" in English, it has multiple meanings, depending on the context.

です

The first meaning of "to be" is what grammarians called a copula or "coupling verb." A coupling verb is a fairly unusual type of verb. Most verbs we encounter fall into one of these categories:

• a verb that takes no object (like "to sleep" or "to laugh"): these are called intransitive verbs. Example: "The dragon sleeps."
• a verb that takes a direct object (like "to kiss" or "to kill"): these are called transitive verbs. Example: "Reginald kissed Bertram."
• a verb that takes a direct object and an indirect object (like "to give" or "to grant"): these are called ditransitive verbs. Example: "The dentist gave his wife a toothbrush."

But the coupling verb "to be" is none of these. It's true that it's often followed by a noun phrase (like "a doctor" in "Ellen is a doctor"), but it's not a transitive verb. That's because "a doctor" refers back to Ellen, while in "Ellen kisses a doctor," "a doctor" refers to someone else than Ellen. "To be" couples "Ellen" and "a doctor"--it shows them to be different ways of referring to the same person: one by name, another by profession. The term for "a doctor" in "Ellen is a doctor" is also not "object," but "predicate."

The coupling verb "to be" can also be followed by an adjective. "The avocado is green" expresses that there's a thing that has two properties: being an avocado and being green. Here, it's even more obvious that "to be" is not a transitive verb: "Bernard kills green" makes no sense.

(There are other coupling verbs, by the way, like "to become" and "to remain," for example.)

The coupling verb "to be" is translated into Japanese as the verb です. (Some linguists argue that です isn't really a verb at all, but for practical reasons, let's just say it behaves like a verb, so it is one.)

エレンは医者です。Ellen is a doctor.

アボカドは緑色です。The avocado is green.

ある, いる

The second meaning of "to be" is best translated as "to exist." This form of "to be" is an intransitive verb, and it typically combines with "There" (as in "There is a form for you to fill in") or with some kind of location (as in "I'm at home" or "The suitcase is in the shed"). Shakespeare's famous quote "To be or not to be" is also this sense of "to be": he's very much talking about existence and non-existence.

For this meaning of "to be," Japanese has two different verbs: ある and いる. The difference? You use the first verb, ある, when the subject is a thing, and you use the second verb, いる, when the subject is a human or an animal. Or, more specifically, as it was once explained to me: いる is for things with a heart, while ある is for things without a heart. So a plant or a jellyfish would be ある, but a cat or a lounge singer would be いる. (I imagine that lawyers and politicians are hard to categorize.)

記入するフォームがあります。There's a form for you to fill in. (あります is the polite form of ある).

大きな鼻を持つ女性がいます。There's a woman with a big nose. (います is the polite form of いる).

アボカドは食器洗い機の中にあります。The avocado is in the dishwasher. 

私は家にいます。I'm at home.

To be is to have?!

If you thought that was it, you're mistaken. The verbs ある and いる can also be used as a roundabout (but very common) way of saying that something (or someone) belongs to someone.

Consider this sentence:

鈴木さんはペンがありますか。Suzuki-san ha pen ga arimasu ka.

This sentence breaks down as follows:

• 鈴木さんは Suzuki-san ha: Mr or Ms Suzuki is the topic of the sentence. It's who the sentence is about.
• パンが pen ga:  "a pen" is the (grammatical) subject of the sentence.
• あります arimasu: polite form of "to be" (intransitive verb, for things without a heart)
• か indicates that this sentence is a question.

Taken the together, it translates literally as the odd-sounding sentence: "As for Mr/Ms Suzuki, is there a pen?" or "When it comes to Mr/Ms Suzuki, is there a pen?"

What it actually means is "Does Mr/Ms Suzuki have a pen?" (or, if you're talking to Suzuki, "Mr/Ms Suzuki, do you have a pen?").

The same construction can also be applied to people and animals, in which case you use います.