Quick Reference

Meaning & Definition

です is the small word that makes Japanese sound polite. It attaches to the end of a sentence to mark ‘is’ or ‘am’ in a courteous register — but unlike the English ‘to be’, it carries almost no meaning of its own and exists mainly to set the tone of the whole sentence.

です is the polite copula. After a noun or な-adjective it works like ‘is/are’: 学生です (gakusei desu) = ‘I am a student’. After an い-adjective it adds politeness without changing meaning: 高いです (takai desu) = ‘it is expensive’ (the い-adjective already means ‘is expensive’; です just makes it polite). Its plain/casual counterpart is だ (da), and its past form is でした (deshita). です does not conjugate for person or number — the same form serves ‘I am’, ‘you are’, and ‘they are’.

How to Use It

A common beginner error is stacking です onto a verb: 食べますです is wrong. Verbs already carry their own politeness in the ます form, so です is not added to them. です belongs after nouns and adjectives. Also note that with い-adjectives, you do NOT insert だ before です — say 高いです, never 高いだです. In very casual speech です is dropped entirely, which is why anime characters speaking plainly rarely use it; adding です to everything is a giveaway of textbook-polite speech.

Example Sentences

Cultural Context

です is the entry point to 敬語 (keigo), the layered system of Japanese politeness. Choosing between です/ます speech (called 丁寧語, teineigo) and plain だ speech is one of the first social judgments a Japanese speaker makes in any conversation: です to strangers, customers, teachers, and elders; plain form to close friends and family. The moment two people drop です with each other often marks a real step toward intimacy, sometimes negotiated explicitly with ‘タメ口でいい？’ (‘can we speak casually?’).

Because です is so emblematic of polite Japanese, it became a playful suffix in pop culture. Characters who end nearly every sentence with です — sometimes the catchphrase ですです or the childish ‘なのです’ — read as either extremely formal, robotic, or endearingly earnest. This makes です one of the first Japanese words foreign anime fans recognize, even attaching it jokingly to English (‘cute desu’) to imitate the sound of polite Japanese.

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