You may have noticed that Japanese sentences’ word order are different from English. Yet, although it may sound odd to say “I Marge am”, don’t be discouraged about it, it is just a matter of learning Japanese sentence structure and soon it will become second nature. Remember that to Nihon-jin our word order for “My name is Marge” must be strange too!
What is Nihon-jin? Nihon-jin is the way to say “Japanese person”.
in Japanese, to express nationality, you add the word for person, jin （ 人 ）to the name of a country. Let’s take a look at some examples.
日本 (Nihon) + 人 (jin )= 日本人 “Japanese person”
in the same way:
ア メリカ (Amerika) + 人 (jin )= アメリカ人 (Amerika-jin) “American person”
イギリス (Igirisu) + 人 (jin )= イギリス人 (Igirisu-jin) “English person”
in total, you can say:
（私は）アメリカ人です。
(Watashi wa) amerika-jin desu.
I’m American.
Note that when talking about yourself, it is not necessary to say “watashi wa”, as it is implied that you are talking about your own nationality in this case.
Easy enough? Talking Japanese step by step you will realize that although the grammar and structure might seem different, it makes sense in its own way. now that you know some basic introduction and important ice-breaking introductions, go ahead and take that trip confidently! It only gets more interesting from here!
