LogFAQs > #883264435

Well technically it would be watashi wa blank desu but if no topic or subject is specified then I is default for statements and you for questions, sorta the same as english. Like in english you could say "want to go to the store?" when really the full sentence is "do you want to go to the store?" but since its a question, you is the implied subject. In english if someone were to say "ugh,....so sleepy" since its a statement I is implied to make it "ugh, im so sleepy.". Japanese works the same way.

In this way japanese is the same as english there. I is in the same place, just omitted in the japanese version because its implied and they like to omit as much as possible. Of course if the sentence gets more complex than that, then yeah the structure is quite different. Of course, if you watch anime at least, a lot of times they would omit the desu as well. You have probably heard plenty of "Urusai!" which technically just means noisy or loud but they use it to imply that that person is noisy or even less directly just that suddenly its noisy (ignoring that the noise is coming from a person, kinda like when a kid is ignoring another kid in english and being like "wow its loud in here all of a sudden, wonder why that is" when the other person is of course just talking in general), all but noisy being omitted because it's implied. Because of this its usually translated as something like "shut up" since thats how they are using it. More example of indirectness.

You may have also heard an exchange of "daijoubu?" "daijoubu" which omits everything except that word. Daijobu just means ok (in terms of the condition like "its ok" or "things are ok here"). You could probably write out whats being implied as "anata wa daijoubu desu ka?" "Watashi wa daijoubu desu". In english its are you ok? I'm ok. Or the shortened version "ok?" "ok". Of course in english the second one is weird as a sentence and the exchange would probably go "you ok?" "yeah". So really both languages omit a ton that you probably never bother to think about until you learn a new language and have to deal with the fact that they omit different things.

Course, as my vocabulary improves I realize sentence structure often isn't that important. Although it would sound dumb just saying "store, I, going, to there" its still pretty easy to understand in english. If your vocabulary is big enough to understand all the words in a line of dialogue in anime the order doesn't really matter so much.
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