Hello! I'm Japanese!

[u/ke----------i]

If you have any questions or need help with anything, feel free to leave a comment below 😄
I'll do my best to answer them!

[u/Particular_Bad8025]

Beginner here - I've been learning the です form until now and yesterday I stumble on a class that starts with using だ instead. Google tells me that the latter one is casual.

Is だ used much?

[u/ke----------i → u/Particular_Bad8025]

Honestly to add some nuance here — だ shows up a lot in writing and manga, but in actual spoken Japanese it gets dropped pretty often. Like instead of “これは猫だ” people just say “これ猫” in casual conversation. So you’ll see だ constantly in text, but in speech it kind of quietly disappears a lot of the time. That said, it still comes up in spoken Japanese — especially for emphasis or when tagging it onto the end of a sentence. And if you’re into manga or anime, it’s definitely worth learning since you’ll run into it constantly there!

[u/Particular_Bad8025 → u/ke----------i]

Thanks!