Japanese Nouns problem


Okay, this is my first question on this page so bear with me, I was studying
Japanese nouns but I'm not sure if you use ではありません or じゃない to deny a noun, so
if someone could please explain it to me, that would be great. Thanks!




じゃ is a colloquial contraction of では, ない is the plain form of ありません so both
are used but without the same level of politeness.

To clarify that a bit (I know it wasn't clear for me when I started Japanese)
here is some information about the copula:

  * だ, the plain form of the copula is a contraction of である (で+ある).
  * You can think of です as the contraction of であります (で+あります) though it's not etymologicaly true from what I know.
  * は in the negative versions is the contrastive particle は which gives the idea in brackets in: "it's not X (but something else)".
  * ない is the negative version of ある.

So we have (plain on the left, polite on the right):

[code]

    だ（である）　　　　です（であります）
    
    ではない　　　　　　ではありません
    
    だった　　　　　　　でした（でありました）
    
    ではなかった　　　　ではありませんでした
    
[/code]

