Learn Japanese - JapanesePod101.com

The new Avengers movie opened in Japan last Friday. The tag-line used on posters is:-

日本よ、これが映画だ。

Nihon yo, kore ga eiga da.

I have two questions about this. The first is: what effect is the よ having? Does it make it say something like "Hey, Japan!"?

The second question is: what am I missing? The tag-line seems to be a statement of the very obvious. Why are they telling me it's a movie? I know it's a movie.

マイケル

マイケルさん、
Yes, you're right about よ
It's like "hey", as you imagined.

And... That's true!
Everyone knows it's A movie, but the tag-line is rather saying "Hey Japan, (pay attention,) THIS is THE movie".
In other words, the ad is saying "you don't know what movies actually are; watch this. THIS, is the movie".
The particle が is not only a subject marker, but it also works as a emphasising が. This means that the word right before が must be emphasised.
これが映画だ　means "this is what we call movie" or "it's this that we say movie".
Hope this helps!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

奈津子さん

Yes, it helps a lot!

I have read about が many times in text books but I never understood how the emphasis works. But now it is very clear. In fact, now that you have explained it, it seems so obvious that I wonder why I didn't understand it.

I have seen the Avengers movie. It's very fast and noisy, and the special effects are incredibly good. But it isn't really my favourite kind of movie…

「アベンジャズ」は映画じゃない。「耳をすませば」が映画だ。

In my humble opinion, of course.

マイケル

マイケルさん、
Wow, I'm glad I could help you!
And you got your sentence right!! Well done! It also confirms that you understood が perfectly!
Congratulations! One more step forward!!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

natsukoy9313 wrote:Congratulations! One more step forward!!

There seems to be something new every day. It isn't always a step forwards, though. But it's always interesting.

For example, today I discovered that there is another set of number kanji that is used banks. Apparently that's because it's easy to turn 一 into 三 but not so easy to turn 壱 into 参. And there are kanji called 宛字 that work phonetically, a bit like kana. You can write my country as 英吉利 and you can use the first kanji 英 to mean British or English. So that's where 英語 comes from!

English people have a friendly rivalry with Americans, and we like to annoy them by telling them that the language we both speak is called English, not American. And it works in Japanese too! It’s 英語, not 米語.　:D

マイケル

マイケルさん、
Yes, that's true
I think the same goes to Spanish, Portuguese,....quite much any languages

Knowing the kanji for country name is very interesting (although not always very useful in daily life )
and I remember I tried to study them when I was child!
When we write 壱 instead of 一, there could be a reason; no one can add anything after it's written to trick someone else if we use 壱, but if we write 一, anybody could add vertical line onto it and change it to 十, which is 10 times bigger as number (much worse than adding 2 more holizontal lines to make it 三)!!
It's like when you write cheque with both figures and words

Natsuko(奈津子),
JapanesePod101.com