*unsubscribes from trolls*

I still contend that, if for no other reason than the fact that they are in the same category called “language,” there must be similarities between Japanese and English; otherwise, they would be categorically different things. And even if the similarities are few and far between, then it’s still better to give a paltry explanation than the retort that’s unnaturally abundant around here: “Don’t bother.” If the latter were the reply to most questions in life, then it would be a miracle if anyone ever learned anything. It does not at all follow from the supposed fact that contact points between languages may be few that only a few things may be learned by comparing them.

Now, onward with my question: Wikipedia (via @joel) said that です is a verb — specifically, a state-of-being verb (or copula). Is it the case, then, that じゃありません is also a copula, but negative? Or is it some form of the verb あります, which is not a copula?

(P.S. — Though I’m not willing to accept the “Don’t bother” response, I will dutifully listen to someone who, with good reason, says, “Don’t bother right now.” In other words, if TextFugu deals with all this in a later chapter, then I’ll willingly suspend my questions till that time.)

@kanjiman8: It’s exactly because I don’t want to waste time that I’m asking this question. What I don’t want to do is “learn” that です is a noun, only to find out later that it’s a verb, or whatever. In short, I don’t want to have to do any un-learning. Plus, TextFugu isn’t my only Japanese learning resource — I also use Tae Kim’s guide and Human Japanese — so I just want to make sure that my learning in one resource squares with what I’m learning in another. If, as @phillip says, @koichi just has an “unorthodox” way of saying things, that’s fine. I guess I just don’t want to be memorizing something that’s not true only to have to un-memorize it and memorize something else later.

I would also like to have very clear in my own mind the differences between English and Japanese so that I don’t try to make English grammar structures in Japanese and end up sounding stupid.