How about letting me take apart a sentance for you. I'll only use romaji since I'm assuming that you cannot read the kana. Just bear with me.
"Watashi no namae wa Tanaka desu. Dare desu ka?"
Let's start with the first sentance.
"Watashi no namae wa Tanaka desu."
This means "My name is Tanaka."
"Watashi" means I,me,my. (it's only "my" sometimes. Read on to find out when); it's as simple as that!
"No" is a "subverbial particle" or "particle word" (abbreviated with (P) ). A particle word has no direct translation in "eigo" -English- Instead, they act as the concrete of a japanese statement. "No" shows a relationship in words, such as "watashi no kuruma." That directly means "I 'no' car." If "watashi" is proceeded by "no", it translates to "my." In English, it would be "My car", but in Japanese, it's "my no car". So whenever you need to say something is mine, say "watashi (My) no (P) kuruma (car)." The same goes for things like "your house". If you use the same ideas, then what would you say?
You would say "Anata (your, not you, because it's proceeded by -no-) no (P) uchi (house)" Basically, if you need to say an object is your's, put "watashi no" in front of it.
One thing that you should never forget is that the particle word "Wa" ALWAYS proceeds the topic as a "topic" marker (You may find later that you can use -ga- sometimes also).
Verbs almost always (if you want to know when they don't, then find a Japanese book or program for learning the langauge) come at the end of the sentance. "Desu" (pronounced -dess-) can mean "is", "are",and "am" (It can mean even more sometimes!). So if your going to say "this is a car", then you would say "Kore (this) wa (P for -topic is before me-) kuruma desu."
Japanese has no translation for the words "a", "and", and "the". This just means that there are less words to worry about, lol.
The sentance structure is also not very hard. It goes like this:
Subject, "wa", indirect object, direct object, verb.
If you need to make anything a question, put "ka" at the end of it like this:
"Sore (that) wa karuma desu ka" meaning, "Is that a car?". Just drop off the "ka" and it means "That is a car".
Good luck with your quest for Japanese; I hope this helped! Using this knowledge, I bet you can figure out what "Dare desu ka" means by knowing that "Dare" means who, the subject has been dropped off (read further to find why), and "wa" has also been dropped off. If your still having trouble, just look down.
I (P) Name (P) is
"Watashi no namae wa Tanaka desu."
This means "My name is Tanaka."
Who are (P meaning-this is a question)
"Dare desu ka?"
This---^ means "Who are you?"
If you really looked at Japanese, then you would find that most of the time, the subject (such as "Kuruma wa") can be dropped off if it's implied. Using "Dare desu ka" as an example, the direct translation from English would be "Anata wa dare desu ka?". Since normal conversation takes place between two people, the subject "Anata wa"(You") has been omitted.
Just as general practice , make English sentances follow the Japanese sentance structure
(Subject, 'wa', indirect object, object, verb), such as:
"I want milk"-----would be----"I 'wa' milk want"
or "I love my family"-----would be-----"I 'wa' my 'no' family love"
REMEMBER: this is really basic Japanese. The order can and will change sometimes, but don't panic, if you study Japanese, it should be a breeze.
If anyone wants to know more, I'd be more than happy to help, but it's a time issue for me. I'd only be able to come on around 10-11pm.
Tanoshinde kudasai!!!! ---(Please have fun!)
Dewmata!---------------(So long!")
