Comments on ～ません versus ～ないです
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～ません versus ～ないです
As far as my knowledge of Japanese goes, there are two ways to form polite negative forms of verbs, the direct conjugation ～ません and the plain negative conjugation ～ない with です added.
Take for instance everyone's favorite word, 食べる (eat). This can be conjugated as:
Negative, Plain: 食べない
Negative, Polite: 食べないです
Negative, Polite: 食べません
My questions about this are,
- Is ～ないです used? While I believe it is grammatically valid, I'm not sure if it is something that Japanese people would actually say.
- If it is used, is there a difference in the usage of the two forms?
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From Steve Wright on Quora,
you can turn an entire phrase or sentence into a noun, and this has an unspoken effect, when suffixed with ～です, of adding up to the message, “I’m explaining this to you.” But rather than being condescending, it’s (often) more like, “Well, you see, this is the case.”
東京に行きません。 I’m not going to Tokyo. (polite)
東京に行かないです。I’m not going to Tokyo. (polite, but…)
So ～ないです is a more situational conjugation.
There's a lot more information about it's uses in the link mentioned.
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