Negative Variants

I know I said I was going to progress to the -te form shortly, but now that I'm supplementing Tae Kim lessons with Genki, I've got new material to learn. The book's grammar points tend to be short and sweet, but I think I'll still break them up into separate posts so I can refer to them individually as needed. This lesson isn't the most critical one, but it's something I'll surely come across in both speaking and writing, so it makes sense to know it.

Currently to negate nouns and na-adjectives, I use じゃない, with じゃ being a contraction of では and ない being the plain negative conjugation of ある. This is probably the most commonly used form, but there are two other ways to negate things that may be seen in more formal language or books.

リーさんは犬じゃないです。

リーさんは犬じゃありません。

リーさんは犬ではありません。

All of these state that Lee is not a dog, with varying degrees of formality. The first is the common way that I initially learned. The second is a more conservative style of speech, with the じゃ contraction but the polite ありません in place. The third is more appropriate in writing and uses the original では.

アヤトは先生じゃありません。
Ayato is not a teacher.

ライトは静かじゃないですよ。
Laito is not quiet.

私は歌手ではありません。
I am not a singer.