desu, imasu and arimasu

This would be a good place to leave the "action verb" endings and explain the "to be" verbs desu, imasu and arimasu. Desu is added to the end of statements to make them polite, including ones that end in plain verb forms or their conjugations. Do not add it to verbs that are already in a polite form, like something from the masu group. After nouns and adjectives, desu acts like English "be verbs" (am, are, is, etc.) and states that something (a noun) is something (a noun or adjective):

Kare wa Tanaka-san desu. (He is Mr. Tanaka.) Carol wa nijuu go sai desu. (Carol is 25 years old.) Bob wa byouki desu. (Bob's sick.) Ashita wa ame desu. (Tomorrow it will rain. [The weather forecast for tomorrow is rain.]) Sono gakkou wa furui desu. (That school is old.)

Imasu and arimasu mean "to be (in a certain place)" or "to exist." Generally speaking, imasu is used for people and animals, and arimasu for everything else:

Tom wa imasu? (Is Tom here / there?) Hai, Tom wa imasu yo. (Yes, Tom's here.) Kabe ni kumo ga imasu. (There's a spider on the wall.) Jisho wa tsukue no ue ni arimasu. (The dictionary is on the desk.) Kouen ni ookina ki ga arimasu. (There's a big tree in the park.) Tom wa imasu ka? (Is Tom there?) Kouen ni ookina ki ga arimasu. (There's a big tree in the park.)

And the polite negative forms would use masen.

Sumimasen ga, ima Tom wa imasen. (Sorry, but Tom's not here now.) Jisho ga arimasen. (I don't have a dictionary.)

The polite past forms are imashita and arimashita :

Kinou Tom wa imashita. (Yesterday Tom was here.) Koko ni ookina ki ga arimashita. (There was a big tree here.)

And for polite past negative use masen deshita :

Kinou Tom wa imasen deshita. (Yesterday Tom was not here.) Koko ni ki ga arimasen deshita. (There was not a tree here.)

And the polite negative is dewa arimasen :

Iie, kare wa haisha dewa arimasen. (No, he's not a dentist.)

Have I mentioned how "grammatically loose" Japanese is? Well, it is, and you will run into lots of strange constructions which cannot be explained in English simply because they do not exist in English. With desu, there is one way it is often used which will throw the student who is still trying to "think out in English" everything heard in Japanese. This is when it is used after the object. A good example would be: A: O-tousan wa? (Where's Dad?) B: Shigoto desu. (He's at work.) B could even answer o-tousan wa shigoto desu, which, to the mind of the student of Japanese, could mean "Dad is a job," but it doesn't. This is the "wild card" nature of desu. I realize that making sense out of this will take some time, but Japanese allows much more "vagueness" than English does. In the example given above, desu is simply added behind the minimum required answer as a polite formality, and has no other value as a grammatical component. The seasoned listener will recognize this and not expect desu to mean anything more.