The basic sentence structure is topic–comment. For example, "Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu" (). "kochira" ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle " wa". The verb "de aru" ("desu" is a contraction of its polite form "de arimasu") is a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, "Tanaka-san desu" is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Ms. Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence "Zō wa hana ga nagai " () literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is "zō" "elephant", and the subject is "hana" "nose".