Here are the translations for the last two sentences on the previous page:
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| What is this thing (nearby)? | This thing is a book. |
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| What is this thing (here)? | This thing is a house. |
I’ve given the answer as a complete sentence because it gives you more practice with the full construction. In conversation, you wouldn’t normally repeat the subject in your response. Instead, you’d drop the "this thing/that thing" in the answer and have a dialogue as follows:
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| What is this thing (nearby)? | It’s a book. |
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| What is this thing (here)? | It’s a house. |
When you’re first learning a language, you don’t want to start dropping words out too early; otherwise you end up speaking like a caveman:
Q: What’s that thing?
A: A book.
Q: Where are you going now?
A: The movies.
Q: What have you been doing lately?
A: Ug.
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