Decks私 は 幸 せ だ — Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar flashcard
As for me, [I am] happy. "ha" (always spelled in Hiragana: は) is the "topic particle" and is always pronounced "wa". It's attached to a noun and identifies it as the topic of what you're talking about or as topic of the sentence. Together with "shiawase da", this may now make more sense. You could translate "watashi ha shiawase da" as: "As for me, I'm happy". It's very important to keep in mind that "watashi ha" is almost certainly omitted, if it's clear that it is YOU who's being talked about. So if someone asks you, how you're feeling, you'd rather say: shiawase da, but not watashi ha shiawase da.
Card 27 of 2,076 in Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar.
More from Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar
Double consonants
Notice the "tt" in janakatta. Double consonants (tt in this case) prolong or stretch the pronunciation of the consonant (t in this case. press "r" to play the audio again). They only exist in the latin transcription, but always result from a "small tsu"-charcter in written Japanese:ka = か, ta = た, so:
"kata" in Japanese looks like this: かた
"katta" in Japanese looks like this: かった
The "っ" in the middle is the small tsu character (here it is next to the large one: つっ). This one is responsible for the prolonged "t". This can also happen for other consonant-based characters, I'll show you more examples.
みんな じゃなかった
The “ー” prolongs the “i”. It's an artifact from katakana, a separate Japanese alphabet.