Japanese language overview: Grammar overview

Japanese Grammar

Grammatically, Japanese is not a very difficult language. It's completely different structurally from English, sure, but a lot of the "trouble spots" you have with other languages, such as genders of nouns, are nonexistent (indeed, there's not really the need to worry about singular/plural with nouns, most of the time).

Particles

One feature of Japanese are grammatical "particles" which "mark" parts of a sentence as the subject or topic, the predicate, the object, and so on. The topic, subject ("I...", object ("the computer"), predicate ("to the beach"), and quotes ("She said, 'let's go'") are all denoted by particles -- it's all very logical, like a computer language, really.

Let's look at some of these...

Wa is the main subject marker, which marks the subject of a sentence (there's another subject marker below, so sometimes wa is said to denote the "topic" and not the "subject" -- all very confusing). This is written with the hiragana "ha" character but read "wa" -- this is one of only two exceptions in which you read a kana as anything other than what it is "supposed" to be read as. It's generally translated as "as for..." as in the following example."

Here's are some sentences:

(Lit. "As for Peter, he's American" or more naturally, "Peter's American.")

("As for Japan, it's interesting" or more naturally "Japan is interesting.")

Of course only a dork would go around saying, "As for Japan..." when he talks. This is just a literal translation to help you see what the sentence is doing.

Your friend "Desu"

Notice your friend, desu. I seem to recall from my Japanese study days that this was called the Coppula, because it makes the verb and subject have sex, or something like that. It basically means "is." The negative form (which turns the sentence into "... is not") is

or de wa arimasen. So if you're from Australia, and a Japanese mistakes you for an American (they do this, I don't know why), you can tell them

which means "No, I'm not an American, I'm an Australian." This long, sometimes unwieldy phrase is often shortened to ja arimasen or just ja nai.

Now for the next particle...

This is ga, the "other" subject marker, which can be used in lieu of wa, or alongside it, to show a more specific subject within a subject.

This means, "As for Americans, they like meat." The "topic" of the sentence is "Amerika-jin" but the "subject" is "oniku"." If you have trouble telling between a "topic" and a "subject," welcome to the "I hate wa/ga club."

It's beyond the scope of this document to teach you everything there is no know about wa and ga, and besides, after 12 years of Japanese study, I don't understand them myself -- instead, I "feel" when one or the other is right. If you want to fluster a Japanese, ask them to explain the difference between wa and ga.

(One warning about this ga, the subject marker. There's another unrelated ga that means "but".)

Note, in the example above, that "America-jin" could actually be translated as "the American" or "Americans." There is no definite article (the) in Japanese, and no difference between plural or singular. This may look odd at first, but it's two less things to worry about in the end -- you pick up the information need from the context of the sentence.

One more sentence, since I introduced "de wa arimasen" above but didn't give any other examples. This means "I am not a student."

This is ni, which is equal to "to" or "in". As in:

("Takeshi is in China now.") You can remember "ni" by thinking that it's "in" spelled backwards. You can't ask for more convenience.

("Tokyo Tower is in Tokyo.")

This is a good sentence because it uses all three writing systems, as Japanese in fact does all the time -- kanji (Tokyo), katakana (tower) and hiragana (the particles and the verb arimasu, "to be (in a place)"). As stated before, you can omit the kanji and write everything in the two kanas -- but as someone who has tried to read The Hobbit in Japanese (which is translated with very few kanji, so that kids can Japanese children can read it), I can tell you that kanji communicates needed information into the mind quickly, and is not something you want to do away with.

About imasu/arimasu

Similar to desu (to be) are imasu and arimasu. They both mean "to be (in a place)." Imasu is for anything animate (people, animals), and arimasu is for any inanimate object (an object, the location in another place). I remember challenging my Japanese teacher about "in between" words, such as a venus flytrap or a coma patient, or a freshly-killed corpse. ^_^ We'll do some arimasu/imasu examples below.

A very useful particle, this is no the "glue-like element" (to quote my Japanese teacher) which sticks to nouns together. Putting no between "you" and "book" makes "your book," that sort of thing.

("My car is a Saturn.")

(It really is. We drive the first Saturn sold in Gunma Prefecture.)

("The Saturn's tires are Bridgestone.") Or if you had a Saturn with only one tire on it, the above could mean that it's sole tire was Bridgestone, but that would be stupid. (I have a friend who works at Bridgestone, incidentally.)

One of the most interesting particles, functionally speaking, is

This is the object particle, which denotes the object of a sentence. It has no other purpose, and the only time you'll see it denoting the object of a sentence. It's pronounced "o" (the same as the normal hiragana "o") but usually romanized "wo."

This says, "I want to buy a computer." The subject is I (watashi), the object is the computer ("konpyuutaa"), and yes, you do get used to "mashing" English words like "weekend" into funny Japanese pronunciations eventually), and the verb is "to buy" (in it's "I want to" form).

"Do you want to read Japanese?"

"Did you go to New York yesterday?" Notice ka, the particle at the end. This is the "question" particle, and turns the entire sentence into a question. Of course, it is omitted sometimes, especially in informal sentences. Intonation of questions, the way we do it in English, is also common.

More Particles

These four particles are the "big six." There are a few others, including kara (from), made (to or until), to (a quote particle that puts the words in front of it in quotes, effectively), de (by means of), and so on. Each one is not really hard, and we'll throw a few of them out in the next section.

Verbs, verbs, verbs

I said earlier that Japanese is an agglutinating language, which means that a lot of information is communicated through the form of the verb. The good news is that you don't a lot of annoying helping verbs flying around your sentences -- the bad news is that you need to get used to all the various forms of each verb in order to use them. However, the conjugations generally follow set forms and are not that hard to get over time.

Some forms you'll need to learn are the "masu" form (formal), the past tense formal form (change masu to mashita, it's easy), the informal or "dictionary" form (when you look up a word in the dictionary, it's listed in this form), the informal past tense (a little harder, ends in ta or da), the "te" form (used to form requests; or to chain two verbs together, change the ta/da in the previous form to te/de), a form used for passive voice, and so on. Most are easy to pick up, and you don't need to worry about all but a few for a long time; remember, this is a "quickie" introduction to what's you'll encounter if you were to study Japanese for two years at a university, roughly speaking.

Let's look at two verbs, iku (to go) and kau (to buy). The first form you are likely to learn are the "masu" form (ikimasu/kaimasu) and the dictionary form (iku/kau). Here they are in roman, hiragana and with their kanji.

The masu and dictionary forms denote present simple tense ("(I) go to school" or "(I) buy Italian suits"), or future tense ("(Tomorrow) I'll go to America") depending on the situation. The fact that you don't need to keep track of extra verb tenses while speaking is very nice for English speakers. It's rare that problems understanding the meaning of the sentence.

The formal form is ostensibly used when talking to those higher-up than you (Japan is very big on "levels" based on age, school year,etc.). Young people use the informal speech almost exclusively.

An easy form to get right away is the formal past tense -- change masu to mashita. The above says "Yesterday, I went to Tokyo." The 'e' particle marks "to" and is similar to "ni", above. It's written with the hiragana for 'he' but pronounced 'e' (it's the only other time you read a kana as anything other than it's supposed to be read).

This is the same sentence as above, but with the verb in its informal form -- presumably the speaker is talking to their friend or a family member. It's more informal and natural sounding.

This says "Saturday, (I) bought (a) banana." As is often done in Japanese, the subject is omitted when it's generally known. So, the most likely subject for the above is "I" (watashi wa). Bananas are a foreign loan word, so this word is written in katakana. "Bought" is in informal past tense.

"Papa, buy a calendar tomorrow, okay?" (You can tell I have a calendar in my room, can't you?) There are more formal words for mother/father, of course, but papa and mama are universal words, and kids use them here. In this sentence, the verb "to buy" is in its "te" form, which is made by taking the "ta" in the past tense informal, as in the banana example, above, and changing it to "te". Putting a verb in its "te" form all by itself is an informal request -- "buy it" or "go". Kudasai means "please." Ne, at the end of a sentence, is one of a large number of particles that go at the end of a sentence, and give it "flavor" (in this sentence, "ne" gives it "cuteness" or "bounce").

That's enough grammar for now. How about those sentences I promised you?

 

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