Learn the basic rules of Japanese sentence structure
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Intro |
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| Michael: How are sentences structured in Japanese? |
| Risa: And are the rules rigid? |
| Michael: At JapanesePod101.com, we hear these questions often. Ben Lee, a college student, is talking with his friend, Hana Hashimoto, about his plans for tomorrow. He says, |
| "[I] will go to Ginza with [my] friend tomorrow." |
| Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 (Ashita, Ginza ni tomodachi to ikimasu.) |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 (Ashita, Ginza ni tomodachi to ikimasu.) |
| Hana Hashimoto: 昨日も、友達と銀座に行きましたね。(Kinō mo, tomodachi to Ginza ni ikimashita ne.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 |
| Michael: "[I] will go to Ginza with [my] friend tomorrow." Or, literally, "Tomorrow, Ginza to, friend with, will go." |
| Hana Hashimoto: 昨日も、友達と銀座に行きましたね。 |
| Michael: "[You] went to Ginza with [your] friend yesterday, too." Or, literally, "Yesterday too, friend with, Ginza to, went." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, you'll learn about Japanese word order and how it may differ from English. |
| Risa: We will also explain when the word order is flexible and when the word order is very rigid. |
| Michael: You may have noticed in the dialogue that while Ben Lee said |
| Risa: 銀座に友達と (Ginza ni tomodachi to), |
| Michael: meaning "to Ginza with a friend," Hana Hashimoto said |
| Risa: 友達と銀座に (tomodachi to Ginza ni), |
| Michael: meaning "with a friend to Ginza." The meaning of these two phrases is the same, as the word order for sentences like these is rather lenient in Japanese. It is important to note, however, that the particles moved together with the nouns as a set; this is important since Japanese uses particles to show the relationship between words. For example, |
| Risa: 友達と食べます (Tomodachi to tabemasu) |
| Michael: means "[I] eat with [my] friend" and |
| Risa: 友達を食べます (Tomodachi o tabemasu) |
| Michael: means "I eat [my] friend." As you can see, particles can change the meaning of the entire sentence. Furthermore, as we saw in the dialogue, in some sense, as long as you pair words with the correct particles, the overall word order is not that important. Sometimes, you can even omit the verb from the sentence. For example, if a friend tells you that someone ate all the food that was prepared for a party, and you want to ask who, you can simply say, |
| Risa: 誰が？ (Dare ga?) |
| Michael: meaning "Who?" without explicitly saying the verb. Moreover, by changing the particle after dare, you can also convey different meanings, like "To whom?" |
| Risa: 誰に？ (Dare ni?), |
| Michael: or "With whom?" |
| Risa: 誰と？ (Dare to?) |
| Michael: As we have seen, the order of words inside a Japanese sentence is not very rigid as long as we know the relationship between the words as suggested by the particles. Now, let's take a look at what grammatical rules are more strict. When you started learning Japanese, one of the first things you probably learned was that the verb always comes at the end of the sentence. That's almost always true, though it may be still followed by sentence-final particles, like |
| Risa: か (ka) or ね (ne). |
| Michael: There is, however, one exception to this rule. Sometimes, it's possible to use inversion, like |
| Risa: 知ってますよ、彼を。 (Shitte masu yo, kare o.) |
| Michael: meaning "I know him." Here, the word "him" along with the object-marking particle, |
| Risa: 彼を (kare o), |
| Michael: is "delayed." In this sentence, the speaker wants to first stress that he or she "knows" something before adding what it is, namely, "him." It's a very specific situation, so it may seem confusing, but you'll get used to using Japanese like this with time. Here, we just want to show that sometimes it's possible to break the golden rule and move the verb before the object. Nevertheless, in most cases, you will find that the main verb will still come at the very end of the sentence. Let's now look at some other rules that are even more rigid. |
| Risa: As you may have already noticed, particles always follow the words that they modify. |
| Michael: This is a rule that cannot be broken, and also results in Japanese word order that is very different from English. For example, whereas in English we would say "from Tom," in Japanese, we would say "Tom from," |
| Risa: トムから (Tomu kara). |
| Michael: Another strict rule is about where to place counters in sentences. As you may already know, when counting things in Japanese, you have to use different counting words depending on the size and shape of what you're counting. If you're new to counters, feel free to check out our counter videos on Japanesepod101.com. When placing counters in a sentence, you usually have two options. The first option is to put the counter after the object and its particle, as in |
| Risa: 友達が３人います。(Tomodachi ga san-nin imasu.), |
| Michael: meaning, "[I] have 3 friends." Notice how we first have the word for "friends," |
| Risa: 友達 (tomodachi), |
| Michael: followed by the particle, |
| Risa: が (ga), |
| Michael: and then followed by the number with a counter, |
| Risa: ３人 (san-nin). |
| Michael: The second option is to put the counter before the object that you're counting. In this case, though, it would usually be followed by the particle |
| Risa: の (no), |
| Michael: like in |
| Risa: ３人の友達がいます。(San-nin no tomodachi ga imasu.) |
| Michael: which again means, "[I] have 3 friends." |
| Risa: It is good to keep in mind that while the subject will usually come at the beginning of the sentence, it is also often omitted. In Japanese, you don't have to say "I" or "you" when it's obvious whom you are talking about. |
| Micheal: Lastly, one final word order rule to remember is that there are some fixed sentence patterns, like |
| Risa: 〜ことができる (~koto ga dekiru) |
| Micheal: meaning "I can…" or |
| Risa: 〜てもいい (~te mo ii) |
| Michael: meaning "It's okay to…" If you don't know these patterns yet, don't worry; just remember that there are sentence patterns like these in which the order is rather fixed and cannot be easily changed. |
| Summary |
| Michael: To recap, we saw that the word order in a Japanese sentence is not very rigid but there are some important rules to remember: First, the main verb of the sentence almost always comes at the very end and can be followed only by sentence-final particles. Second, counter words can come either after the object and its particle or before the object with the object being followed by the particle no. Third, the subject, if not omitted, will usually come at the beginning of the sentence. And fourth, there are some fixed sentence patterns where the word order cannot be changed. Other than that, Japanese word order is somewhat flexible thanks to particles which always follow words to indicate their function in the sentence. This is different from English, for example, where, in many cases, changing the word order will also change the meaning of the sentence. As an example, note how "birds eat worms" and "worms eat birds" have completely opposite meanings, and this is only due to the word order of the sentence being changed. The function of the words in a Japanese sentence, however, would be marked by particles. Thus, in this case, we would have |
| Risa: 鳥がミミズを食べる (Tori ga mimizu o taberu) |
| Michael: meaning "birds eat worms" and |
| Risa: ミミズが鳥を食べる (Mimizu ga tori o taberu). |
| Micheal: meaning "worms eat birds." Technically, here, we did change the word order as well, but that is not what changed the meaning of this sentence. It is, in fact, the particles that changed the meaning. Thus, it is also possible to keep the original word order with "birds" first and "worms" coming later, as in |
| Risa: 鳥をミミズが食べる (Tori o mimizu ga taberu), |
| Micheal: and still the "worms" would be eating the "birds" in this new sentence. However, since now "worms" is the subject of this sentence, it's more natural to say it at the beginning of the sentence. Also, the direct object, "birds," which is followed by the particle o, "likes" to be close to the verb that it is an object to, which here is "to eat." Note, though, that this is not a rigid rule, just a tendency in the language. |
| Expansion |
| Michael: We now know that the word order in a Japanese sentence is more flexible than in English because the relationship of words is marked by particles. We also know that there are some rules you can't break, and, occasionally, one word order will sound a bit more natural than another. The overall flexibility of Japanese word order, however, is not true for the order of morphemes, or the small parts of words that make up words. |
| Risa: Yes, the order of morphemes is really strict. |
| Michael: For example, to say that you didn't want to eat, you need three morphemes: one to mark the past tense, one to mark the negation, and one to express the meaning of the English verb "to want" Here, the order is fixed: the morpheme meaning "want to" always comes first, followed by negation, and then by past tense. Thus, to say "[I] didn't want to eat," one would say, |
| Risa: 食べたくなかった。(Tabetaku nakatta.) |
| Michael: Let's see this word broken down into its morphemes: |
| Risa: First, we have the root, 食べ (tabe), then, we have the part that means "want to," た (ta), which comes from たい (tai), then we have the negation くな (kuna), which comes from くない (ku nai), and lastly, we have the past tense, かった (katta). So, altogether, it's 食べ・た・くな・かった (tabe-ta-kuna-katta). |
| Michael: And this order is very strict. The good news is that it's also relatively easy to learn, as you will learn each form independently. Moreover, as you will see, it is almost impossible to attach all the pieces of the word together if you change the order, even just slightly. |
| Review |
| Michael: Let's review the sample conversation: Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud, and then listen carefully as Risa models the correct answer. Repeat after her, with the focus on your pronunciation. Are you ready? |
| How do you say, "[I] will go to Ginza with [my] friend tomorrow?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Risa as Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 |
| Michael: Did you get it right? Listen again and repeat. Remember to focus on your pronunciation. |
| Risa as Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Risa as Ben Lee: 明日、銀座に友達と行きます。 |
| Michael: Let's move on to the second sentence. How do you say, "[You] went to Ginza with [your] friend yesterday, too." |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Risa as Hana Hashimoto: 昨日も、友達と銀座に行きましたね。 |
| Michael: Did you get it right this time? Listen again and repeat. |
| Risa as Hana Hashimoto: 昨日も、友達と銀座に行きましたね。 |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Risa as Hana Hashimoto: 昨日も、友達と銀座に行きましたね。 |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Risa: またね！ (Mata-ne!) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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