
The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure - tav
https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/
======
kazinator
Hey all, on a topic related to this: here is another way to get some feeling
for the different sentence structure.

I recently finished making English subs for a 45 minute Japanese rock concert
video from the 1980's.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqfX9nm-
No](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqfX9nm-No)

Here I introduce a concept in subtitling whereby a subtitle template with
dashed ("\------") blanks appears for an entire English sentence, and the
blanks convert to words and phrases as the corresponding concepts appear in
the Japanese audio, in that order.

The viewer has a better idea of what is being sung at the moment it is sung,
and which words are receiving the emotional emphasis in the song. Also, the
revelation of meaning is delayed for the English viewer in the same way. The
"kicker" phrase at the end of a verse or a meaning-altering particle (such as
an entire sentence negation) isn't prematurely revealed in the translation.

~~~
glandium
"This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on
copyright grounds." :(

~~~
kazinator
Somewhat ironically, this problem hinges on an excerpt of a studio album song
which plays over the ending credits for less than a minute. Not around the
actual video album itself. That's what the content ID system latched on to.

------
whym
This article does a great job at presenting a gist of the Japanese sentence
structure. Nevertheless, it makes me want to point out that it's not the whole
story. If you take into account topics such as modality and conjugation, some
of the information you add to a verb is placed _after_ the verb and _cannot_
be freely reordered.

Japanese verbs are "greater" than English verbs in the sense that you
conjugate/suffixate a verb to express negation, conjunctions, conditional
forms etc, making it longer and longer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation)

In contrast, English has a relatively simple set of inflections of verbs. Many
of those Japanese verb forms and suffixated long verbs are translated into
multi-word phrases. Compare:

Anata wa kyou _nemuru_. (You _sleep_ today.) -- verb is in normal form
("nemuru")

Anata wa kinou _nemurenakatta_. (You _were not able to sleep_ yesterday.) --
verb is in continuative form ("nemuru"→"nemu") + possibility suffix
("reru"→"re") + negation suffix ("nai"→"naka") + past suffix ("ta"→"tta")

~~~
iamnotlarry
For Japanese, you learn a handful of rules to conjugate a verb. Then those
rules always apply with no exceptions. In English, there are not set rules.
Every case is special.

What is the past tense form of 'shake'? 'see'? 'walk'? 'sleep'? 'eat'?
'speak'? 'sit'? 'seek'? 'work'?

There are no rules. You basically have to memorize every word and all the
possible ways it can morph.

English possessive: 's or s' or ' or s, depending. Japanese possessive: no

English plural: different for every word. Japanese plural: same as singular,
or throw on a -tachi

English past tense: different for every word. Japanese past tense: -mashita
for verbs, deshita for adverbs/adjectives

In English, nothing is simple. In Japanese, a multi-word phrase may have more
syllables, but at least it will always be the same rule.

~~~
Grue3
You're forgetting that there are only 3 (three) verb conjugations in English,
of which two are almost always the same. Only a finite number of verbs have
irregular conjugations, so you just learn them along with vocabulary. In
Japanese, the number of possible conjugations of all irregular verbs (copula,
"suru", "kuru") is probably larger than the number of English irregular verbs
that are commonly used. In fact, let's count the number of conjugations of
"kuru" in my ICHIRAN [1] database:

    
    
        ICHIRAN/DICT> (length (get-kana-forms 1547720))
        186
    

Are English possessives considered difficult by anyone? Not sure what that
demonstrates.

Plurals! Oh, that's my favorite topic that I'm working on right now. -tachi is
mostly used with people, so can't be used in most context. For inanimate
objects you just say the number of them. And that's where the ___counters_
__come in... At which point any sane person gives up learning Japanese for
good.

Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really
work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The
correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]".

[1] [https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran](https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran)

~~~
glandium
You're somehow comparing 3 verb conjugations in English vs. 186 for "kuru".
Well, I hate to break it to you, but there aren't 186 conjugations for "kuru".
There are, exactly, 6. 9 if you count the formal/archaic forms[1]. There may
be 186 forms you can build with auxiliaries, but then, you'd have to compare
to all the variants you can have in english with may, can, shall, etc.

1\.
[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6%A0%BC%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8)

Edit:

> Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't
> really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word.
> The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]".

'tanishiideshita' is the kind of mistake you make when you're not taught that,
in japanese, adjectives conjugate. Sadly, a lot of material glosses over that
fact.

Similarly, most material for non-natives like to talk about the -masu form,
then describe things as "-masu form without masu" (sigh).

Cumulating "knowledge" from such material, you end up with simplified rules
like in GP, which work in some cases, but don't in many others.

Then when you dive more into the language, you either encounter new forms and
consider them as such, and are crushed under the sheer number of forms, or
have to basically start over, deconstruct what you learned and realize that,
in fact, it's all much simpler and structured than what you thought, and what
made it all more complex is all the learning material for beginners.

In some ways, it's like maths.

Coming back to the 186 forms for "kuru", I'm sure you only end up with that
because of that same learning material "limitations". So you probably end up
counting "konai", "konakatta", "konakute", "konakereba", and many other forms
as forms of "kuru", when, in fact, they are one form of "kuru" with variants
of "nai".

The same material will e.g. also tell you about "-kunai" for the negative form
of "-i adjectives", but fail to mention that it's actually "-ku+nai", which
explains why you will find forms like "-ku ha nai" or "-ku mo nai". I've never
seen those explained in textbooks, but that I'm sure it's not pretty.

~~~
ue_
>Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"?

I learned this quite early on, but I'm still a little confused for exactly
when to conjugate desu instead.

~~~
mikekchar
The main problem beginning Japanese learners often face is that they are
taught polite form before plain form. Polite form is a natural extension of
plain form, but if you start with that, it's actually quite mind bending to
back track to plain form. The secret is to abandon polite form entirely until
you are relatively fluent with plain form and then add polite form back in.

For example, "tanoshii" is present/future tense. "tanoshikatta" is past tense.
If you want to make it polite, then you just add "desu". Super easy.

While it is grammatically incorrect, it is completely acceptable in normal
conversation to do the same with the negation. "tanoshikunai" is the negation.
Past tense negation is "tanoshikunakatta" (ye gods, I can't read romaji...).
You can do exactly the same thing to make it polite -- just jam "desu" on the
end. That's what every child will do. The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai
desu" should really be "tanoshiku arimasen".

For "na" adjectives, it works differently. "suki" is present tense. To make it
polite: "suki desu". Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki
deshita". Negation is "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...).
Polite negation is "suki de wa arimasen" (though you can very much get away
with the mistake of saying "suki de wa nai desu" \-- again, every single child
speaks this way).

Past tense negation is "suki de wa nakatta". Polite is "suki de wa arimasen
deshita" (but again, the easy way is "suki de wa nakatta desu").

So, why is it like this? The reason is that "i" adjectives were originally
verbs that had a different set of inflections/conjugations. Very obscure piece
of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is that "ohayou
gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's actually
"(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending mixes with
"de" to produce the "ou" ending. Anyway, the point is that you have to inflect
it because it is literally a verb that is modifying a noun.

"na" adjectives on the other hand are actually adjectives. They are called
"na" adjectives because you have to add "na" when modifying the noun. For
example, "suki na hito". The "na" is actually a contraction of "ni aru" \--
because in Japanese you can only modify nouns with verb phrases.

So this is why there is a difference between the negation of "i" adjectives
and "na" adjectives. "ku" is the verb combining form of the old style "i"
verbs (like "te" is on modern verbs). So "tanoshikunai" is really "tanoshiku
nai" \-- you are combining the "tanoshi" verb with the "nai" verb. On the
other hand "suki" is actually an adjective, not a verb, so you have to say
"suki de wa nai" \-- you can't combine them.

Past tense is exactly the same. In "tanoshikunakatta", it's really combining 2
verbs and conjugating the last one (as per the rules" \-- "tanoshiku
nakatta"). If you want to make it polite, the polite past tense of "nai" is
"arimasen deshita" (but you can get away with "nakatta desu" in virtually
every situation).

With "na" adjectives -- "suki de wa nakatta", we've conjugated the only verb.
Again to make it polite you can say "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (or "suki de
wa nakatta desu" if you want to sound like an uneducated bumpkin like me).

Hope this helps! Avoid polite form until you can handle plain form and it's
almost all completely logical ;-)

Edit: Fix past tense in the examples of incorrect, but acceptable polite
forms.

~~~
glandium
> The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku
> arimasen".

While it should technically be -ku arimasen, it's actually rarely used, and
-kunai desu is more "mainstream".

> Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is
> "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is
> "suki de wa arimasen"

Trivia: all these forms are really variations of "suki de aru". "datta" comes
from "de atta", "de ha nai" is really "de nai" with a "ha" for emphasis. "de
ha arimasen" is really "de aru", with the "ha" for emphasis, and "aru"
conjugated with the "masu" auxiliary at the negative form.

> Very obscure piece of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is
> that "ohayou gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's
> actually "(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending
> mixes with "de" to produce the "ou" ending.

Technically speaking, the -i and the de are not combining at all. The -u form
(ウ音便) comes from the -ku form (連用形), where the k is removed. Then the
preceding sound also changes (like in arigataku -> arigatou ; oishiku ->
oishuu, etc.). The typical forms used in keigo are -u gozaimasu and -u
zonjimasu (where there is no "de" to combine in the latter ;) )

I think the Japanese learn the ウ音便 in 国語 or 古文, so I don't think it's some
obscure trivia that few people know. In fact, you can hear it in e.g. 時代劇
dramas.

Also, the form is pretty common in Kansai dialect (without gozaimasu). In
fact, wikipedia claims[1] it comes from there and the gozaimasu was added in
Kantou.

1\.
[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%B3%E4%BE%BF#.E5.BD.A2.E...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%B3%E4%BE%BF#.E5.BD.A2.E5.AE.B9.E8.A9.9E.E3.81.AE.E9.80.A3.E7.94.A8.E5.BD.A2)

~~~
mikekchar
Thank you for that. That makes a lot more sense. I admit my source for the
combining was 言葉マン on NHK and I may have misunderstood some things :-).

------
iamnotlarry
I learned Japanese very much the same way I learn programming languages and
found it to be very easy to learn spoken Japanese.

As far as languages go, Japanese is structured a lot like a programming
language. If you learn five or six "bunpo" or grammar rules, you can go a very
long ways. Then, to improve, just add rules to your mastery.

When I first learn any programming language I start with basics: variable
binding/assignment, types, conditionals, looping, etc. Japanese fits very
nicely into the same learning method.

Does a language have if/then? is it 'if (<expression>) { expression }'? Or 'if
<expression> then <expression> end if'? Is there an 'unless' form? What about
'else'?

For Japanese, it's <expression> naraba <expression>. That's it. Unless?
<expression> nakeriba <expression>.

How about while? <expression> nagara <expression>

For people who can learn the gist of a programming language in a week, you
could learn the gist of Japanese in a week or two. That doesn't mean you would
be fluent. You'd still need to learn thousands of vocabulary words. But the
basic mechanics can be mastered in days or weeks. More mechanics can be
layered as needed.

~~~
irq11
_" For Japanese, it's <expression> naraba <expression>. That's it. Unless?
<expression> nakeriba <expression>."_

There are actually a number of ways to say "if" in japanese, and the one you
mention can only be used in certain contexts.

People might get your gist if you use the conditional tense for everything,
but you'll be wrong a lot. The -tara/nara grammar is at least as commonly
used, if not more so.

I bring this up to illustrate only that the "programming language" metaphor
doesn't go very far. Japanese, like any human language, is loaded with weird,
illogical exceptions.

~~~
iamnotlarry
What? You mean there's a ternary operator?

I bring this up to illustrate that the metaphor isn't perfect, but it has some
legs. I meant that BNF diagrams would be easier to create and understand for
Japanese than for English.

You are right that there are more forms for saying 'if'.

Then again, I've seen programmers who spell 'if' 'f-o-r'.

~~~
irq11
No, I mean that there are at least a half a dozen different ways to express
"if", and they all have specific semantic uses. It is way, way more
complicated than syntax.

~~~
dcw303
Agreed. This [0] and the subsequent lessons go onto explain that if clauses
change depending on whether something is a fact, whether it is an invitation,
whether it is volitional, etc.

I've been studying Japanese for years and I am at a basic intermediate level.
I still find grammar hard to read, and even harder to produce naturally. I may
just be particularly thick but I think saying "you can master Japanese grammar
in a matter of weeks" is pretty misleading.

[0] [http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-
conditional...](http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-conditional-
form-to.html)

~~~
irq11
Yeah, anyone who suggests that is either exaggerating, or doesn't know as much
as they think they do.

Japanese grammar is simpler than English in some ways, harder in others.
Overall though, it's really, really hard.

~~~
glandium
To be fair, all things considered, if you have to learn either language from
scratch from a native language that has no link[1] whatsoever to it, I think
English is harder than Japanese.

1\. by which I mean, in the case of English, for example, if your native
language is not french, german, etc.

In fact, I think English is harder to learn for Japanese native speakers than
Japanese for English native speakers.

~~~
irq11
Yeah, I can't really speculate. It seems to me that the #1 biggest obstacle
for Japanese speakers of English is getting past the Japanese education
system, and actually _speaking_. Beyond that, I don't know.

But as a general principle, I believe that learning any new language is
really, really hard. The people who claim to master languages in a few weeks
are usually full of it (and by "usually", I mean "essentially always".)

------
ThinkingGuy
One minor quibble with the author's example sentences: They use "watashi wa
hito desu" to mean "I am a person."

I'm not a native Japanese speaker, but I'm pretty sure that "hito" is only
used to refer to other people, never to oneself (source: the excellent
"Nihongo Notes" series by the Mizutanis).

Maybe _watashi ha ningen desu_ 私は人間です (I am a human) would be a better example
that still illustrates the grammar pattern.

------
myrandomcomment
So I am sitting in Ebisu in Tokyo right now. I spend about 3-4 months a year
here and have for about 8 years. My understanding of spoken Japanese is pretty
decent. However it is by pure memorization over time. This just sorted a whole
bunch of things out in my head as to the why. Very good stuff. Thank you.

~~~
xelxebar
Oh cool. I'm in Koenji.

If you would like more of this kind of thing, I highly recommend Tae Kim's
Guide to Japanese Grammar. It's a lot like OP's article, but much more
thorough, organized by topic, and provides auxillary resources so you can dig
in as much as you please.

------
tempodox
I love how precise and detailed this article is written. If only more
documentation were like this.

It was always my assumption that grammar is the most important thing to learn
about a language. Vocabulary accumulates almost automatically over time, with
practise (and a dictionary). Interesting to see how that holds in this case.

~~~
kalleboo
> It was always my assumption that grammar is the most important thing to
> learn about a language

I think it depends on what your goals are. If you just want to communicate,
vocabulary is the most important thing to get started, since even with poor
grammar people can infer what you mean (gestures help too!). I've seen too
many people here in Japan who have crammed English grammar all their school
years but are paralyzed when trying to communicate because they're just
focused on getting the grammar right.

~~~
iamnotlarry
I think you should learn a handful of grammar rules right up front.

Obviously, * Desu/deshita/de arimasen/de arimasen deshita *
Masu/masen/mashita/masen deshita

Then add a few more * if * while * want to <verb> * passive * honorific * etc.

You can learn one a week or one a month. There aren't very many to learn. But
having just four or five up your sleeve (in addition to verb conjugation) can
really improve your comfort.

~~~
kalleboo
Absolutely! You're not going to get anywhere in any language with _only_
either grammar or vocabulary.

------
dbshapco
Anyone actually recommend the book from which the article is taken? I also
tried to read the wa v. ga blog post on the site to get a further sense of the
author's approach, but the server returns an out of memory error (from a blog
post?!).

I've been in Tokyo now 18 months, took private lessons twice costing about
$2,000, and feel I learned 10 words. That's $200/word. I joke with people I
stopped taking lessons because learning Kanji would bankrupt me. Japanese just
doesn't stick in my older and very Western brain. It doesn't help that my
office does business in English and one can get by in Tokyo with minimal
Japanese and a lot of pointing and gesturing. The glacial progress becomes
discouraging.

I tried Rosetta Stone. It takes the same phrasebook approach as the first
textbook I was given, Nihongo Fun & Easy, which was neither. The textbook at
least had short sidebar discussions of grammar and somewhat useful phrases. I
had no idea where I'd get to use the phrase "The children are swimming," that
Rosetta offers.

The 8020 article was the first discussion of particles that actually made
sense. When I'd asked teachers about particles before the answer was usually
something like "Don't worry about that yet, just memorize the phrases." If the
remainder of the book is in the same vein I'd pay twice the asking price. I
flipped through parts of Nihongo Fun & Easy after reading this article and it
suddenly made much more sense. I wasn't staring at a list of phrases I was
supposed to memorize and slowly reverse engineer the language, but could
deconstruct the basic sentences.

It's much easier for me to learn construction, and use the break down of other
sentences to construct my own, even if the rules fail sometimes and lead me to
construct sentences no native speaker would utter. That's the other 80% of
language idiosyncrasies that takes time.

I don't expect to be fluent in Japanese any time soon, however moving past
"sumimasen kore onegeihshimasu" while pointing at a menu item would be
awesome.

~~~
marxama
I really recommend the Japanese For Busy People books, I learned tons from
them quickly. They start off very basic (obviously), but they explain the
grammar in a really good way, and progress into more advanced topics as you go
along. Make sure to get the kana versions, not romaji!

For learning Kanji, the most efficient option I've found is Remembering the
Kanji by James Heisig. It's a bit of a long-term investment, in that it takes
a while for them to really pay off (you don't learn the readings/sounds until
book two, the first one is completely focused on the meaning and writing of
the characters), but in the long run I think it's a much better option than
for example the books trying to teach you the characters by showing you their
similarity to the things the represent.

------
a_c
This article resembles two different ways of designing protocols. In tcp [0],
information are encoded in position, e.g. the first 16 bits are for source
port and the next 16 bits are for dst ports. While in, say, FIX [1],
information are encoding be delimiters and position doesn't matter.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Information_eXchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Information_eXchange)

------
stephengillie
Using particles in this way almost sounds like using flags to specify
parameters when calling a function. This allows them to be placed in any
order. A Powershell-like example:

    
    
      Construct-Sentence -subject Taro -object Noriko -verb to_see -time Past  
      > "Taro saw Noriko."
    
      Construct-Sentence -object Noriko -time Past -verb to_see -subject Taro 
      > "Taro saw Noriko."
    

The original sentence is "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita." And "masu" appears to
be the root verb "to see".

    
    
      Construct-Sentence -wa Taro -wo Noriko -verb masu -time Past
      > "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita."
    

Something more Bash-like:

    
    
      csent wa:Taro wo:Noriko masu -past_affirmative
      # "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita."
    

Meanwhile, subject-object-verb (SVO) and similar patterns depend on the order
of inputs:

    
    
      Construct-Sentence Taro Norkio to_see Past
      > "Taro saw Noriko"
    
      Construct-Sentence Norkio Taro to_see Past
      > "Noriko saw Taro"
    

This allows for invalid outputs:

    
    
      Construct-Sentence Taro to_see Norkio Past
      > "Taro Noriko'ed see"

~~~
mcaruso
I've made the analogy of function calls before, it's a pretty cool way to
think about it. But I think your example is slightly off. The verb is the head
of the phrase, and would thus be the function (or command) itself:

    
    
        miru --topic=Taro --object=Noriko # Taro sees Noriko
    

This uses "miru", the plain non-past form of "to see". Conjugating the verb is
a little trickier to translate, but I think it would be analogous to higher-
order functions, functions that modify the verb to create a new verb. Using a
Python-like syntax:

    
    
        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object="Noriko")
        # Taro wa Noriko wo mimashita
    

I'm trying to think of a way to include relative clauses in this analogy, but
it's a little harder. A relative clause is of the form "[verb-phrase] [noun]",
e.g. "doresu wo kiru Noriko" (Noriko who wears a dress). Maybe we could use
positional arguments for this:

    
    
        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=kiru(object="doresu", "Noriko"))
        # Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita ??
    

EDIT: or maybe currying would be a nice way to solve this. So each verb would
be a function that takes arguments, and returns a new function that takes a
noun to apply that verb to:

    
    
        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=kiru(object="doresu")("Noriko"))
        # Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita

~~~
stephengillie
Could this situation be described by nesting sentences?

    
    
      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."
    

To extend your example:

    
    
      formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object="Noriko")
      "Taro saw Noriko."
    
      formal(present(kiru))(topic="Noriko", object="doresu") 
      "Noriko wears a dress."
    

Nested:

    
    
      formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=(formal(present(kiru))(topic="Noriko", object="doresu")) )
    
      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."
      "Taro saw Noriko wear a dress."
    
      "Taro wa (doresu wo kiru Noriko wa(?)) wo mimashita"
      "Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita"
    

Does that make sense?

*Please help correct any errors, as I have never formally studied the Japanese language.

~~~
mcaruso
It wouldn't type-check, since `object` is expected to be a noun and not a
verb. :)

~~~
stephengillie
It's a difficulty inherent in describing one unfamiliar language with another
unfamiliar language. :)

This could work in Powershell. The function would have to be written to expect
nested recursive calls, to remove the omitted particle.

    
    
      Construct-Sentence -verb miru -Formal -Past -Topic Taro -Object (
      Construct-Sentence -verb kiru -Formal -Present -Topic Noriko -Object doresu
      )
    
      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."
      "Taro saw Noriko wear a dress."
    
      "Taro wa (doresu wo kiru Noriko wa(?)) wo mimashita"
      "Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita"

------
ehsquared
Filipino is really similar in terms of the use of particles/markers! For
example, to say: "The cat is eating the fish", we say: "Kumakain ng isda ang
pusa". The verb (is eating, kumakain) always comes first. The subject (cat,
pusa) is identified by the "ang" marker, while the object (fish, isda) is
identified by the "ng" marker. We could also say "Kumakain ang pusa ng isda",
although that's rarely used.

The "-um-" affix in "kumakain" makes the verb active ("is eating"). If we
instead used the "-in-" affix (as in "kinakain"), it would make the verb
passive ("is being eaten by"). So we could alternatively say: "Kinakain ng
pusa ang isda" to mean: "The fish is being eaten by the cat".

------
creamyhorror
I quite like the headlining diagram. It's a simplified view that shows the
schematic approach of the languages - Japanese relies on case particles rather
than ordering (unlike English). Of course, there's a lot of complexity that
goes on under the hood when you start to figure out the appropriate verb
conjugations to use (which aren't shown in the figure).

Small side comment, if anyone's learning Japanese and wants to ask or answer
questions about it, you're welcome to join a little Discord chat group
(including native speakers and advanced learners) at
[https://discord.gg/6sjr3UY](https://discord.gg/6sjr3UY)

------
Grue3
Yeah it's "logical", except in casual language the rules are broken all the
time. A lot of things can follow the verb.

The article doesn't mention subclauses at all, but it's where things become
hairy. There's particle "ga" which is similar to "wa" except it works as a
subject of subclause, except sometimes it means "but". There are dozens of
ways to incorporate subclauses into main sentence, using different particles.
It's very common for the entire sentence to be a subclause ([something] no/n
desu).

------
akssri
Interestingly, many Indic [2] languages follow similar verb-centric grammars.
In the canonical Vyakarana tradition (of Panini), sentences are seen as
revolving around the verb [1].

The "noun-cases" or कारक (karaka) are generally equivalent to the "particles"
in Japanese. The genitive (eqv. の) is not a karaka, since it has no relation
to the verb. Of course, since there is technically no syntactic difference
between adjectives and nouns in Sanskrit, the semantics of the genitive in
particular can be very undeterministic. This is not the case in others though.

I wish there were more studies on how Indic traditions affected East/SE Asia
[3]. Sadly, most academics/people here don't believe there exists a world
outside N. America & W.Europe (often no India either!).

[1] There is a competing tradition of semantics called "Nyaya" where sentences
are seen to be Noun-centric. These discourses are generally not easily
accessible.

[2] Dividing the languages based on presence/absence of noun inflections would
appear not to have much discriminative power to claim anything about
historical origins. Historical Linguistics, I believe, is mostly a politicized
pseudoscience.

[3] This documentary highlights the kind of things I mean.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WaenzbSJwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WaenzbSJwk)

It is also fascinating to look at the Thai/Khmer scripts and realize these are
related to current day Telugu/Kannada scripts.

~~~
monster_group
Since you brought up Sanskrit and topic of discussion is sentence structure I
will provide one more data point. Because Sanskrit is a highly inflected
language there is a lot of flexibility in sentence structure in Sanskrit. In
fact one can put the words in pretty much any order in a Sanskrit sentence.
This flexibility comes at a very high price though - there are tens of ways in
which a noun can transform and theoretically thousands of ways in which a verb
can transform. The good thing though is that Panini and later grammarians gave
us rules to go by so it is not as bad as it sounds.

~~~
tom_mellior
> In fact one can put the words in pretty much any order in a Sanskrit
> sentence.

But will all of those variants still be considered the "same" sentence? I'm
asking because it's popular to make the same claim about Hungarian, but it's
not really true. You can switch things around a lot and still get fully
grammatical sentences that all relate to the same event. But due to
Hungarian's topic/focus structure, the actual meanings expressed by the
variants are so different that Hungarian speakers wouldn't consider them "the
same sentence expressed a bit differently". Some examples:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_grammar#Emphasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_grammar#Emphasis)

In contrast, I believe Latin is _really_ liberal in its sentence structure,
especially in poetry.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
Yeah, and reading Latin is complicated by the fact that Latin authors like to
put the adjective and its noun on oppposite ends of a phrase and then stuff
other things in between. So, instead of "the yellow car in my driveway that
belongs to my brother" they'll say "the yellow in my driveway that belongs to
my brother car". Because an adjective must match its noun in number, gender
and case, the authors think of the noun and adjective as holding the phrase
together. And this is only the beginning: in poetry there are even fewer
patterns because the words are generally ordered to fit the meter: the only
thing you can really count on is that certain particles must be the second
word in a sentence (important because the manuscripts didn't have punctuation)
and that a preposition always precedes its object.

~~~
monster_group
Pretty much everything you said about Latin holds for Sanskrit too. Sanskrit
has additional complication 'Sandhi' \- euphonic combination [1]. There are
many rules which are used to combine words depending on the ending sound of
the first word and the beginning sound of the second. And you can keep on
combining words as long as the rules are applicable. So you can get very long
words without a break. Newbies often struggle with this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi)

------
scarygliders
I'm wondering if the main factor is one's ability to learn a new language -
itself affected by many factors such as age, for example?

I've been married to a native Japanese for going on 19 years now.

I have tried to learn the language. I have lived in Japan for 6 years, hoping
that full immersion would help. I even embarked in the Kumon Japanese course
whilst in Japan, from beginner level to more advanced. I have piles and piles
of the work books cluttering my home.

I ended up being able to read katakana, hiragana, and learned some 250 Kanji.

What I didn't end up managing was being able to have decent conversation in
Japanese. Sure, I could ask for a beer, directions, talk about the weather,
but that was about it. I had reached some plateau and could go no further.

In the end I gave up. It was basically something I couldn't do. I tried many
different ways of learning, found none which could not prevent my sheer
frustration at not being able to take the knowledge in.

Are some people simply 'wired' to learn language more than others? Is there an
age limit, for example? Was it my low tolerance for frustration? Was it my
perfectionist tendencies? Probably a 'yes' to most of those.

But I stopped after more than a decade of trying.

------
iamnotlarry
Remember those English diagramming classes everyone hated? I'm not very
familiar with the education system in Japan, but I doubt they have diagramming
classes. In Japanese, the diagramming is built into the language. You tag the
subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. Everything gets markup.

Which part of the sentence is the direct object? Uh... the part with the
direct object tag hanging off it? Correct!

Have you ever heard a programming language described as "designed for
teaching"? Japanese is a language designed to be as simple as possible to
learn.

Coming from English, the idea that a natural language could actually be
designed was a shock to me. I thought they just evolved sloppily and
haphazardly. Well, Japanese is proof that it doesn't have to be that way.
Clear rules and not too many of them. No exceptions. Rigidly consistent. It's
like a language created in a lab that never got dirtied up by real world
usage. Except, oh wait, it's a real language used by millions of people every
day.

~~~
unscaled
I never had the pleasure of taking them myself, butI'm pretty sure Japanese
grammar classes are not so fun as you imagine.

Putting aside that the norm in Japanese school is rote memorization and
pedantic attention to details (e.g. you'd memorize dates of historical
events), the Japanese grammar that is taught in class is traditional Japanese
grammar. It's pretty streamlined compared to the abomination that is medieval
Latin grammar (which remains the basis for English grammar taught in class),
but it still targets Classical Japanese and uses rather obscure terms where
clear diagrams would suffice.

I'll have to ask, but I think that instead of diagrams, Japanese students
mainly need to memorize the difference between Izenkei, Mizenkei, Renyoukei,
Rentaikei and Shuushikei, even though the last one is irrelevant for modern
Japanese.

And of course Japanese wasn't "designed" any more than English was. There are
dialects with widely varying grammar and vocabulary, and there some aspects
which are very hard to learn even if you ignore the writing system (e.g. the
proper use of Wa vs Ga, the proper use of emphatic sentence endings like
no/n'da or yo). Inflection is way more regular than English, and syntax is
pretty streamlined, which is a boon.

~~~
iamnotlarry
Wa/Ga aren't that hard. Mostly just subject vs topic. Just like objective and
subjective isn't that hard in English. Of course, most Americans can't master
objective/subjective.

The trick for wa/ga is often just to remember that subjects are often implied
in Japanese and missing from the actual text/speech. So, "Nekko ga suki desu"
because the "watakushi wa" was implied.

------
migueloller
The article says:

> What this means is that the sentences, “This is a car”, and, “This is the
> car”, would both be, 「これは車です」. There is no differentiation.

This is not always true. The latter could be 「これが車です」. The は and が particles
are very similar but are still different. Fully grasping this small difference
is one of the biggest problems Japanese learners encounter when studying
grammar.

Closer to the beginning, the article also mentions:

> The topic of a Japanese sentence is very similar to what other languages
> refer to as the subject. The subject of a sentence is the person or thing
> that does the action described by the main verb in the sentence. These are,
> in fact, slightly different concepts, but for now, we will treat them as
> being the same so as to keep things simple.

It turns out that は marks the topic and が marks the subject. I feel that many
times the confusion between は and が in Japanese learners happens because the
learning material tries to make this simplification in the beginning. When
it's time to learn が, it's hard to retrain the brain.

~~~
gizmo686
This isn't quite true.

は has two distinct usages. One is to mark the topic of the sentence. The other
is to mark the subject of the sentence with a contrastive connotation.

~~~
strongai
And what does 'contrastive connotation' mean?

~~~
glandium
See the examples on
[http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=ha-2](http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=ha-2)

------
RayVR
Anyone that would benefit from this style of learning (rapid, focused on
structure and rules) may actually be hurt by the rush to cover many topics
without treating any precisely. I'm by no means an expert but here are some
issues in just the first section.

* example that glosses over the difference between a topic and a subject is frustrating because, in fact, the similarity is fairly superficial.

* there is no "a", "an", or "the" in Japanese, however to specify "this is the car" (implying that it is in answer to some question about which car) one would say これが車です。Using the が particle instead of は.

I'm always on the lookout for useful resources. So far, Tae Kim's guide [1]
has been the best I've found. Kim doesn't assume much about the reader's pre-
existing knowledge yet he is able to remain succinct.

[1]
[http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar)

------
fenomas
Cached link:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R3iCWi...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R3iCWiY9nHgJ:https://8020japanese.com/japanese-
sentence-structure/)

------
unscaled
I have to enter a caveat here though. Spoken Japanese is a little bit
different, and in some cases, arguments will follow the verb. It's pretty
rare, but I did hear things like "Dou sureba ii ore" or "nani yatteru omae"?

This is VERY rough and informal though, and not Japan being very polite, it's
not something that I'd hear everyday. Maybe on TV or from really close
friends, and even then I'm not sure if everyone would say that.

But it just goes to show that natural languages are very complex creatures,
and even the tidiest rules have exceptions sometimes.

~~~
laurieg
I wouldn't describe that pattern as incredibly rough or even particularly
informal. It's common to at the subject after the sentence when speaking
quickly. You use it when you think the listener may have to quite picked up
what you were saying etc.

------
glandium
Something I like about the whole "verb at the end of the sentence" thing is
that you can totally flip over the meaning of what you're saying, right at the
end. In English, you can achieve the same effect with awkward forms (like
"not" at the end of the sentence), but in Japanese, it's just the natural
form.

Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like "I
don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence.

Sadly (ironically?), that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor
the Japanese go for.

~~~
Razengan
_> Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like
"I don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence. Sadly (ironically?),
that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor the Japanese go for._

If that's true, I think it might be more that such kind of humor is seen as
too basic, or childish, and not particularly subtle for adults. Akin to simple
puns or "ghost jokes" and the like in English (What do ghosts like for
dessert? I Scream!) that kids — or foreigners — may enjoy, but native speakers
don't really count as witty.

You can still see what you're talking about in some of their comedy skits,
though:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nW4jhqPbd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nW4jhqPbd0)

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
As much as people claim to despise puns, the major English authors show very
little reluctance to use them: they are everywhere in Shakespeare, for
example, and you can also find them in more recent authors like TS Eliot (for
example, in Ash Wednesday, he puns on dissembled/disassembled)

------
panorama
Beginner question: In casual, spoken Japanese, I've been taught that I can
drop the particles (including pronouns). Hence "watashi wa tabemasu" can be
colloquially shortened to "tabemasu".

Thanks to this article, I've come to understand particles much better and why
they're important, but does it change in casual spoken Japanese? Are some
particles okay to drop whereas others are kept? Thanks in advance.

~~~
sdrothrock
> I can drop the particles (including pronouns)

Sure. "piza wo taberu?" can be "piza taberu?" and that's fine, even normal.

> (including pronouns)

This is different and I think there are a few misconceptions bundled up in
this assumption.

1\. Particles don't exist on their own; they're permanently linked to the word
that precedes them; if you've ever studied a Romance language, you can think
of them as a way of declining nouns.

So "watashi wa" is the nominative, "watashi wo" is the accusative.

2\. Pronoun dropping is done in the sense that the pronoun is not essential to
the sentence and can be inferred from context.

For example, if you and your friend are eating and you ask "motto taberu
[gonna eat more?]," nobody's going to be confused about whether the subject of
that sentence is "watashi wa" or "anata wa."

It happens in English, too, but people overthink it a lot when presented with
it consciously in Japanese.

~~~
panorama
Thanks. Sorry for the confusion; I have a decent understanding of when
pronouns can be dropped, but my question was moreso about when particles can
be dropped. For instance, from the linked article, this sentence:

Tarō wa Noriko wo toshokan de mimashita.

In casual spoken Japanese, can any of these particles (wa, wo, de) be dropped?

~~~
fenomas
None in that case. I don't know of any general rules for when particles can be
dropped, but sitting here thinking of examples, it's usually done for simple,
direct sentences where the particle would be tying together two words whose
relationship is already obvious:

> eiga miru?

> ano hon, suki?

> ame futte kita.

> okaasan iru?

And so on. But I don't think that's a rule you can work backwards from, it
just describes all the cases that occur to me.

------
dasfasf
A interesting property of Japanese is that a sentence is also a subordinate
clause. For example

Tarou wa Noriko wo toshokan de mimashita. (Tarou saw Noriko at the library.)

Tarou wa Noriko wo mimashita. (Tarou saw Noriko.)

Tarou wa Noriko wo mimashita toshokan (The library where Tarou saw Noriko)

Generally "<sentence> <noun>" means "the <noun> such that <noun> <particle>
<sentence> is true for some choice of <particle>".

~~~
shiro
Your third example isn't valid. It needs a bit of tweak.

Tarou ga Noriko wo mita toshokan

The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic. But in a phrase to explain
a noun, we use "ga" exclusively. Your main point still holds, in a sense that
"Tarou ga Noriko wo mita" is a valid sentence. But to be precise, "mita" in
those two sentences are different conjugated forms; it just happens that two
conjugated forms are the same in the verb "miru" (to see).

~~~
blipmusic
> The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic

Forgive me for saying this, since you seem to be a native speaker, but don't
you mean that they both introduce the _subject_ , not topic (using 'topic' as
a linguistic term)?

"Wa" would be the topicalising subject marker, denoting known information:

Tanaka wa nihon ni itta.

Tanaka went to Japan. -> As for Tanaka, he went to Japan. Tanaka = known
information (i.e. Tanaka is familiar to the listener)

"Ga", while also a subject marker could denote/introduce new information:

Tanaka ga nihon ni itta.

Tanaka went to Japan. -> e.g. It was Tanaka who went to Japan.

Tanaka = new information (e.g. the listener is did not not Tanaka was the one
going to Japan.)

(Note: I realise there are other constructions for my interpretation of the
ga-sentence)

~~~
shiro
My knowledge of Japanese grammar is in Japanese, so I'm not certain about the
English term of 主語, to be honest. We use the same term to describe 'subject'
in English grammar. I used 'topic' just because the original article used it.

Your explanation of 'ga'/'wa' is spot on as far as I can understand as a
layman of native speaker with standard Japanese grammar education in Japan but
no advanced linguistic degree.

I'd say that, because 'wa' emphasizes the introduced subject as the center of
interest, it isn't used in the subordinate clause.

Tanaka ga nihon ni itta hi. (The day Tanaka went to Japan) ; ok - the interest
is on 'hi'

Tanaka wa nihon ni itta hi. ; invalid

~~~
blipmusic
Thanks for your reply. I believe 主語 covers both subject and topic. Since an
English sentence such as "John loves Mary." can be understood as e.g. "It is
John (not James) who loves Mary." or "John loves Mary (not Lisa)", it might
have several formal representations in Japanese via e.g. the use of wa/ga.

Also, see user gizmo686's excellent explanation for one approach below.

------
rootsudo
I feel like this is being shilled too much. I see it everywhere on facebook,
reddit japan topics and general.

Of course, generally speaking I am learning Japanese.

------
randomgyatwork
Learning Japanese, it's been hard to realize that the most important part of a
sentence is always at the end.

------
lisper
Japanese structure is very reminiscent of Forth.

~~~
vram22
so ? How

~~~
lisper
Subject, object, etc -- all of the "arguments" \-- come before the verb.

~~~
vram22
Hey, it was a joke - though maybe not a good one, Forth-syntax-wise. Just
something I quickly came up with. I actually know Forth a bit. Had played
around with it some earlier.

~~~
lisper
Oh, I see. Sorry. Dense very I was being. :-)

~~~
vram22
Anyway, good joke or not, I'm glad I made it, because it made me look at your
profile and then your blog. Checking out a few of the articles, like Why Lisp?
and Lisping at JPL, looks interesting ...

------
CinnamonStick
For anyone interested in learning the logical rules that dictate the more
confusing parts of Japanese grammar (which were, as others have pointed out,
dramatically over-simplified in this article), this is a decent starting
point: [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kobun-reading-
introduction/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kobun-reading-introduction/)

I've personally been happy with the following books as well: Bungo Manual:
Selected Reference Materials for Students of Classical Japanese Classical
Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary Classical Japanese: A Grammar

Many of the confusing rules we have today (i-adjectives vs na-adjectives,
different verb conjugation classes, etc.) are subsets of much larger rule-sets
from early in the language's written history. Bound particles are probably the
most confusing of these rules, which were too convoluted to survive over time,
but still inform common usage patterns today.

The Japanese language (particularly its written form) is very young, so it's
actually feasible to gain an in-depth understanding of the language's entire
history without spending a decade on a doctorate.

