I was thinking about this today, and it got me seriously interested. Now, to get things straight, I am still a beginner and only been learning Japanese about 8 weeks, and I am already thinking ahead.
So, Japanese grammer, how does it work. Is there a pattern, or a key, for instance if I wanted to say “It is towards you”, do I write it as Sore wa anata ga mukatte, or would it be Sore wa mukatte ga anata.
(I guessed the Ga part).
Please bear in mind, I have not got this far in my learning, but I am really interested how the wordage is formed. Can some one give me tips to write proper Japanese.
Thank you
the nyc japanexe societ has a movie about it on yt,
it’s subject objects verb
The way that clicked for me was to think of Japanese as a collection of prepositional phrases tied together with the verb or declarative at the end. However, Japanese use postpositions (at the end of the phrase) and we normally call those things particles.
To the beach, with a friend, on our bicycles, through the park, passed through.
海岸へ 友だちと 一緒に 自転車で 公園を 渡りました。
There’s obviously a lot, lot more to all of this but that simple idea that these are small phrases that can work together, usually in any order, just made the written language seem all nice and structured. Sure, the casual spoken form throws all that out the window but by then you should know all the rules being broken and recognize there’s a system that remains that still structured.
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As of yet, I have not started learning Kanji, so I can not read this text. I am hoping it is written in the same order as the English wording as shown.
If this is the case, whilst this does not really tell me much at all, I did see something that I wish to clarify with you. Structure wise and looking at your phrase I am thinking maybe Japanese word structure is or could be based on importance of the words. Such as going to the Beach is the primary goal here so the word beach is at the forefront of the sentence, then followed by friend, bikes, park and the last wordage being the least important, passed through. In essence if I wanted to go through the park with a friend on bikes to the beach, it would be, Beach - Friend - Bike - Park - Passed Through. This is how I think Japanese grammer works.
Say I wanted to go the pictures to see a film with a friend and we went on the bus, the wordage in order of importance would be, Friend - Movie - Bus… Just guessing here, Watashi no tomodachi to watashi wa eiga o mimasu (ok, I am stumped here, do not know the word for Bus, could try Train instead, but not sure how to add that to this sentence)
I am just wondering if I got the basic idea.
Added this to my favourites list, had a quick look and positively surprised. Bloody good site, nice one, chap.
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Word order is not important since they all have particles marking what they do in the sentence. Pretty much, so long as the topic of the sentence is first and the verb is last, everything else in between can be mixed up all different ways and it means the same. An exception for the possessive の exists as the connecting words have to be by each other.
Again, there’s still a lot more to it than this. I do recommend Tae Kim. If you want, check out the grammar course (and video series) I uploaded to Memrise based on Tae Kim’s website.
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I shall finish the course I am on at the moment then start on this new one, thank you for that.
Speaking of No, if a word has this connecting it to another, is this classed as the topic of the sentence, seeing as No is a possessive particle. As for Verbs, I will need to figure that one out, even in English Verbs just do not compute with me.
Again, thank you. There is more than enough here for me to ponder and learn.