Sentence Structure


The word order in Japanese is significantly different from English's. Before you can put sentences together in Japanese, you have to be able to put the words in the right order and you also have to understand what each word in a sentence is doing. Each noun has a certain role in a sentence, like a role in a play. Here are the three most common roles. In English, our sentences generally go in this order:
SUBJECT - VERB - OBJECT
S  V-- O---
I  ate cake.

S- V------- O--------
He took out the trash.

S------ V---- O---------
The boy broke the window.
In Japanese, the order is:
SUBJECT - OBJECT - VERB
This is the same as English, except the verb is put at the end instead of in between the subject and object.
S  O--- V--
I  cake ate.

S- O-------- V-------
He the trash took out.

S------ O--------- V----
The boy the window broke.
Of course, this sounds weird in English. You may think this could be confusing, but the Japanese also have a way to indicate each noun's role in a different way besides word order. For each role, there is a short word that corresponds to it. It is called a postposition. It is similar to a preposition in English, but there are two differences. First, postpositions come AFTER the noun they are marking, whereas prepositions come BEFORE it. And second, there is a postposition for the subject and a postposition for the object in Japanese. In English, we rely on word order alone to indicate these two roles. You need to know these postpositions well because you will use them in almost every sentence. Even though the postposition for the subject and object are the ones least similar to English, we must learn them first because they are the most important ones. There is no postposition for the verb because it isn't a noun and also because it always comes at the end.

Here's your first vocabulary list so you can start practicing this concept. However, Japanese words sometimes work a little differently from English words. Here are some notes on how they are different. Though, knowing them are not critical, they are very useful later.

sushi = sushi, raw fish      mizu = water
gohan = rice                 MIRUKU = milk
ringo = apple                sake = sake, rice wine

watashi = I, me              taberu = to eat
watashi-tachi = we, us       nomu = to drink
ano hito = he/she, him/her
ano hito-tachi = they, them
I won't use all of the vocabulary in my examples. You can use the rest to make up your own examples. If you create your own examples, you are more likely to remember what you've learned.

I eat apples.
The order in Japanese is SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB, so it only makes sence we find these three things in that order. The subject in this sentence is "I" since "I" is the person doing the action of the sentence. "I" is translated to "watashi" in Japanese. Now since it's the subject, we know we have to add the subject-marking postposition. "Wa" is the subject marker so we add it after our subject. So far we have "watashi wa." Second, we have to look for the object of the sentence, or the person or thing receiving the action. "Apples" in this sentence are the things being acted upon, so they are our object. "Apples" is translated as "ringo" since there is no distinction between singular and plural nouns in Japanese. Since "ringo" is now our object, we need to put our object marking postposition after it. The object marking postposition is "o." We're almost done. So far our sentence is "watashi wa ringo o." Now all we need is the verb of the sentence at the end. "Eat" is our verb. It is the action being preformed by the subject. "Eat" is translated as "taberu" in Japanese. Verbs aren't followed by postpositions, so we are done. The end result is
Watashi wa ringo o taberu.

He drinks milk.
Again, first we have to find the subject. The actor of this sentence is "he." "He" is translated to "ano hito" in Japanese. Since "ano hito" is the subject, we need to put the subject marker after it. The subject marker is "wa" so we have "ano hito wa." Second, look for the object of the sentence. "Milk" is the thing being acted upon in this sentence. "Milk" is translated as "MIRUKU" in Japanese. I put it in capitol letters because it is a foreign word written in katakana, the angular Japanese script. It is good to learn which words are written in hiragana and kanji and which are written in katakana now so once you learn hiragana and katakana, you can write them correctly. Anyway, "MIRUKU" is our object. Now add the object marker "o" after it. So now we have "kare wa MIRUKU o." The last thing we find is our verb. "Drinks" is the action being preformed in this sentence. "Drinks" is translated to "nomu" in Japanese. The verb doesn't take a postposition after it so we end with
Ano hito wa MIRUKU o nomu.

Now let's try going from Japanese to English.

Ano hito wa sake o nomu.
Since the order in English is SUBJET-VERB-OBJECT, we start by finding the subject. Even though these begining sentences are pretty straight forward, don't expect the subject to always be the first word. Look for the subject marker first which is "wa" to find the subject. "Ano hito" is our subject which translates to either "he" or "she." Let's assume it's a woman. Our verb, we know, comes at the end. "Nomu" is translated to "drinks" in English. The last thing we find is our object. The object is followed by "o" and so we know that our object in this sentence is "sake." "Sake" can be translated as "sake" or "rice wine." In all, our sentence becomes
She drinks rice wine.

Tanaka-san wa gohan o taberu.
Since "Tanaka-san" is followed by "wa," we know they are our subject. I say "they" because "-san" can be translated as either "Mr" or "Mrs" and you can only tell from context which one it is. For this example, let's just assume he is "Mr. Tanaka." So what is Mr. Tanaka doing? The verb which comes at the end is "taberu" which is translated as "eats." Our object is "gohan." We know this because it is followed by the object marker "o." "Gohan" means "rice." So this sentence means
Mr. Tanaka eats rice.

There are many more postpositions. Once you become familiar with them, I will start to add them as vocabulary words. The two you learned today are some of the hardest ones, though, because English doesn't have equivalents. Most of the other postpositions have an actual translation in English, so I shouldn't need to spend much time on them. In the next lesson, for example, we will be using "ni" and "e" which both translate to "to (a place)" in English. They still come after the noun they mark, though, so if you want to say "to the store," you would say "gakkou ni" or "gakkou e."

Return