Basic Grammar Japanese

Expressing state-of-being in 4 tenses

You can declare what something is by attaching the Hiragana character 「だ」 to a noun, pronoun or na-adjective only.

We learn how to conjugate: negative state-of-being, past state-of-being, and negative past state-of-being.

Introduction to particle

A particle is a word that has a grammatical function but does not fit into the main parts of speech (i.e. noun, verb, adverb). Particles do not change (conjugate). In Japanese specifically, particles are one or more Hiragana characters that attach to the end of a word to define the grammatical function of that word in the sentence.

The 「は」 topic particle

The 「も」 inclusive topic particle

The 「が」 identifier particle

The 「が」 particle identifies a specific property of something while the 「は」 particle is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation. This is why, in longer sentences, it is common to separate the topic with commas to remove ambiguity about which part of the sentence the topic applies to.

Adjective

An adjective can directly modify a noun that immediately follows it. It can also be connected in the same way we did with nouns using particles.

The na-adjective is very simple to learn because it acts essentially like a noun. All the conjugation rules for both nouns and na-adjectives are the same. One main difference is that a na-adjective can directly modify a noun following it by sticking 「な」 between the adjective and noun. (Hence the name, na-adjective.)

All i-adjectives always end in the Hiragana character: 「い」. Na-adjective that end with 「い」sẽ viết bằng Kanji. Except 「きれい」 and 嫌い (きらい). Unlike na-adjectives, you do NOT need to add 「な」 to directly modify a noun with an i-adjective.

Do NOT attach 「だ」 to i-adjectives.

Conjugation rules for i-adjectives

The two exception i-adjective are: 「いい」(good) and 「かっこいい」(attractive)

Take care to make all the conjugations from 「よい」 not 「いい」.

Verb

Verb basic

We’ve now learned how to describe nouns in various ways with other nouns and adjectives. This gives us quite a bit of expressive power. However, we still cannot express actions. This is where verbs come in. Verbs, in Japanese, always come at the end of clauses.

A grammatically complete sentence requires a verb only (including state-of-being).

We will now learn the three main categories of verbs, which will allow us to define conjugation rules.

With the exception of only two exception verbs (する and 来る [くる] ), all verbs fall into the category of ru-verb (ichidan verb) or u-verb (godan verbs).

• godan, gou-dan verb

• ichiru verb

• kunyomi => Kanji

• Onyomi => Chin ChONg

i-adj, na-adj

Algorithm to determine type of verb:

1. If not end in る => u-verb
2. If it is not [iru | eru] => u-verb [aou-ru]
3. If it is [iru | eru] => ru-verb in most cases. A list of common exceptions can be found here.

Below is a list of u-verbs with a preceding vowel sound of /i/ or /e/ (“iru” or “eru” sound endings). The list is not comprehensive but it does include many of the more common verbs categorized roughly into three levels. iru/eru u-verbs grouped (roughly) by level

Negative verbs conjugation

You can conjugate noun, adj, verb in Japanese.

But before we get into that, we need to cover one very important exception to the negative conjugation rules:

• ある (u-verb) – to exist (inanimate)
• いる (ru-verb) – to exist (animate)
• Nó ngược: aru là in-animate còn iru lại là animate

「ある」 is an u-verb used to express existence of inanimate objects. The equivalent verb for animate objects (such as people or animals) is 「いる」, which is a normal ru-verb. These two verbs 「ある」 and 「いる」 are quite different from all other verbs because they describe existence and are not actual actions. You also need to be careful to choose the correct one based on animate or inanimate objects.

The negative of 「ある」 is 「ない」 (meaning that something does not exist). Còn "いる" thì chia theo quy tắc bình thường thành "いない".

Conjugation rules for negative verbs

Có 3 exceptions:

1. する → しない
2. くる → こない
3. ある → ない

Past tense & Past-negative of verbs

To change a ru-verb from the dictionary form into the past tense, you simply drop the 「る」 and add 「た」.

Changing a u-verb from dictionary form to the past tense is difficult because we must break up u-verbs into four additional categories. These four categories depend on the last character of the verb. In addition, there is one exception to the rules, which is the verb 「行く」. I’ve bundled it with the regular exception verbs 「する」 and 「来る」 even though 「行く」 is a regular u-verb in all other conjugations.

The conjugation rules for the past-negative tense are the same for all verbs. You might have noticed that the negative of just about everything always end in 「ない」. The conjugation rule for the past-negative tense of verbs is pretty much the same as all the other negatives that end in 「ない」. You simply take the negative of any verb, remove the 「い」 from the 「ない」 ending, and replace it with 「かった」.

Particles used with verbs

The direct object particle 「を」 is attached to the end of a word to signify that that word is the direct object of the verb. This character is essentially never used anywhere else. That is why the katakana equivalent 「ヲ」 is almost never used since particles are always written in hiragana. The 「を」 character, while technically pronounced as /wo/ essentially sounds like /o/ in real speech.

Unlike the direct object we’re familiar with in English, places can also be the direct object of motion verbs such as 「歩く」 and 「走る」. Since the motion verb is done to the location, the concept of direct object is the same in Japanese.

When you use 「する」 with a noun, the 「を」 particle is optional and you can treat the whole [noun+する] as one verb.

The target particle 「に」 can specify a target of a verb. This is different from the 「を」 particle in which the verb does something to the direct object. With the 「に」 particle, the verb does something toward the word associated with the 「に」 particle. For example, the target of any motion verb is specified by the 「に」 particle.

As you can see in the last example, the target particle always targets “to” rather than “from”. If you wanted to say, “come from” for example, you would need to use 「から」(also a particle), which means “from”. If you used 「に」, it would instead mean “come to“. 「から」 is also often paired with 「まで」(also a particle), which means “up to”.

The idea of a target in Japanese is very general and is not restricted to motion verbs. For example, the location of an object is defined as the target of the verb for existence （ある and いる）. Time is also a common target. Here are some examples of non-motion verbs and their targets

While the 「に」 particle is not always required to indicate time, there is a slight difference in meaning between using the target particle and not using anything at all. In the following examples, the target particle makes the date a specific target emphasizing that the friend will go to Japan at that time. Without the particle, there is no special emphasis.

The directional 「へ」 particle: While 「へ」 is normally pronounced /he/, when it is being used as a particle, it is always pronounced /e/ （え）. The primary difference between the 「に」 and 「へ」 particle is that 「に」 goes to a target as the final, intended destination (both physical or abstract). The 「へ」 particle, on the other hand, is used to express the fact that one is setting out towards the direction of the target. As a result, it is only used with directional motion verbs. It also does not guarantee whether the target is the final intended destination, only that one is heading towards that direction. In other words, the 「に」 particle sticks to the destination while the 「へ」 particle is fuzzy about where one is ultimately headed.

Note that we cannot use the 「へ」 particle with verbs that have no physical direction. For example, the following is incorrect.

This does not mean to say that 「へ」 cannot set out towards an abstract concept. In fact, because of the fuzzy directional meaning of this particle, the 「へ」 particle can also be used to talk about setting out towards certain future goals or expectations.

The contextual 「で」 particle

The 「で」 particle will allow us to specify the context in which the action is performed. For example, if a person ate a fish, where did he eat it? If a person went to school, by what means did she go? With what will you eat the soup? All of these questions can be answered with the 「で」 particle.

It may help to think of 「で」 as meaning “by way of”. This way, the same meaning will kind of translate into what the sentence means.

Using 「で」 with 「何」

The word for “what” （何） is quite annoying because while it’s usually read as 「なに」, sometimes it is read as 「なん」 depending on how it’s used. And since it’s always written in Kanji, you can’t tell which it is. I would suggest sticking with 「なに」 until someone corrects you for when it should be 「なん」. With the 「で」 particle, it is read as 「なに」 as well. (Hold the mouse cursor over the word to check the reading.)

Here’s the confusing part. There is a colloquial version of the word “why” that is used much more often than the less colloquial version 「どうして」 or the more forceful 「なぜ」. It is also written as 「何で」 but it is read as 「なんで」. This is a completely separate word and has nothing to do with the 「で」 particle.

Basically the point is that the two sentences, while written the same way, are read differently and mean completely different things. Don’t worry. This causes less confusion than you think because 95% of the time, the latter is used rather than the former. And even when 「なにで」 is intended, the context will leave no mistake on which one is being used. Even in this short example snippet, you can tell which it is by looking at the answer to the question.

When location is the topic

There are times when the location of an action is also the topic of a sentence. You can attach the topic particle （「は」 and 「も」） to the three particles that indicate location （「に」、「へ」、「で」） when the location is the topic.

When direct object is the topic

The direct object particle is different from particles related to location in that you cannot use any other particles at the same time. For example, going by the previous section, you might have guessed that you can say 「をは」 to express a direct object that is also the topic but this is not the case. A topic can be a direct object without using the 「を」 particle. In fact, putting the 「を」 particle in will make it wrong.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

In Japanese, sometimes there are two types of the same verb often referred to as transitive and intransitive verbs. Since the basic meaning and the kanji is the same, you can learn two verbs for the price of just one kanji! Nó chỉ hơi khác nhau chút xíu thôi.

Pay attention to particles!

The important lesson to take away here is to learn how to use the correct particle for the correct type of verb. It might be difficult at first to grasp which is which when learning new verbs or whether there even is a transitive/intransitive distinction. If you’re not sure, you can always check whether a verb is transitive or intransitive by using an online dictionary such as jisho.org

Relative Clauses and Sentence Order

Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives

Have you noticed how, many forms of verbs and the state-of-being conjugate in a similar manner to i-adjectives? Well, that is because, in a sense, they are adjectives. For example, consider the sentence: “The person who did not eat went to bank.” The “did not eat” describes the person and in Japanese, you can directly modify the noun ‘person’ with the clause ‘did not eat’ just like a regular adjective. This very simple realization will allow us to modify a noun with any arbitrary verb phrase!

Using state-of-being clauses as adjectives

state-of-being clauses = noun conjugated

The negative, past, and negative past conjugations of verbs can be used just like adjectives to directly modify nouns. However, we cannot do this with the plain non-past state-of-being using 「だ」. (I told you this was a pain in the butt.) The language has particles for this purpose, which will be covered in the next section.

You cannot use 「だ」 to directly modify a noun with a noun like you can with 「だった」、「じゃない」、and 「じゃなかった」.

Using relative verb clauses as adjectives

relative clause = Verbs clauses

Japanese Sentence Order

The real order of the fundamental Japanese sentence is: [Verb]. Anything else that comes before the verb doesn’t have to come in any particular order and nothing more than the verb is required to make a complete sentence.

In addition, the verb must always come at the end. That’s the whole point of even having particles so that they can identify what grammatical function a word serves no matter where it is in the sentence. In fact, nothing will stop us from making a sentence with [Object] [Subject] [Verb] or just [Object] [Verb]. The following sentences are all complete and correct because the verb is at the end of the sentence.

Noun-related Particles

We have already gone over very powerful constructs that can express almost anything we want. We will see the 「の」 particle will give us even more power by allowing us to define a generic, abstract noun. We will also learn how to modify nouns directly with nouns. The three particles we will cover can group nouns together in different ways.

This is the last lesson that will be specifically focused on particles but that does not mean that there are no more particles to learn. We will learn many more particles along the way but they may not be labeled as such. As long as you know what they mean and how to use them, it is not too important to know whether they are particles or not.

The Inclusive 「と」 particle

The 「と」 particle is similar to the 「も」 particle in that it contains a meaning of inclusion. It can combine two or more nouns together to mean “and”.

Another similar use of the 「と」 particle is to show an action that was done together with someone or something else.

The Vague Listing 「や」 and 「とか」 particles

The 「や」 particle, just like the 「と」 particle, is used to list one or more nouns except that it is much more vague than the 「と」 particle. It implies that there may be other things that are unlisted and that not all items in the list may apply. In English, you might think of this as an “and/or, etc.” type of listing.

「とか」 also has the same meaning as 「や」 but is a slightly more colloquial expression.

The 「の」 particle

The 「の」 particle has many uses and it is a very powerful particle. It is introduced here because like the 「と」 and 「や」 particle, it can be used to connect one or more nouns. Let’s look at a few examples.

The first sentence essentially means, “Bob’s book.” (not a lost bible chapter). The second sentence means, “Book’s Bob” which is probably a mistake. I’ve translated the first example as “book of Bob” because the 「の」 particle doesn’t always imply possession as the next example shows.

Suffix

A suffix is a group of letters added to the end of a word to modify it, change its meaning and alter its grammatical function in a sentence. A suffix can change word class, tense, meaning or add extra information.

な ( = na) or なあ ( = naa)

Adverbs and Sentence-ending particles

k