Japanese Grammar

Under construction, text may be subject to revision

In order to learn Japanese you will need to percept sentence structure in a whole new way. In fact, if you thought the French or Spanish were speaking backwards, think again. Japanese is really backwards, from an American point of view, and the complement always follows the object. Here is an example of a sentence:

バス で 行きます｡
basu de ikimasu.
(basu dé ikimass')

(I am taking the bus); Here, and most of the time in a simple sentence, the verb is the last word (ikimasu); the noun opens the sentence (basu), as you can see there are no pronouns or adjectives as such words are very rare in Japanese, as long as its not necessary for comprehension. A complement is placed after the word, I call such words "particles" (see PARTICLE section) but don't take my word for it, your teacher or book may have a more appropriate term. A particle's function is to indicate the noun's (the one placed before this particle) purpose in the sentence. In this case "de" is a particle of "way of action", the manner in which the action will be accomplished. The verb (ikimasu) means, "to go". If you recapitulate, you will easily make a literal translation like: To go with the help of a bus. Of course you will encounter more complex sentences, with multiple particles and verbs. The particle is very important. Also the next section will introduce them with more details, followed by the verbs and other fun stuff.

soon, more details on particles verbs