Japanese sentences are rather straightforward, as long as you know the rules that need to be applied that speaking, reading, and writing will be no issue.
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Sentence Structure
Japanese sentence structures are organized using a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order.
This structure differs from the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure used in English. Let’s take an example of what an English sentence that follow this order.
"I eat an apple."The subject in this sentence is “I”, the verb is “eat”, and the object is “apple”. This strictly adheres to the SVO sentence structure order.
Now let’s express the same sentence in Japanese.
私はりんごを食べます。
(Watashi wa ringo o tabemasu.)
"I eat an apple."The subject is 私 (“I”, watashi), the object is りんご (“apple”, ringo), and the verb is 食べます (“eat”, tabemasu). As you can see in this order structure, the sentence follows SVO.
You will notice the use of は (wa) and を(o) in the sentences. There are particles (discussed below) which are essential for marking the roles of each part of the sentence, which allows for greater flexibility in word order while maintaining clarity.
Particles in Sentences
Particles are hiragana characters that follow nouns, pronouns, and phrases to indicate their grammatical roles in a sentence. There are numerous particles present in Japanese sentence, but it allows for grammar to have a very straightforward intent and flow.
We will cover は (wa) and を(o) briefly as this section is to just demonstrate the use of how particles affect the sentence.
は (wa) Particle
The は (wa) particle here is used to mark the topic of the sentence in the following structure:
<Topic> は <Rest of the sentence>The topic that you want to make in the sentence will always come before は (wa), followed by the rest of the sentence.
For example:
私は学生です。
(Watashi wa gakusei desu.)
"I am a student."The topic in this 私 (“I”, watashi), and we are saying that topic is a student.
We just need to clarify that は (wa) marks the topic of the sentence, not the subject. In Japanese grammar, topic and subject are separate things as there are particles that specify each one separately.
The SOV structure mentioned earlier was to show you how sentences are structured, but don’t confuse the subject from SOV from the subject that are defined by particles.
を(o) Particle
The を(o) particle here is used to describe an action or verb of the sentence in the following structure:
<Topic/Subject> を <Verb/Action>Remember that according to SOV, the verb will always come at the end of a sentence.
Let’s look at one of the previous examples that we did:
私はりんごを食べます。
(Watashi wa ringo o tabemasu.)
"I eat an apple."The subject is 私 (“I”, watashi), the object is りんご (“apple”, ringo), and the verb is 食べます (“eat”, tabemasu).
We’re using the particle を(o) before the verb that is at the end of the sentence to specify that we’re eating the apple.
There are numerous particles that are present in the Japanese language. Mastering these particles is crucial for understanding and creating grammatically correct sentences in Japanese.
Sentence Context
Japanese is a highly context-dependent language, which means that if you know the topic or subject that is being discussed, you can omit it from the conversation.
For example, if you’re already having a discussion with somebody, and the previous discussion what in regards to you, you can omit the topic from the sentence:
りんごを食べます。
(Ringo o tabemasu.)
"I eat an apple."Here, the topic 私 (“I”, watashi) is implied and does not need to be explicitly stated unless clarification is required. This practice is especially common in casual conversations.