1.2 - Basic Sentence Structure

Most learners are thrown off due to the fact that the Japanese sentence structure is very different from English, but don't be afraid! It really is easy.

As you already know, English sentences are SVO (Subject-Verb-Object). This means the verb comes in the middle of a sentence, the subject comes first and object at the very end.

e.g: I drink juice.
      (S) (V)   (O)

Japanese, however, is a tad bit different. Unlike English, in Japanese there's a grammatical rule that the verb (in theory) MUST come at the end of a sentence. Adhering to this rule, Japanese becomes a SOV language (Subject-Object-Verb). So "I drink juice" becomes "I juice drink". Convert that to Japanese words:

"私はジュースを飲みます。" - "watashi wa jyuusu wo nomimasu." - I drink juice.

There's no need to feel over-whelmed by the Japanese characters. Right now, we'll just represent Japanese sentences in Roman letters, i.e, romaji.

In the above example, "watashi", meaning "I", is the subject. "Jyuusu" (juice) is the object and "nomu" is the verb "to drink". "nomu" has been conjugated/converted to its politer form "nomimasu". Now you might be thinking, "But what about those two extra words 'wa' and 'wo'?"

"wa" and "wo" are just two of the things we call "particles" in Japanese. Particles are used to mark/specify the word right before them. The "wa" particle is the subject-marker, meaning it tells us that the word right before it (watashi) is the subject of our sentence. The "wo" particle, (spelt "o"), marks the direct object of our sentence. In this case it "wo" comes in front of "jyuusu". This tells us that juice is the object of our sentence. In English, we don't need to specify the subject and the object with particles, but in Japanese we MUST do.

Now, let's say you want to say: A is B.

In Japanese it would be: A wa B desu.

This sentence has a subject, A, marked with the particle "wa", but this sentence has no direct object. "Desu" is basically a sentence-ending particle but it's safe to assume it as a verb.

Now you can replace A and B with anything you desire and you have a basic sentence.

For instance, This is a book, becomes:

"kore wa hon desu." - kore means this and hon means book. You know the rest and why "wa" and "desu" are used.

Similarly we could just as easily turn this sentence into a question: Is this a book?, by simply adding a "ka?" in front of desu. "ka" is really just the question-marker in Japanese.

So Is this a book? would be:

"kore wa hon desu ka?"

Great! You've just learnt the basic sentence structure used in Japanese!