The Surprisingly Simple Logic Behind

Japanese Sentence Structure

Most people nd Japanese sentence structure to be di cult and confusing.

One of the biggest reasons for this is thatthe usual way of learning Japanese
involves remembering random phrases and sentence patterns in isolation, without
actually being taught why those sentences work the way they do. This is ne in the
beginning when youre just trying to learn a few basic phrases, but it makes it very
hard to take the next step.
The truth is, Japanese sentence structure is actually incredibly logical, and a solid
understanding of it will save you a huge amount of time trying to make sense of
Japanese grammar.

In this guide, I break it all down and show you exactly how Japanese sentences
work. Every aspect of Japanese grammar ts within the structure outlined below.

Contents
Basic sentences
How particles work
De ning di erent roles
Expanding individual elements

Basic sentences
Lets start by looking at basic sentences that use the special verb
(pronounced dess), which is e ectively equivalent to the English verb be (am,
are, is).

Sentences using usually follow this basic structure:

[topic] (something that describes the topic)

Here are a few simple examples:

Check or uncheck the boxes below to show or hide each version of the Japanese sentences:

Romaji
 Kana

Kanji

Furigana

I am a person.

This is a car.

The car is red.

The rst step to understanding this structure is knowing what is.

(pronounced wa) is what is known as a particle. Particles are like markers

that identify what role each word or phrase plays within a sentence.

The particle tells us that the word or phrase before it is the topic of
that sentence.

The topic is basically the thing that is being talked about in that sentence, and
usually appears near the beginning. In our examples above, the things that are
being talked about are I, this, and the car, respectively, so the topics of these
sentences in Japanese are , and .

The topic of a Japanese sentence is very similar to what other languages refer to as
the subject. The subject of a sentence is the person or thing that does the action
described by the main verb in thesentence. These are, in fact, slightly di erent
concepts, but for now, we will treat them as being the sameso as to keep things
simple.

Particles like do not exist in English, but they are the backbone of
Japanese grammar. Well look at particles in more detail soon.

These sentences also show us another important rule that applies to all Japanese
sentences:

The main verb comes at the end of the sentence.

In all of the above examples, that verb is , which takes the form of is or
am in the English translations. However, this rule also applies for other verbs,
which we will look at shortly.

First, lets take another look at the rst two sentences above. Text with the same
formatting has the same meaning.

I am a person.

This is a car.


First of all, we can see that has no English equivalent. This is because its
entirepurpose is to show that or is the topic of these sentences.
That is, de nes these words as the topic. In English, there is no need for a
particle like because the subject of a sentence can be determined based on
the word order. Well look at this more closely in the next section.

Secondly, since means person and means car, we can see that
thereis no Japanese equivalent of a.

The articles a, an and the do not exist in Japanese.

What this means is that the sentences, This is a car, and, This is the car, would
both be, . There is no di erentiation.

This makes things simpler in some ways, but can be hard to get used if youve
spent your entire life speaking English or similar languages, as not having these
words can sometimes make a sentence feel incomplete. Without them, it can be
hard to know ifsomeone is referring to a speci c car, or just any car. There are
other ways to specify which car is being talked about, but in many cases, this is
implied purely by context. This is something you will get used to over time.

We now know three very important rules relating to Japanese sentence structure:

The particle identi es the topic of a sentence

The verb comes at the end of the sentence

The articles a, an and the do not exist in Japanese

These rules apply to everything, so using the rst two in particular, we can adapt
our sentence structure model from earlier to this:

[topic] (other information) [verb]

When the verb is , the other information can just be a noun (

) or adjective (). In fact, the last thing immediately before
should be either a noun or an adjective.

For verbs other than , however, basically everything in the other

information section needs to be accompanied by a particle.

How particles work

The main thing that di erentiates Japanese from most other languages is its use of
particles. Weve already seen the particle , but there are many more
particles, and a proper understanding of what they are and how to use them will
make the Japanese language much easier to decipher.

As stated earlier:

Particles are like markers that tell us the role each word plays in a
sentence.

In any language, a combination of words only makes sense if the role of each word
is clear. The biggest di erence between Japanese and English (and many other
languages) is how these roles are de ned.

First, lets understand what is meant by the role each word plays in a sentence.
In English, for the main elements in a sentence, this role is determined by word
order. Heres a very basic example:

Taro saw Noriko.

This sentence has three words: Taro, saw and Noriko. The central word in any
sentence, in both English and Japanese, is the main verb, which in this case is
saw. The other words in a sentence always relate to the main verb, either directly
or indirectly, so every sentence must have a main verb.

To gure out what the role of each of the other words is, we look at the word
order:

Taro comes before saw, which tells us that Taro is the one that saw
something.

Noriko comes after saw, which tells us that Noriko is the thing that was
seen.

If we change the order and put Noriko rst, we end up with the sentence:

Noriko saw Taro.

This has an entirely di erent meaning because changing the word order changes
the role that each word plays, which in turn, changes the overall meaning of the
sentence.

Japanese is di erent.In Japanese, particles determine the role of each word in a

sentence.
Given that the Japanese word for saw is , we would normally write
the above sentence as:

Taro saw Noriko.

This sentence has two particles:

, which tells us who we are talking about

, which tells us what they saw

In more general terms:

de nes the topic of a sentence, which is usually the person or thing that
performed the main action being described

, pronounced o, de nes to whom or to what that action was done, which is

known as the object of the verb

Importantly, particles de ne the role of the word that comes before them. In the
above example:

The word before is , so we know that Taro is the person who

performed the act of seeing.

The word before is , so we know that Noriko is the thing that

was seen.

If we put this all together, it means: Taro saw Noriko.

Because of particles like these, word order is not as important as it is in English. In

Japanese, we can actually change the order of the words without changing the
fundamental meaning of the sentence, as long as the same particles are paired
with the same words. Both of the following mean e ectively the same thing:

These two sentences both mean Taro saw Noriko. The word order doesnt a ect
the fundamental meaning because the particles tell us what each word in the
sentence does.

That said, we wouldnt normally use sentence two above because, as our sentence
structure model shows, the topic is usually near the beginning of the sentence.
This is not a hard rule, but it is unnatural in most situations for the topic to be
placed after other key elements in the same clause.

De ning di erent roles

In our basic example sentence involving Taro and Noriko, the only roles that have
actually been de ned are the topic(Taro) and the object (Noriko).

These, together with the verb, are the three most important pieces of information
in a sentence. They tell us:

What action is done

Who does the action

To what or whom the action is done

 Roughly when the action occurs (past, present, future etc. as de ned by the
verb tense)

Of course, there are many more pieces of information that can be added to a
sentence.

Lets start by considering some basic information that relates directly to the action
itself, such as:

When (more precisely) the action takes place

Where the action takes place

The destination of the action

The origin of the action

The means by which the action is done

When we include this information, we need to specify how that information

relates to the other parts of the sentence, and to the main verb in particular.

Before we look at how this is done in Japanese, lets consider how the role of
additional information is de ned in English.

De ning roles in English

We know that the subject and the object are determined based on word order. For
most additional information, however, word order alone is not enough we need
prepositions like in, on, at, to and from.

For example, we cant just say Taro saw Noriko the library. We need a preposition
to tell us how the library relates to everything else. The preposition we use
depends on what role we want to attribute to the library.
The diagram below shows some examples of how prepositions are used to de ne
the relationship between di erent pieces of information and the action described
by the main verb.

How di erent roles are de ned in English sentences

We can usually just add this additional information together with the appropriate
preposition to the end of the sentence after the object. For example, to de ne
the location where Taro saw Noriko, we could use the preposition at and insert it
after Noriko (the object of the verb saw):

Taro saw Noriko at the library.

It can also go at the beginning of the sentence:

At the library, Taro saw Noriko.

Either way, the at is essential to understanding what role the library plays.
Without it, we dont know if Taro saw Noriko at the library, in front of the library, on
his way to the library, or while he was thinking about what he would do when he
got to the library. The role needs to be de ned.

De ning roles in Japanese

In Japanese, just as we did with the topic and the object, we de ne the roles of
additional elements using particles. The Japanese version of the above diagram
looks like this:

How di erent roles are de ned in Japanese sentences

The rst major di erence, as weve already discussed, is that the topic and the
object, like everything else, are determined by particles, not word order as they are
in English.
Each of the elements including the topic and object need to be included in a
sentence with the appropriate particle after them. There are a few exceptions to
this (such as time words, where is only required in some cases), but in
general, particles are required.

To build a sentence, we just need to insert each piece of information together

with its particle into the sentence structure we identi ed earlier:

[topic] (other information) [verb]

Note that, as mentioned, the topic is only placed at the beginning of the sentence
because that is its natural location in most situations. It is not, however, a
requirement.

Lets do this with our example sentence:

Taro saw Noriko at the library.

We know that Taro is the topic, and the verb is saw (mimashita). The other
information is:

Noriko, who is the thing that was seen (the object)

The library, which is where he saw her (the location)

This ts into our diagram like so:

 Taro saw Noriko at the library

The other information can go in basically any order, so we just need to insert it
together with the appropriate particles:

Taro saw Noriko at the library.

To say that the order doesnt matter is oversimplifying things a little, as it does
make a subtle di erence to where the emphasis lies, and certain orderings are
generally more natural than others. However, this is far less important than using
the right particles, as using the wrong ones would change the meaning entirely. If
we swap wo and de, for example, we get:
 Taro saw the library at Noriko.

Although grammatically correct, this obviously makes no sense. When it comes to

the meaning of a sentence, particles are critical.

Subject vs. Topic

You may have noticed that for English I described Taro as being the subject, while
for Japanese I described him as being the topic. These are subtly di erent
concepts, but they are not the same, and in fact Japanese sentences can also have
a subject, which is marked by the particle .

Although is actually a very common particle that you need to know, I have
purposely left it out of this discussion, as the di erence between the particles
and is one of the most confusing concepts you are likely to face
learning Japanese. You can read more about that here, but for now, gaining a solid
understanding of sentence structure is far more important.

Now lets add another elementand try building the following sentence in Japanese:

On Sunday, Taro saw Noriko at the train station

If we put this into our diagram, we get this:

 On Sunday, Taro saw Noriko at the train station

As indicated, we attribute the particles as follows:

Using our three basic rules, we can then create our sentence to be any of the
following:

There are other possible combinations too, and as long as all the pieces of
information are followed by the correct particles, they are grammatically correct
and have the same fundamental meaning.

Again, some orderings are more natural than others. For example, time phrases
usually appear near the beginning of the sentence, so in most cases, the third
option above is less preferable. Time phrases are also unique in that they often
appear even before the topic, like so:

[time phrase] + [topic] (other information) [verb]

This would make our example look like this:

The actual di erence between this and the other orderings above is negligible. Its
like the di erence between the following:

On Sunday, Taro saw Noriko at the train station

Taro saw Noriko at the train station on Sunday

As you can see, the word order doesnt really a ect the meaning.

Lets look at another example:

Taro went with Noriko from the train station to the library by car.
Heres the diagram for this:

Taro went with Noriko from the train station to the library by car

This gives us:

Note that Norikos role has changed from object to co-participant, hence the
particle after her name has changed too. The same is true for .

Our sentence could be written as:



Again, these are all correct and have essentially the same meaning, with just a
slight di erence in emphasis.

Now letslook at another way that we can add more information to a sentence.

Expanding individual elements

An important point about the diagrams above are that they show the relationship
between certain pieces of information and the main verb. This is because each of
them relates directly to the action. For example:

de nes when the action takes places

de nes where the action takes place

de nes the destination of the action

We can, however, add other information that doesnt relate directly to the verb.
Instead it relates speci cally to one of the individual elements in the sentence.

The simplest example of this is adjectives.

In Japanese, adjectives are used in much the same way as they are in English
immediately before the noun they describe. (This is in addition to their use in
simple sentences where the main verb is , such as ).

Lets take a shorter version of our sentence from earlier

Taro went to the library by car.

and change it to specify that the car was blue:

Taro went to the library in a blue car

(Note that in English, by changes to in, but the meaning is essentially the same).

What were essentially doing is expanding the individual element, , to add

more detail. In this case, the means of transport has changed from to
. When we do this, as a whole should be marked by , since
a blue car is the means of transport, not just a car.

This has no impact on the other parts of the sentence, so it ts into the diagram
di erently:
 Taro went to the library in a blue car

Expanding on a single noun like this creates what is called a noun phrase. A noun
phrase is essentially a phrase that, as a whole, represents a single thing.
Technically, car by itself is a noun phrase, but so are all of the following:

a car

a blue car

my car

my blue car

the blue car over there

the blue car thats always parked in the street next to the mailbox

All of these represent a single thing a car and can be substituted into sentences
in the same way, like so:
 He is driving a car.

He is driving my blue car.

He is driving the blue car thats always parked in the street next to the mailbox.

Noun phrases are just as common in Japanese as they are in English, and serve the
same fundamental purpose to add more information about a speci c noun.

There are many di erent ways that noun phrases can be formed, in both English
and Japanese. Another very common example is:

Taro went to the library in my car.

Here, weve taken the noun car and expanded on it to indicate that it belongs to
me. The result is the noun phrase, my car, which in Japanese is:

my car

This makes use of another very common particle: .

The particle indicates possession.

E ectively, converts I, you, he, she and they into my, your, his,
her and their, respectively. For other things like peoples names, animals, places
and objects, it has the same e ect as adding s (apostrophe s).

If instead we wanted to say Taros car, for example, we would say ,

with the indicating that the car belongs to Taro.
The one-size- ts-all way of de ning would be to say it is equal to English of
. For example, instead of my car or Taros car, and
could be thought of as the car of me or the car of Taro.

can be used to connect just about any two things, where one of the two
things belongs to the other in some way, such as the back of the door, the color
of your eyes or even the rain of yesterday.

Now that we know this, lets substitute into our example sentence. First,
heres the diagram:

Taro went to the library in my car

Thiscan be turned into the following:

Taro went to the library in my car.



Here, the means of transportation is my car, so the noun phrase

needs to be followed by the particle .

Its important to note that even though is a particle, it cannot be moved

around freely like the other particles weve looked at.This is because it is part of a
noun phrase, and noun phrases cannot be separated. Doing so would be like
separating my from car. The result might be something like this:

Taro went to my library by car.

If we want to change the word order, we can, but we need to move the whole noun
phrase , and the associated particle , together as a single block.
Heres one way we could do this:

Taro went to the library in my car.

This is true for any noun in any sentence. That is, any noun can be expanded into a
more detailed noun phrase. The resulting noun phrase can then be used in the
same way as the original noun, no matter what role that noun has in the sentence.
It just has to be kept together as a single block.

For example, the destination could be changed from the library to the university
library:
 Taro went to the university library by car.

Or my car could be used as the object, de ned by :

Taro saw my car.

It can even be used as the topic:

My car is red.

Any noun, no matter where it is used, can be expanded as long as the resulting
phrase is a valid noun phrase.

Our diagram can therefore be modi ed to look like this:

 The di erent roles in Japanese sentences can be expanded using noun phrases

In Japanese, noun phrases are used in a lot of di erent ways, from simple
examples like the ones above, to more complex expressions like:

This is the book that he bought yesterday ()

When I went to Japan, I ate lots of ramen (

)

I think it would be better to go tomorrow morning (

)

Please wash your platebefore you watch TV (

)

The various ways of building di erent noun phrases and using them in sentences
are covered in detail in 80/20 Japanese.

Japanese sentence structure summary

The most important things to remember about Japanese sentence structure are:

The verb comes last

Particles de ne the roles of each of the di erent elements within a sentence

Word order is less important, and only in uences the emphasis

Each noun in a sentence can be expanded into a more detailed noun phrase

It is usually more natural to put the topic and time phrases near the beginning
of the sentence

The result is that basic sentences usually look like this, withthe other information
appearing optionally and in any order:

Structure of a typical basic Japanese sentence

This basic structure is thefoundationof the entire Japanese language. If you

understand this, Japanese will start to make a lot more sense.
 You can learn more about particles, noun phrases and everything else essential to
the Japanese language in my book, 80/20 Japanese. To receive a free sample
chapter,
76.4k click here.
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by Richard Webb | April 18, 2016

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