Hi! Welcome to Introduction to Japanese. My name is Alisha, and I'm joined by...
Hi everyone! I'm Risa. In this lesson, you'll learn the basics of Japanese grammar. Word order refers to the order in which words are structured to form a sentence in a given language.
Consider the English sentence, I ate an apple. But first... let's remove the article an here for simplicity. So we're just left with I ate apple.
The basic word order for English is subject, verb, object, or SVO for short. If we break down the English sentence I ate apple, we can see that the subject I is presented first, followed by the verb ate, and then finally the object apple is positioned last. This is the basic word order for sentences in English. Now, let's compare the same sentence I ate an apple in Japanese.
私がりんごを食べました。 Like before, let's remove the particles to keep it simple. So we're just left with the words.
If we break down the Japanese sentence, we get the subject 私 meaning I. Then comes the object りんご meaning apple. And finally, we have the verb 食べました meaning ate.
The word order for Japanese then is subject, object, verb or SOV for short. In both languages, the subject is presented first. In English, though, it's followed by the verb and then the object, compared to the object being first and the verb last in Japanese. The same sentence in Japanese is essentially I apple ate, subject first, then object, and verb last, SOV.
This is the basic word order for sentences in Japanese. Okay, let's move on to the next section. English is what is called a subject-prominent language. This simply means that the subject is slightly more important than other components in the sentence. It's the key piece of information other components in the sentence relate to.
Who is doing the action is slightly more important than what is being done or which object it's being done to in English. If we had to slowly remove pieces of information from a sentence while trying to keep its essence intact, logically we would do so in order of least important to most important. If we were to omit the subject, we would get ate an apple.
which sounds strange. On the other hand, if we were to omit the object instead, the sentence would become I ate. Even though in each instance we omitted a piece of information, the reason I ate sounds less strange is because we've yet to break any grammatical rules, and so there's still potential for the sentence fragment to become a complete sentence and to become grammatically correct.
Since the latter is logical, this indicates that the subject is more important than the object in English. The same would have been true if we had omitted the verb. Since the subject is the integral component in the sentence, this makes English a subject-prominent language.
Japanese, on the other hand, is a topic-prominent language. Unlike English, the focus of each Japanese sentence is the topic, not the subject. Essentially, the 8-an apple portion, りんごを食べました, is the main focus of the sentence, where I is deemed less important and can be omitted.
In fact, if it's obvious what the subject is, or if it's already been established, it's quite normal to omit the subject from the conversation altogether in Japanese. Let's look at this aspect in a bit more detail. More often than not, if you wanted to say, I ate an apple in Japanese, you would not say, 私がリンゴを食べました。
Instead, you would more likely say, Apple ate in Japanese. リンゴを食べました。 Since Japanese is a topic-prominent language, the information to be shared is the act of eating the apple. Less important is the subject, which is omitted altogether.
Most Japanese sentences are constructed and spoken like this in real life. In most situations, such as a one-on-one conversation, it's clear that the person who's speaking is the subject. In cases where it's obvious who or what the subject is, it's almost guaranteed that the subject will be omitted.
And so, you're left with… On the other hand, when it's unclear who or what the subject is, or if you wanted to place emphasis on the subject, like if you wanted to declare from a group of people that it was you who ate the apple, then you would include the subject. 私がリンゴを食べました。 But more often than not, most sentences spoken in daily Japanese conversation can be spoken without including the subject at all, particularly if that subject is you. 箱を開けました。 電車で帰りました。
Knowing this, we can easily express any simple action in Japanese using just the object and the verb. Try to create the sentence, I ate a hot dog, from these sets of words. hot dog wo Okay, got it? The object goes first, so let's put hot dog here.
And the verb goes last, so let's put ate at the end. Finally, we connect them using the appropriate particle. And that's it.
hot dog wo tabemashita Which means, I ate a hot dog in Japanese. hot dog wo tabemashita You can create any basic sentence like this in Japanese if you simply know the word for the object and the verb in Japanese. Well done!
Let's wrap up this lesson by recapping what we've learned. In this lesson, you learned that Japanese sentences are formed using a subject-object-verb, or SOV, word order. The most important aspect of Japanese sentences is not the subject of the sentence, but the topic. Most sentences spoken in Japanese will not actually contain a subject, especially if that subject is obvious, like when it's yourself, the speaker.
And lastly, you can create basic sentences in Japanese by putting the object first and the verb last. We've covered only the very basics of Japanese grammar. If you're interested in learning more, check out our Learn Basic Japanese video series. In that course, we teach you useful phrases while covering the fundamentals of Japanese grammar.
In the next lesson, we'll introduce you to the basics of Japanese writing. See you in the next lesson! Bye!
Bye!