Learn Japanese With Me: Grammar

Japanese grammar can be very hard. Here we will go over particles, adjective conjugation, verb conjugation, and more.

Grammar Basics

Japanese sentence structure is slightly different than English. In English, we form our sentences like so: subject - verb - object. Example: I eat food. "I" is the subject, "eat" is the verb, and "food" is the object. In Japanese, sentences are formed as subject - object - verb. In Japanese, that same sentence would be 私は食べ物を食べる。Literally, "I food eat." There are particles in this sentence, but we will cover those later on. The good thing about Japanese sentences is that every other part is flexible as long as words are marked with the correct particle and the verb is always at the end of the sentence. You can also omit the subject of the sentence if it's obvious what the subject is. 私 (I) is often omitted.

Verbs

The Three Verb Groups

/u/ verbs; Godan Verbs, Group 1 Verbs, Consonant-Stem Verbs

The basic form of /u/ verbs ends with the /u/ sound. Examples of these verbs include 話す (to speak) and 待つ (to wait).