Japanese Grammar Guide
Japanese Grammar Guide
Tae Kim November 21, 2012
Contents
1 Introduction
11
1.1 The problem with conventional textbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2 A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 The Writing System
15
2.1 The Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Intonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Hiragana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.1 The Muddied Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.2 The Small and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.3 The Small . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.4 The Long Vowel Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 Katakana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.1 The Long Vowel Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.4.2 The Small . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4.3 Some examples of words in Katakana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5 Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.1 What is Kanji? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.2 Learning Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.3 Reading Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5.4 Why Kanji? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3 Basic Grammar
29
3.1 Basic Grammatical Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2 Expressing State-of-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2.1 Declaring something is so and so using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2.2 Conjugating to the negative state-of-being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.3 Conjugating to the past state-of-being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.4 Conjugation summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3 Introduction to Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.1 Defining grammatical functions with particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.2 The topic particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.3 The inclusive topic particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.4 The identifier particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.1 Properties of Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3
3.4.2 The na-adjective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.4.3 The i-adjective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.4.4 An annoying exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.5 Verb Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.5.1 Role of Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.5.2 Classifying verbs into ru-verbs and u-verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 3.5.3 Appendix: iru/eru u-verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.6 Negative Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.6.1 Conjugating verbs into the negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.7 Past Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.7.1 Past tense for ru-verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.7.2 Past tense for u-verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.7.3 Past-negative tense for all verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 3.8 Particles used with verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.8.1 The direct object particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3.8.2 The target particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3.8.3 The directional particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.8.4 The contextual particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.8.5 When location is the topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 3.8.6 When direct object is the topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.9 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3.9.1 Pay attention to particles! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3.10 Relative Clauses and Sentence Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.10.1 Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.10.2 Using state-of-being clauses as adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 3.10.3 Using relative verb clauses as adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 3.10.4 Japanese Sentence Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 3.11 Noun-related Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.11.1 The last three particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.11.2 The Inclusive particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.11.3 The Vague Listing and particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.11.4 The particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 3.11.5 The particle as explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.12 Adverbs and Sentence-ending particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 3.12.1 Properties of Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 3.12.2 Sentence-ending particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.12.3 sentence ending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.12.4 sentence ending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.12.5 Combining both to get . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4 Essential Grammar
83
4.1 Polite Form and Verb Stems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.1.1 Not being rude in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.1.2 The stem of verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.1.3 Using to make verbs polite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1.4 Using for everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.1.5 is NOT the same as . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4
4.2 Addressing People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.2.1 Referring to yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.2.2 Referring to others by name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.2.3 Referring to others with "you" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.2.4 Referring to others in third person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 4.2.5 Referring to family members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.3 The Question Marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.3.1 Questions in polite form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.3.2 The question marker in casual speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 4.3.3 used in relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 4.3.4 Using question words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4 Compound Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 4.4.1 Expressing a sequence of states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 4.4.2 Expressing a sequence of verbs with the te-form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 4.4.3 Expressing reason or causation using and . . . . . . . 106 4.4.4 Using to mean "despite" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4.4.5 Expressing contradiction using and . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 4.4.6 Expressing multiple reasons using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 4.4.7 Expressing multiple actions or states using . . . . . . . . 113
4.5 Other uses of the te-form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.5.1 Using for enduring states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.5.2 Enduring state-of-being vs enduring state of action . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 4.5.3 Using for resultant states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.5.4 Using the form as preparation for the future . . . . . . . . . 120 4.5.5 Using motion verbs () with the te-form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.6 Potential Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.6.1 Expressing the ability to do something . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.6.2 The Potential Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.6.3 Potential forms do not have direct objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 4.6.4 Are and exceptions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 4.6.5 , yet another exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.7 Using and with the particle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 4.7.1 Using and for nouns and na-adjectives . . . . . . . . . 128 4.7.2 Using with i-adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 4.7.3 Using and with verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.8 Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.8.1 How to say "if" in Japanese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.8.2 Expressing natural consequence using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.8.3 Contextual conditionals using () . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 4.8.4 General conditionals using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 4.8.5 Past conditional using () . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 4.8.6 How does fit into all of this? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.9 Expressing "must" or "have to" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 4.9.1 When there's something that must or must not be done . . . . . . . . . . 140 4.9.2 Using , , and for things that must not be done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 4.9.3 Expressing things that must be done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
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