A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

Outline

The problem with conventional textbooks
A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar
What is not covered in this guide?
Suggestions
Requirements

The problem with conventional textbooks

The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals.

They want readers to be able to use functional and polite Japanese as quickly as possible.
They don't want to scare readers away with terrifying Japanese script and Chinese characters.
They want to teach you how to say English phrases in Japanese.

Traditionally with romance languages such as Spanish, these goals presented no problems or were nonexistent due to the similarities to English. However, because Japanese is different in just about every way down to the fundamental ways of thinking, these goals create many of the confusing textbooks you see on the market today. They are usually filled with complicated rules and countless number of grammar for specific English phrases. They also contain almost no kanji and so when you finally arrive in Japan, lo and behold, you discover you can't read menus, maps, or essentially anything at all because the book decided you weren't smart enough to memorize Chinese characters.

The root of this problem lies in the fact that these textbooks try to teach you Japanese with English. They want to teach you on the first page how to say, "Hi, my name is Smith," but they don't tell you about all the arbitrary decisions that were made behind your back. They probably decided to use the polite form even though learning the polite form before the dictionary form makes no sense. They also might have decided to include the subject even though it's not necessary and excluded most of the time. In fact, the most common way to say something like "My name is Smith" in Japanese is to say "am Smith". That's because most of the information is understood from the context and is therefore excluded. But does the textbook explain the way things work in Japanese fundamentally? No, because they're too busy trying to push you out the door with "useful" phrases right off the bat. The result is a confusing mess of "use this if you want to say this" type of text and the reader is left with a feeling of confusion about how things actually work.

The solution to this problem is to explain Japanese from a Japanese point of view. Take Japanese and explain how it works and forget about trying to force what you want to say in English into Japanese. To go along with this, it is also important to explain things in an order that makes sense in Japanese. If you need to know [A] in order to understand [B], don't cover [B] first just because you want to teach a certain phrase.

Essentially, what we need is a Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar.

A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar

This guide is an attempt to systematically build up the grammatical structures that make up the Japanese language in a way that makes sense in Japanese. It may not be a practical tool for quickly learning immediately useful Japanese phrases (for example, common phrases for travel). However, it will logically create grammatical building blocks that will result in a solid grammatical foundation. For those of you who have learned Japanese from textbooks, you may see some big differences in how the material is ordered and presented. This is because this guide does not seek to forcibly create artificial ties between English and Japanese by presenting the material in a way that makes sense in English. Instead, examples with translations will show how ideas are expressed in Japanese resulting in simpler explanations that are easier to understand.

In the beginning, the English translations for the examples will also be as literal as possible to convey the Japanese sense of the meaning. This will often result in grammatically incorrect translations in English. For example, the translations might not have a subject because Japanese does not require one. In addition, since the articles "the" and "a" do not exist in Japanese, the translations will not have them as well. And since Japanese does not distinguish between a future action and a general statement (such as "I will go to the store" vs. "I go to the store"), no distinction will necessarily be made in the translation. It is my hope that the explanation of the examples will convey an accurate sense of what the sentences actually mean in Japanese. Once the reader becomes familiar and comfortable thinking in Japanese, the translations will be less literal in order to make the sentences more readable and focused on the more advanced topics.

Be aware that there are advantages and disadvantages to systematically building a grammatical foundation from the ground up. In Japanese, the most fundamental grammatical concepts are the most difficult to grasp and the most common words have the most exceptions. This means that the hardest part of the language will come first. Textbooks usually don't take this approach; afraid that this will scare away or frustrate those interested in the language. Instead, they try to delay going deeply into the hardest conjugation rules with patchwork and gimmicks so that they can start teaching useful expressions right away. (I'm talking about the past-tense conjugation for verbs in particular) This is a fine approach for some, however; it can create more confusion and trouble along the way much like building a house on a poor foundation. The hard parts must be covered no matter what. However, if you cover them in the beginning, the easier bits will be all that easier because they'll fit nicely on top of the foundation you have built. Japanese is syntactically much more consistent than English. If you learn the hardest conjugation rules, most of remaining grammar builds upon similar or identical rules. The only difficult part from there on is sorting out and remembering all the various possible expressions and combinations in order to use them in the correct situations.

※Before you start using this guide, please note that half brackets like these: 「」 are the Japanese version of quotation marks.

What is not covered in this guide?

The primary principle in deciding what to cover in this guide is by asking myself, "What cannot be looked up in a dictionary?" or "What is poorly explained in a dictionary?" In working on this guide, it soon became apparent that it was not possible to discuss the unique properties of each individual word that doesn't correspond well to English. (I tried making vocabulary lists but soon gave up.) Occasionally, there will be a description of the properties of specific words when the context is appropriate and the property is exceptional enough. However, in general, learning the nuance of each and every word is left to the reader. For example, you will not see an explanation that the word for "tall" can either mean tall or expensive, or that "dirty" can mean sneaky or unfair but cannot mean sexually perverted. The edict dictionary, which can be found here (mirrors also available) is an extensive dictionary that not only contains much more entries than conventional dictionaries in bookstores, it also often contains example sentences. It will help you learn vocabulary much better than I ever could. I also suggest not wasting any money on buying a Japanese-English, English-Japanese paper dictionary as most currently in print in the US market are woefully inadequate. (Wow, it's free and it's better! Remind anyone of open-source?)

Suggestions

My advice to you when practicing Japanese: if you find yourself trying to figure out how to say an English thought in Japanese, save yourself the trouble and quit because you won't get it right almost 100% of the time. You should always keep this in mind: If you don't know how to say it already, then you don't know how to say it. Instead, if you can, ask someone right away how to say it in Japanese including a full explanation of its use and start your practice from Japanese. Language is not a math problem; you don't have to figure out the answer. If you practice from the answer, you will develop good habits that will help you formulate correct and natural Japanese sentences.

This is why I'm a firm believer of learning by example. Examples and experience will be your main tools in mastering Japanese. Therefore, even if you don't get something completely the first time right away, just move on and keep referring back as you see more examples. This will allow you to get a better sense of how it's used in many different contexts. Unfortunately, writing up examples takes time and is slow going. (I'm trying my best!) But lucky for you, Japanese is everywhere, especially on the web. I recommend practicing Japanese as much as possible and referring to this guide only when you cannot understand the grammar. The Internet alone has a rich variety of reading materials including websites, bulletin boards, and online chat. Buying Japanese books or comic books is also an excellent (and fun) way to increase vocabulary and practice reading skills. Also, I believe that it is impossible to learn correct speaking and listening skills without a model. Practicing listening and speaking skills with fluent speakers of Japanese is a must if you wish to master conversational skills. While listening materials such as tapes and T.V. can be very educational, there is nothing better than a real human with which to learn pronunciation, intonation, and natural conversation flow. If you have specific questions that are not addressed in this guide, you can discuss them at the Japanese grammar guide forum.

www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/

Don't feel discouraged by the vast amount of material that you will need to master. Remember, every new word or grammar learned is one step closer to mastering the language!

Requirements

Since Japanese is written in Japanese in this guide (as it should be and NOT in romaji) your browser must be able to display Japanese fonts. If 「こんにちは」 does not look like

(minus differences in fonts), then you need to install Japanese language support or use some kind of gateway to convert the characters. Links to instructions and a translation gateway are below.

Japanese Language Support
Translation Gateway (Considerably slower)

Also, please make sure you have a recent browser to enjoy all the benefits of stylesheets. I recommend Firefox.

Don't worry about having to manually look up all the Kanji and vocabulary. You can go to the WWWJDIC and paste all the examples there to quickly look up most of the words.

All the material presented here including examples is original except for some of the common terminology and when explicitly stated otherwise. I hope you enjoy this guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which is to say, frustrating and time-consuming yet somehow strangely mixed with an enormous feeling of satisfaction.

There are bound to be (many) small errors and typos especially since I wrote this in ed, haha, just kidding! (Sorry, nerd joke). I actually wrote this in Notepad which has no spellcheck, so please forgive the numerous typos! Please post any feedback, corrections, and/or suggestions at the Japanese Grammar Guide Forum

Well, no more chit-chat. Happy learning!

-Tae Kim

This page has last been revised on 2005/6/8
Changed feedback from email to the forum (2005/6/8)

The Japanese Writing System

Japanese (n): The devil's own tongue designed
to thwart the spread of Christianity

The Alphabets

Japanese consists of two alphabets (or kana) called hiragana and katakana, which are two versions of the same set of sounds in the language. Hiragana and katakana consist of a little less than 50 "letters", which are actually simplified Chinese characters adopted to form a phonetic alphabet.

Chinese characters, called kanji in Japanese, are also heavily used in the Japanese writing. Most of the words in the Japanese written language are written in kanji (nouns, verbs, adjectives). There exists over 40,000 kanji where about 2,000 represent over 95% of characters actually used in written text. There are no spaces in Japanese so kanji is necessary in distinguishing between separate words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for discriminating between homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.

Hiragana is used mainly for grammatical purposes. We will see this as we learn about particles. Words with extremely difficult or rare kanji, colloquial expressions, and onomatopoeias are also written in hiragana. It's also often used for beginning Japanese students and children in place of kanji they don't know.

While katakana represents the same sounds as hiragana, it is mainly used to represent newer words imported from western countries (since there are no kanji associated with words based on the roman alphabet). The next three sections will cover hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Intonation

As you will find out in the next section, every character in hiragana (and the katakana equivalent) corresponds to a [vowel] or [consonant + vowel] syllable sound with the single exception of the 「ん」 and 「ン」 character (more on this later). This system of letter for each syllable sound makes pronunciation absolutely clear with no ambiguities. However, the simplicity of this system does not mean that pronunciation in Japanese is simple. In fact, the rigid structure of the fixed syllable sound in Japanese creates the problem of intonation in place of the difficulties that exist in separate consonant and vowel alphabets such as the English alphabet.

Intonation of high and low pitches is a crucial aspect of the spoken language. For example, homophones can have different pitches of low and high resulting in a slightly differently sounding of the word even if it is written with the same sounds. The largest barrier to proper and natural sounding speech is incorrect intonation. Many students often speak without paying attention to the correct enunciation of pitches making speech sound unnatural (the classic foreigner's accent). It is not practical to memorize or attempt to logically create rules for pitches, especially since it can change depending on the context or the dialect. The only practical approach is to get the general sense of pitches by mimicking native Japanese speakers with careful listening and practice.

Lessons covered in this section

Hiragana - The main Japanese phonetic alphabet. It is used mostly for grammatical purposes. It can also be used to show the reading for rare or obsolete kanji or as a substitute altogether. This lesson will go over all the letters in hiragana.
Katakana - An alphabet used generally to distinguish non-native words that does not have any kanji associated with it. This lesson will go over all the letters in katakana.
Kanji - An adoption of the Chinese writing system for Japanese. This lesson describes some general properties of kanji as well as some strategies for learning kanji (correctly).

This page has last been revised on 2004/11/24

ひらがな

Outline

What is Hiragana?
The Muddied Sounds
The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」
The Small 「つ」
The Long Vowel Sound

What is Hiragana?

Hiragana is the basic Japanese phonetic alphabet. It represents every sound in the Japanese language. Therefore, you can theoretically write everything in hiragana. However, because Japanese is written with no spaces, this will create nearly indecipherable text.

Here is a table of hiragana and similar-sounding English consonant-vowel pronunciations. It is read up to down and right to left, which is how most Japanese books are written. In Japanese, writing the strokes in the correct order and direction is important, especially for kanji. Because handwritten letters look slightly different from typed letters (just like how 'a' looks totally different when typed) you will want to find a source such as a website or textbook that will show you how to write the characters. I must also stress the importance of correctly learning how to pronounce each sound. Since every word in Japanese is composed of these sounds, learning an incorrect pronunciation for a letter can severely damage the very foundation on which your pronunciation lies.

Hiragana Table 1
n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ん	わ	ら	や	ま	は	な	た	さ	か	あ	a
	ゐ*	り		み	ひ	に	ち (chi)	し (shi)	き	い	i
		る	ゆ	む	ふ (fu)	ぬ	つ (tsu)	す	く	う	u
	ゑ*	れ		め	へ	ね	て	せ	け	え	e
	を	ろ	よ	も	ほ	の	と	そ	こ	お	o

* = obsolete (ie no longer used)

Hiragana is not too tough to master or teach and as a result, there are a variety of web sites and free programs that are already available on the web. I strongly urge you to go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each character. The relevant sections are 2.1 to 2.11. I also suggest recording yourself and comparing the sounds to make sure you're getting it right.

When practicing writing hiragana by hand, the important thing to remember is that the stroke order and direction of the strokes matter. There, I underlined, italicized, bolded, and highlighted it to boot. Trust me, you'll eventually find out why when you read other people's hasty notes that are nothing more than chicken scrawls. The only thing that will help you is that everybody writes in the same order and so the "flow" of the characters is fairly consistent. I strongly recommend that you pay close attention to stroke order from the beginning starting with hiragana to avoid falling into bad habits. Go to this web site to see little animated gifs of stroke order and practice from there.

※ As an aside, an old Japanese poem called 「いろは」 was often used as the base for ordering of the hiragana alphabet until recent times. The poem contains every single letter of the hiragana alphabet except for 「ん」 which probably did not exist at the time it was written. You can check out this poem for yourself in this wikipedia article. As the article mentions, this order is still sometimes used in ordering lists so you may want to spend some time checking it out.

Notes

Except for 「し」、「ち」、「つ」、and 「ん」、you can get a sense of how each letter is pronounced by matching the consonant on the top row to the vowel. For example, 「き」 would become / ki / and 「ゆ」 would become / yu / and so on.
Go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each hiragana character. The relevant sections are from 2.1 to 2.11.
As you can see, not all sounds match the way our consonant system works. As written in the table, 「ち」 is pronounced "chi" and 「つ」 is pronounced "tsu".
The / r / or / l / sound in Japanese is quite different from any sound in English. It involves more of a roll and a clip by hitting the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Pay careful attention to that whole column.
Pay careful attention to the difference between / tsu / and / su /.
The 「ん」 character is a special character because it is rarely used by itself and does not have a vowel sound. It is attached to another character to add a / n / sound. For example, 「かん」 becomes 'kan' instead of 'ka', 「まん」 becomes 'man' instead of 'ma', and so on and so forth.
You must learn the correct stroke order and direction! Go to this web site to learn.

The Muddied Sounds

Once you memorize all the characters in the hiragana alphabet you're done learning the alphabet but not all the sounds. There are five more possible consonant sounds that are possible by either affixing two tiny lines similar to a double quotation mark called dakuten （濁点） or a tiny circle called handakuten （半濁点）. This essentially creates a "muddy" or less clipped version of the consonant (technically called a voiced consonant or 「濁り」, which literally means to become muddy).

All the possible combinations of muddied consonant sounds are given in the table below.

Muddied Consonant Sounds
p	b	d	z	g
ぱ	ば	だ	ざ	が	a
ぴ	び	ぢ (ji)	じ (ji)	ぎ	i
ぷ	ぶ	づ (dzu)	ず	ぐ	u
ぺ	べ	で	ぜ	げ	e
ぽ	ぼ	ど	ぞ	ご	o

Notes

Go to this web site again to hear the pronunciations of these new sounds. The relevant parts are at the end of sections 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and 2.6.
Notice that 「ぢ」 sounds essentially identical to 「じ」 and both are pronounced as / ji /, while 「づ」 is pronounced like / dzu /.

The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」

You can also combine a consonant with a / ya / yu / yo / sound by attaching a small 「や」、「ゆ」、or 「よ」 to the / i / vowel character of each consonant.

All possible small や、ゆ、and よ combinations
p	b	j	g	r	m	h	n	c	s	k
ぴゃ	びゃ	じゃ	ぎゃ	りゃ	みゃ	ひゃ	にゃ	ちゃ	しゃ	きゃ	ya
ぴゅ	びゅ	じゅ	ぎゅ	りゅ	みゅ	ひゅ	にゅ	ちゅ	しゅ	きゅ	yu
ぴょ	びょ	じょ	ぎょ	りょ	みょ	ひょ	にょ	ちょ	しょ	きょ	yo

Notes

The above table is the same as before. Match the top consonants to the vowel sound on the right. Ex: きゃ = kya.
Go to this web site again to hear the pronunciations of these new sounds. The author has decided to include 「ぢゃ」、「ぢゅ」、and 「ぢょ」 but these combinations are actually never used in favor of 「じゃ」、「じゅ」、and 「じょ」.
Also note that since 「じ」 is pronounced / ji /, all the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」 sounds are also based off of that, namely; / jya / jyu / jyo /.
The same thing also applies to 「ち」 which becomes / cha / chu / cho / and 「し」 which becomes / sha / shu / sho /. (Though arguably, you can still think of it as / sya / syu / syo /.)

The Small 「つ」

A small 「つ」 is inserted between two characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first. For example, if you inserted a small 「つ」 between 「び」 and 「く」 to make 「びっく」, the / k / consonant sound is carried back to the end of the first character to produce "bikku". Similarly, 「はっぱ」 becomes "happa", 「ろっく」 becomes "rokku" and so on and so forth. I have provided my own simple mp3 file to illustrate the sound difference between 「もと」 and 「もっと」. And in case you're wondering, both are actual words and yes, both mean different things.

Notes

A small 「つ」 is used to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first. Ex: 「がっき」 = "gakki".
Download this mp3 file to hear the difference between 「もと」 and 「もっと」.
The addition of another consonant almost always creates the characteristic clipping sound. But make sure you're clipping with the right consonant (the consonant of the second character).

The Long Vowel Sound

Whew! You're almost done. In this last portion, we will go over the long vowel sound which is simply extending the duration of a vowel sound. You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding either 「あ」、「い」、or 「う」 depending on the vowel in accordance to the following chart.

Extending Vowel Sounds
Vowel Sound	Extended by
/ a /	あ
/ i / e /	い
/ u / o /	う

For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from 「か」, you would add 「あ」 to create 「かあ」. Other examples would include: 「き → きい」, 「く → くう」, 「け → けい」, 「こ → こう」, 「さ → さあ」 and so on. The reasoning for this is quite simple. Try saying 「か」 and 「あ」 separately. Then say them in succession as fast as you can. You'll notice that soon enough, it just sounds like you're dragging out the / ka / for a longer duration than just saying / ka / by itself. You can try this exercise with the other vowel sounds if you like. Try to remember that you are, in fact, saying two characters with blurred boundaries. In fact, you may not even have to consciously think about long vowels and simply pronounce the letters together quickly to get the correct sound.

In addition, while the / e / vowel sound followed by 「い」 is usually considered to a long vowel sound, the pronunciation is actually a slurred connection of the / e / and / i / vowel sounds. In other words, it should be pronounced like / ay / (as in "acorn") and not just a long / e /.

It's important to make sure you hold the vowel sound long enough because you can be saying things like "here" （ここ） instead of "High School" （こうこう） or "middle-aged lady" （おばさん） instead of "grandmother" （おばあさん） if you don't stretch it out correctly!

There are rare exceptions where an / e / vowel sound is extended by adding 「え」 or an / o / vowel sound is extended by 「お」. Some examples of this include 「おねえさん」、「おおい」、and 「おおきい」. Pay careful attention to these exceptions but don't worry, there aren't too many of them.

This page has last been revised on 2006/4/7
Added reference to 「いろは」 (2005/8/3)
/ei/ should be pronounced as /ay/ and not just a long /e/ (2006/4/7)

ひらがな Practice Exercises

Outline

Fill in the Hiragana Chart
Hiragana Writing Practice
More Hiragana Writing Practice
Hiragana Reading Practice

PDF Printout

Fill in the Hiragana Chart

Though I already mentioned that there are many sites and helper programs for learning hiragana, I figured I should put in some exercises of my own in the interest of completeness. I've removed the obsolete characters since you won't need to know them. I suggest playing around with this chart and a scrap piece of paper to test your knowledge of hiragana.

Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.

Hiragana Table

n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ん flip	わ flip	ら flip	や flip	ま flip	は flip	な flip	た flip	さ flip	か flip	あ flip	a
		り flip		み flip	ひ flip	に flip	ち flip	し flip	き flip	い flip	i
		る flip	ゆ flip	む flip	ふ flip	ぬ flip	つ flip	す flip	く flip	う flip	u
		れ flip		め flip	へ flip	ね flip	て flip	せ flip	け flip	え flip	e
	を flip	ろ flip	よ flip	も flip	ほ flip	の flip	と flip	そ flip	こ flip	お flip	o

Show all answers | Hide all answers

Hiragana Writing Practice

In this section, we will practice writing some words in hiragana. This is the only part of this guide where we will be using the English alphabet to represent Japanese sounds. I've added bars between each letter to prevent the ambiguities that is caused by romaji such as "un | yo" vs "u | nyo". Don't get too caught up in the romaji spellings. Remember, the whole point is to test your aural memory with hiragana. I hope to replace this with sound in the future to remove the use of romaji altogether.

Hiragana Writing Exercise 1

Sample: ta | be | mo | no ＝たべもの

1. ku \| ru \| ma	＝	くるま
2. a \| shi \| ta	＝	あした
3. ko \| ku \| se \| ki	＝	こくせき
4. o \| su \| shi	＝	おすし
5. ta \| be \| ru	＝	たべる
6. wa \| ka \| ra \| na \| i	＝	わからない
7. sa \| zu \| ke \| ru	＝	さずける
8. ri \| ku \| tsu	＝	りくつ
9. ta \| chi \| yo \| mi	＝	たちよみ
10. mo \| no \| ma \| ne	＝	ものまね
11. hi \| ga \| e \| ri	＝	ひがえり
12. pon \| zu	＝	ぽんず
13. hi \| ru \| me \| shi	＝	ひるめし
14. re \| ki \| shi	＝	れきし
15. fu \| yu \| ka \| i	＝	ふゆかい

Show all answers | Hide all answers

More Hiragana Writing Practice

Now we're going to move on to practice writing hiragana with the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」、and the long vowel sound.　For the purpose of this exercise, I will denote the long vowel sound as "－" and leave you to figure out with hiragana to use based on the letter preceding it.

Hiragana Writing Exercise 2

Sample: jyu | gyo－＝じゅぎょう

1. nu \| ru \| i \| o \| cha	＝	ぬるいおちゃ
2. kyu－ \| kyo \| ku	＝	きゅうきょく
3. un \| yo－\| jo－ \| ho－	＝	うんようじょうほう
4. byo－ \| do－	＝	びょうどう
5. jyo－ \| to－ \| shu \| dan	＝	じょうとうしゅだん
6. gyu－ \| nyu－	＝	ぎゅうにゅう
7. sho－ \| rya \| ku	＝	しょうりゃく
8. hya \| ku \| nen \| ha \| ya \| i	＝	ひゃくねんはやい
9. so \| tsu \| gyo－ \| shi \| ki	＝	そつぎょうしき
10. to－ \| nyo－ \| byo－	＝	とうにょうびょう
11. mu \| ryo－	＝	むりょう
12. myo－ \| ji	＝	みょうじ
13. o \| ka－ \| san	＝	おかあさん
14. ro－ \| nin	＝	ろうにん
15. ryu－ \| ga \| ku \| se \| i	＝	りゅうがくせい

Show all answers | Hide all answers

Hiragana Reading Practice

Now let's practice reading some hiragana. I want to particularly focus on correctly reading the small 「つ」 (by correctly carrying over the previous consonant). Remember to not get too caught up in the unavoidable inconsistencies of romaji. The point is to check whether you can figure out how it's supposed to sound in your mind.

Hiragana Reading Exercise

Sample: とった＝ totta

1. きゃっかんてき	＝	kyakkanteki
2. はっぴょうけっか	＝	happyoukekka
3. ちょっかん	＝	chokkan
4. ひっし	＝	hisshi
5. ぜったい	＝	zettai
6. けっちゃく	＝	kecchaku
7. しっぱい	＝	shippai
8. ちゅうとはんぱ	＝	chuutohanpa
9. やっかい	＝	yakkai
10. しょっちゅう	＝	shocchuu

Show all answers | Hide all answers

This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20

アイ・ラブ・カタカナ！

Outline

What is Katakana?
The Long Vowel Sound
The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」
Some examples of words in katakana

What is Katakana?

As mentioned before, katakana is mainly used for words imported from foreign languages. It can also be used to emphasize certain words similar to the function of italics. For a more complete list of usages, refer to the Wikipedia entry on katakana.

Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as hiragana except, of course, all the characters are different. Since foreign words must fit into this set of [consonants+vowel] combinations, they undergo many radical changes resulting in the case where English speakers can't understand words that are supposed to have been derived from English! As a result, the use of katakana is extremely difficult for English speakers because they expect English words to sound like... well... English. Instead, it is better to completely forget the original English word, and treat the word as an entirely separate Japanese word, otherwise you can run into the habit of saying English words with English pronunciations (whereupon a Japanese person may or may not understand what you are saying).

Katakana Table
n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ン	ワ	ラ	ヤ	マ	ハ	ナ	タ	サ	カ	ア	a
	ヰ*	リ		ミ	ヒ	ニ	チ	シ	キ	イ	i
		ル	ユ	ム	フ	ヌ	ツ	ス	ク	ウ	u
	ヱ*	レ		メ	ヘ	ネ	テ	セ	ケ	エ	e
	ヲ*	ロ	ヨ	モ	ホ	ノ	ト	ソ	コ	オ	o

* = obsolete or rarely used

Katakana is significantly tougher to master compared to hiragana because it is only used for certain words and you don't get nearly as much practice as you do with hiragana. To learn the proper stroke order (and yes, you need to), here is the same web site as before except it is for katakana.

Also, since Japanese doesn't have any spaces, sometimes the symbol 「・」 is used to show the spaces like 「ロック・アンド・ロール」 for "rock and roll". Using the symbol is completely optional so sometimes nothing will be used at all.

Notes

All the sounds are identical to what they were for hiragana.
As you will find out later, since 「を」 is only ever used as a particle and all particles are in hiragana, you will almost never need to use 「ヲ」 and therefore it can be safely ignored. (Unless you are reading very old telegrams or something.)
The four characters 「シ」、「ン」、「ツ」、and 「ソ」 are fiendishly similar to each other. Basically, the difference is that the first two are more "horizontal" than the second two. The little lines are slanted more horizontally and the long line is drawn in a curve from bottom to top. The second two have almost vertical little lines and the long line doesn't curve as much as it is drawn from top to bottom. It is almost like a slash while the former is more like an arc. These characters are hard to sort out and require some patience and practice.
The characters 「ノ」、「メ」、and 「ヌ」 are also something to pay careful attention to, as well as, 「フ」、「ワ」、 and 「ウ」. Yes, they all look very similar. No, I can't do anything about it.
You must learn the correct stroke order and direction! Go to this web site to learn.
Sometimes 「・」 is used to denote what would be spaces in English.

The Long Vowel Sound

Everything else works exactly the same way as hiragana, you just need to substitute the equivalent katakana characters. However, one thing that is different is that long vowels have been radically simplified in katakana. Instead of having to muck around thinking about vowel sounds, all long vowel sounds are denoted by a simple dash like so: ー.

Summary

All long vowel sounds in katakana are denoted by a dash. For example, "cute" would be written in katakana like so: 「キュート」.

The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」

Due to the limitations of the sound set in hiragana, some new combinations have been devised over the years to account for sounds that were not originally in Japanese. Most notable is the lack of the / ti / di / and / tu / du / sounds (because of the / chi / tsu / sounds), and the lack of the / f / consonant sound except for 「ふ」. The / sh / j / ch / consonants are also missing for the / e / vowel sound. The decision to resolve these deficiencies was to add small versions of the five vowel sounds. This has also been done for the / w / consonant sound to replace the obsolete characters. In addition, the convention of using the little double slashes on the 「ウ」 vowel （ヴ） with the small 「ア、イ、エ、オ」 to designate the / v / consonant has also been established but it's not often used probably due to the fact that Japanese people still have difficulty pronouncing / v /. For instance, while you may guess that "volume" would be pronounced with a / v / sound, the Japanese have opted for the easier to pronounce "bolume" （ボリューム）. In the same way, vodka is written as "wokka" （ウォッカ） and not 「ヴォッカ」. You can write "violin" as either 「バイオリン」 or 「ヴァイオリン」. It really doesn't matter however because almost all Japanese people will pronounce it with a / b / sound anyway. The following table shows the added sounds that were lacking with a highlight. Other sounds that already existed are reused as appropriate.

Additional sounds
v	w	f	ch	d	t	j	sh
ヴァ	ワ	ファ	チャ	ダ	タ	ジャ	シャ	a
ヴィ	ウィ	フィ	チ	ディ	ティ	ジ	シ	i
ヴ	ウ	フ	チュ	ドゥ	トゥ	ジュ	シュ	u
ヴェ	ウェ	フェ	チェ	デ	テ	ジェ	シェ	e
ヴォ	ウォ	フォ	チョ	ド	ト	ジョ	ショ	o

Notes

Notice that there is no / wu / sound. For example, the katakana for "woman" is written as "u-man" （ウーマン）.
While the / tu / sound (as in "too") can technically be produced given the rules as 「トゥ」, foreign words that have become popular before these sounds were available simply used / tsu / to make do. For instance, "tool" is still 「ツール」 and "tour" is similarly still 「ツアー」.
Back in the old days, without these new sounds, there was no choice but to just take characters off the regular table without regard for actual pronunciation. On old buildings, you may still see 「ビルヂング」 instead of the modern spelling 「ビルディング」. Incidentally, this is the case for the old Shin-Maru building across from Tokyo Station where I work. It is, however, soon slated for a complete rebuild and we will be moving out shortly. Ironically, Shin-Maru （新丸） has the character for "new" in it (the original one was rebuilt and is now newer).

Some examples of words in katakana

Translating English words into Japanese is a knack that requires quite a bit of practice and luck. To give you a sense of how English words become 'Japanified', here are a few examples of words in katakana. Sometimes the words in katakana may not even be correct English or have a different meaning from the English word it's supposed to represent. Of course, not all katakana words are derived from English.

Sample Katakana Words
English	Japanese
America	アメリカ
Russia	ロシア
cheating	カンニング (cunning)
tour	ツアー
company employee	サラリーマン (salary man)
Mozart	モーツァルト
car horn	クラクション (klaxon)
sofa	ソファ or ソファー
Halloween	ハロウィーン
French fries	フライドポテト (fried potato)

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/17
Added link to additional usages (2006/5/11)

カタカナ Practice Exercises

Outline

Fill in the Katakana Chart
Katakana Writing Practice
More Katakana Writing Practice
Changing English words to katakana

PDF Printout

Fill in the Katakana Chart

Here is the katakana chart you can use to help test your memory. The 「ヲ」 has been removed since you'll never need it.

Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.

Katakana Table

n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ン flip	ワ flip	ラ flip	ヤ flip	マ flip	ハ flip	ナ flip	タ flip	サ flip	カ flip	ア flip	a
		リ flip		ミ flip	ヒ flip	ニ flip	チ flip	シ flip	キ flip	イ flip	i
		ル flip	ユ flip	ム flip	フ flip	ヌ flip	ツ flip	ス flip	ク flip	ウ flip	u
		レ flip		メ flip	ヘ flip	ネ flip	テ flip	セ flip	ケ flip	エ flip	e
		ロ flip	ヨ flip	モ flip	ホ flip	ノ flip	ト flip	ソ flip	コ flip	オ flip	o

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Katakana Writing Practice

Here, we will practice writing some katakana words in katakana (obviously). Plus, you'll get a little taste of what foreign words sound like in Japanese.

Katakana Writing Exercise 1

Sample: ta | be | mo | no ＝タベモノ

1. pan	＝	パン
2. kon \| pyu－ \| ta	＝	コンピュータ
3. myu－ \| ji \| ka \| ru	＝	ミュージカル
4. u－ \| man	＝	ウーマン
5 he \| a \| pi－ \| su	＝	ヘアピース
6. nu－ \| do	＝	ヌード
7. me \| nyu－	＝	メニュー
8. ro－ \| te－ \| shon	＝	ローテーション
9. ha \| i \| kin \| gu	＝	ハイキング
10. kyan \| se \| ru	＝	キャンセル
11. ha \| ne \| mu－n \|	＝	ハネムーン
12. ku \| ri \| su \| ma \| su \| tsu \| ri－	＝	クリスマスツリー
13. ra \| i \| to	＝	ライト
14. na \| i \| to \| ge－ \| mu	＝	ナイトゲーム

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More Katakana Writing Practice

Now let's practice writing some more katakana. This time, we're going to include all the irregular sounds that don't exist in hiragana.

Katakana Writing Exercise 2

Sample: bi－ | chi ＝ビーチ

1. e \| i \| zu \| wi \| ru \| su	＝	エイズウイルス
2. no－ \| su \| sa \| i \| do	＝	ノースサイド
3. in \| fo \| me－ \| shon	＝	インフォメーション
4. pu \| ro \| je \| ku \| to	＝	プロジェクト
5. fa \| su \| to \| fu－ \| do	＝	ファストフード
6. she \| ru \| su \| ku \| ri \| pu \| to	＝	シェルスクリプト
7. we－ \| to \| re \| su	＝	ウェートレス
8. ma \| i \| ho－ \| mu	＝	マイホーム
9. chi－ \| mu \| wa－ \| ku	＝	チームワーク
10. mi \| ni \| su \| ka－ \| to	＝	ミニスカート
11. re－ \| za－ \| di \| su \| ku	＝	レーザーディスク
12. chen \| ji	＝	チェンジ
13. re \| gyu \| ra－	＝	レギュラー
14. we \| i \| to \| ri \| fu \| tin \| gu	＝	ウエイトリフティング

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Changing English words to katakana

Just for fun, let's try figuring out the katakana for some English words. I've listed some common patterns below but they are only guidelines and may not apply for some words.

As you know, since Japanese sounds always consist of consonant-vowel pairs, any English words that deviate from this pattern will cause problems. The only combination that doesn't create problems is the consonant-vowel + n (using 「ン」). Here are some trends you may have noticed.

If you've seen "Lost in Translation", you know that / l / and / r / are indistinguishable.

（１）　Ready -> レディ
（２）　Lady -> レディ

If you have more than one vowel in a row or a vowel sound that ends in / r /, it usually becomes a long vowel sound.

（１）　Target -> ターゲット
（２）　Shoot -> シュート

Abrupt cut-off sounds usually denoted by a / t / or / c / employ the small 「ッ」.

（１）　Catch -> キャッチ
（２）　Cache -> キャッシュ

Any word that ends in a consonant sound requires another vowel to complete the consonant-vowel pattern. (Except for "n" and "m" for which we have 「ン」) For "t" and "d", it's usually "o". For everything else, it's usually "u".

（１）　Good -> グッド
（２）　Top -> トップ
（３）　Jack -> ジャック

English to Katakana Exercise

Sample: Europe ＝ヨーロッパ

1. check	＝	チェック
2. violin	＝	バイオリン
3. jet coaster (roller coaster)	＝	ジェットコースター
4. window shopping	＝	ウィンドーショッピング
5. salsa	＝	サルサ
6. hotdog	＝	ホットドッグ
7. suitcase	＝	スーツケース
8. kitchen	＝	キッチン
9. restaurant	＝	レストラン
10. New York	＝	ニューヨーク

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This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20

Now you want me to learn Chinese too??

Outline

What is Kanji?
Learning Kanji
Reading Kanji
Why Kanji?

What is Kanji?

In Japanese, nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs are almost all written in Chinese characters called kanji. Adverbs are also fairly frequently written in kanji as well. This means that you will need to learn Chinese characters to be able to read essentially almost all the words in the language. Not all words are written in kanji however. For example, while the verb 'to do' technically has a kanji associated with it, it is always written in hiragana. Individual discretion and a sense of how things are normally written is needed to decide whether words should be written in hiragana or kanji. However, a majority of the words in Japanese will be written in kanji almost always. (Children's books or any other material where the audience is not expected to know a lot kanji is an exception to this.)

This guide begins using kanji from the beginning to help the reader read "real" Japanese as quickly as possible. Therefore, we will go over some properties of kanji and discuss some strategies of learning it quickly and efficiently. Mastering kanji is not easy but it is by no means impossible. The biggest part of the battle is mastering the skills of learning kanji and time. In short, memorizing kanji past short-term memory must be done with a great deal of study and, most importantly, for a long time. And by this, I don't mean studying five hours a day but rather reviewing how to write a kanji once every several months until you are sure you have it down for good. This is another reason why this guide starts using kanji right away. There is no reason to dump the huge job of learning kanji at the advanced level. By studying kanji along with new vocabulary from the beginning, the immense job of learning kanji is divided into small manageable chunks and the extra time helps settle learned kanji into permanent memory. In addition, this will help you learn new vocabulary, which will often have combinations of kanji you already know. If you start learning kanji later, this benefit will be wasted or reduced.

Learning Kanji

All the resources you need to begin learning kanji are on the web for free at Jim Breen's WWWJDIC. In addition to its huge dictionaries, it has stroke order diagrams for the 1,945 jouyo kanji (essentially almost all the kanji you will need to know). Especially for those who are just starting to learn, you will want to repeatedly write out each kanji to memorize the stroke order. Another important skill is learning how to balance the character so that certain parts are not too big or small. So make sure to copy the characters as close to the original as possible. Eventually, you will naturally develop a sense of the stroke order for certain types of characters allowing you to bypass the drilling stage. All the kanji used in this guide can be easily looked up by copying and pasting to the WWWJDIC.

Reading Kanji

Almost every character has two different readings called 音読み（おんよみ） and 訓読み（くんよみ）. 音読み is the original Chinese reading while 訓読み is the Japanese reading. Kanji that appear in a compound or 熟語 is usually read with 音読み while one kanji by itself is usually read with 訓読み. For example, 「力」（ちから） is read with the 訓読み while the same character in a compound word such as 「能力」 is read with the 音読み（which is 「りょく」 in this case）.

Certain characters (especially the most common ones) can have more than one 音読み or 訓読み. For example, in the word 「怪力」, 「力」 is read here as 「りき」 and not 「りょく」. Certain compound words also have special readings that have nothing to do with the readings of the individual characters. These readings must be individually memorized. Thankfully, these readings are few and far in between.

訓読み is also used in adjectives and verbs in addition to the stand-alone characters. These words often have a string of kana (called okurigana) that come attached to the word. This is so that the reading of the Chinese character stays the same even when the word is conjugated to different forms. For example, the past form of the verb 「食べる」 is 「食べた」. Even though the verb has changed, the reading for 「食」 remain untouched. (Imagine how difficult things could get if readings for kanji changed with conjugation or even worse, if the kanji itself changed.) Okurigana also serves to distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs (more on this later).

Another concept that is difficult to grasp at first is that the actual readings of kanji can change slightly in a compound word to make the word easier to say. The more common transformations include the / h / sounds changing to either / b / or / p / sounds or 「つ」 becoming 「っ」. Examples include: 「一本」、「徹底」、and 「格好」.

Yet another fun aspect of kanji you'll run into are words that practically mean the same thing and use the same reading but have different kanji to make just a slight difference in meaning. For example 「聞く」（きく） means to listen and so does 「聴く」（きく）. The only difference is that 「聴く」 means to pay more attention to what you're listening to. For example, listening to music almost always prefers 「聴く」 over 「聞く」. 「聞く」 can also mean 'to ask', as well as, "to hear" but 「訊く」（きく） can only mean "to ask". Yet another example is the common practice of writing 「見る」 as 「観る」 when it applies to watching a show such as a movie. Yet another interesting example is 「書く」（かく） which means "to write" while 描く（かく） means "to draw". However, when you're depicting an abstract image such as a scene in a book, the reading of the same word 「描く」 becomes 「えがく」. There's also the case where the meaning and kanji stays the same but can have multiple readings such as 「今日」 which can be either 「きょう」、「こんじつ」, or 「こんにち」. In this case, it doesn't really matter which reading you choose except that some are preferred over others in certain situations.

Finally, there is one special character 々 that is really not a character. It simply indicates that the previous character is repeated. For example, 「時時」、「様様」、「色色」、「一一」 can and usually are written as 「時々」、「様々」、「色々」、「一々」.

In addition to these "features" of kanji, you will see a whole slew of delightful perks and surprises kanji has for you as you advance in Japanese. You can decide for yourself if that statement is sarcasm or not. However, don't be scared into thinking that Japanese is incredibly hard. Most of the words in the language usually only have one kanji associated with it and a majority of kanji do not have more than two types of readings.

Why Kanji?

Some people feel that the system of using separate, discrete symbols instead of a sensible alphabet is out-dated and overly complicated. In fact, it might have not have been a good idea to adopt Chinese into Japanese since both languages are fundamentally different in structure. But the purpose of this guide is not to debate over the decisions made thousands of years ago but to explain why you must learn kanji in order to learn Japanese. And by this, I mean more than just saying, "That's how it's done so get over it!".

Some people feel that Japanese should have just switched from Chinese to romaji to do away with all the complicated characters that was bewildering the foreign white devils. In fact, Korean has adopted their own alphabet to greatly simplify their written language to great success. So why didn't it work for Japanese? And I ask this in the past tense because I believe that the government did attempt to replace kanji with romaji shortly after the second world war with little success. I think anyone who has typed at any length in Japanese can easily see why this did not work. At any one time, when you convert typed hiragana into kanji, you are presented with almost always at least two choices (two homophones) and sometimes even up to ten. (Try typing kikan). The 46 or so character alphabet of set sounds in Japanese makes it hard to avoid homophones. Compare this to the Korean alphabet which has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Any of the consonants can be matched to any of the vowels giving 140 sounds. In addition, a third and sometimes even fourth consonant can be attached to create a single letter. This gives over 1960 sounds that can be created theoretically. (The sounds that are actually used is actually much less than that, though I don't know the exact number.)

Since you want to read at a much faster rate than you talk, you need some visual cues to instantly tell you what each word is. You can use the shape of words in English to blaze through text because most words have different shapes. Try this little exercise: Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?" Korean does this too because it has enough characters to make words with distinct and different shapes. However, because the visual cues are not distinct as kanji, spaces needed to be added to remove ambiguities. (This presents another problem of when and where to set spaces.)

With kanji, we don't have to worry about spaces and much of the problem of homophones is mostly resolved. Without kanji, even if spaces were to be added, the ambiguities and lack of visual cues would make Japanese text much more difficult to read.

This page has last been revised on 2006/5/12

Grammatical Foundations

Basic Grammatical Structures

Now that we have learned how to write Japanese, we can begin going over the basic grammatical structure of the language. This section primarily covers all the parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. It will also describe how to integrate the various parts of speech into a coherent sentence by using particles. By the end of this section, you should have a basic understanding of how Japanese works and how thoughts are expressed in Japanese.

Lessons covered in this section

Expressing State of Being - We will learn how to express the English verb "to be" in Japanese.
Introduction to Particles - This lesson describes how to create relationships between things by designating a topic or identifier using 「は」、「も」、and 「が」 particles.
Adjectives - Covers the main properties of adjectives. We will learn how to describe nouns by directly modifying the noun or by using particles.
Verb Basics - Covers the basic properties of verbs. This lesson will describe how verbs are categorized so that we can easily generalize conjugation rules.
Negative Verbs - Goes over the conjugation rules for negating verbs. We will learn how to transform the sentence, "He will go." into "He will not go."
Past Tense - Goes over the rules for conjugating verbs to the past tense. We will learn how to transform the sentence, "He will go." into "He went."
Particles used with Verbs - This lesson covers particles most often associated with verbs. We will learn the direct object particle （を）, target particle （に）, motion target particle （へ）, and the context particle （で）.
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs - We will learn about transitive and intransitive verbs and how our usage of particles changes as a result.
Descriptive Subordinate Clauses - We will learn how to modify nouns with verb and conjugated noun clauses to create more complicated sentences.
Noun-related Particles - We will learn particles associated with nouns （と、や、とか、の）. Generic noun substitution will also be covered allowing us to essentially set just about anything as the topic or identifier. Its use as an implied explanation is also covered.
Adverbs and Gobi - A short and simple section to finish off this section. It describes how to change adjectives into adverbs. It also introduces two very common and useful sentence endings.

Because I said so!

Outline

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」
Conjugating for the negative state-of-being
Conjugating for the past state-of-being
To sum up

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」

One of the trickiest part of Japanese is that there is no verb for the state-of-being like the verb "to be" in English. What Japanese has instead, is a way to declare that something is the way it is by attaching the hiragana character 「だ」 to a noun or na-adjective only. You'll see what this means when we learn about nouns and adjectives.

Declaring that something is so using 「だ」

Attach 「だ」 to the noun or na-adjective
（１）　魚。 - Fish.
（２）　魚だ。 - Is fish.

Seems easy enough. Here's the real kicker though.

A state-of-being can be implied without using 「だ」!

As it stands, （１） is simply the word "fish" and doesn't mean anything beyond that. However, we'll see in the next section that with the topic particle, we can infer that something is a fish from the context without declaring anything. So the question that should be floating around in your head is, "If you can say something is [X] without using 「だ」, then what's the point of even having it around?" Well, the main difference is that a declarative statement makes the sentence sound more emphatic and forceful in order to make it more... well declarative. Therefore, it is more common to hear men use 「だ」 at the end of sentences. This is also why you cannot use 「だ」 when asking a question because then it sounds like you're making a statement and asking a question at the same time. (Unless you're declaring a question word such as 「どこだ」.)

The declarative 「だ」 is also needed in various grammatical structures where a state-of-being must be explicitly declared. There is also the case where you must not attach it. It's all quite a pain in the butt really but you don't have to worry about it yet.

Conjugating to the negative state-of-being

In Japanese, negative and past tense are all expressed by conjugation. We can conjugate a noun or adjective to either its negative or past tense to say that something is not [X] or that something was [X]. This may be a bit hard to grasp at first but none of these state-of-being conjugations make anything declarative like 「だ」 does. We'll learn, in a later lesson, how to make these tenses declarative by attaching 「だ」 to the end of the sentence .

First, for the negative tense, you simply attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective.

Conjugation rules for the negative state-of-being

Attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective
（例）友達　→　友達じゃない (is not friend)

Examples

（１）　じゃない。- Is not fish.
（２）　じゃない。- Is not student.
（３）　じゃない。- Is not quiet.

Conjugating for the past state-of-being

We will now learn the past tense of the state-of-being. To say something was something, 「だった」 is attached to the noun or na-adjective.

In order to say the negative past (was not), the negative tense is conjugated to the negative past tense by simply dropping the 「い」 from 「じゃない」 and adding 「かった」.

Conjugation rules for the past state-of-being

Past state-of-being: Attach 「だった」 to the noun or na-adjective
（例）友達　→　友達だった (was friend)
Negative past state-of-being: Conjugate the noun or na-adjective to the negative tense first and then replace 「い」 of 「じゃない」 with 「かった」
（例）友達　→　友達じゃない →　友達じゃなかった (was not friend)

（１）　魚だった。- Was fish.
（２）　学生じゃなかった。- Was not student.
（３）　静かじゃなかった。- Was not quiet.

To sum up

We've now learned how to use express a state-of-being in all four tenses. Next we will learn some particles, which will allow us assign roles to words. Here is a summary chart of the conjugations we learned in this section.

Summary of state-of-being
	Positive		Negative
Non-Past	魚（だ）	Is fish	魚じゃない	Is not fish
Past	魚だった	Was fish	魚じゃなかった	Was not fish

This page has last been revised on 2005/4/7
Removed reference to 「か question marker」 and changed formatting. (2005/4/7)

State-of-Being Practice Exercises

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Conjugation Exercise 1
Conjugation Exercise 2
Question Answer Exercise

Vocabulary used in this section

In the following exercises, we will practice the state-of-being conjugations we just covered. But first, you might want to learn or review the following useful nouns that will be used in the exercises.

Kanji
To start with, I have listed the kanji you will need for the vocabulary for your convenience. The link will take you to a diagram of the stroke order. However, it doesn't clearly show the direction (though you can kind of tell by the animation) so you should check with a kanji dictionary if you're not sure. I recommend practicing the kanji in the context of real words (such as the ones below).

人 - person
子 - child
小 - small
中 - middle
大 - big
友 - friend
生 - life
先 - ahead
学 - study
校 - school
高 - high
車 - car
供 - accompanying
達 - reach

Vocabulary
Here is the list of some simple nouns that might be used in the exercises.

うん - casual word for "yes" (yeah, uh-huh)
ううん - casual word for "no" (nah, uh-uh)
これ - this
それ - that
あれ - that over there
こう - (things are) this way
そう - (things are) that way
人【ひと】 - person
大人【おとな】 - adult
子供【こども】 - child
友達【ともだち】 - friend
車【くるま】 - car
学生【がくせい】 - student
先生【せんせい】 - teacher
学校【がっこう】 - school
小学校【しょうがっこう】 - elementary school
中学校【ちゅうがっこう】 - middle school
高校【こうこう】 - high school
大学【だいがく】 - college

Conjugation Exercise 1

We are now going to practice the state-of-being conjugations in order. Take each noun and conjugate it to the following forms: the declarative, negative state-of-being, past state-of-being, and negative past state-of-being.

Sample: 人＝人だ、人じゃない、人だった、人じゃなかった

1. これ
declarative	=	これだ
negative	=	これじゃない
past	=	これだった
negative-past	=	これじゃなかった

2. 大人
declarative	=	大人だ
negative	=	大人じゃない
past	=	大人だった
negative-past	=	大人じゃなかった

3. 学校
declarative	=	学校だ
negative	=	学校じゃない
past	=	学校だった
negative-past	=	学校じゃなかった

4. 友達
declarative	=	友達だ
negative	=	友達じゃない
past	=	友達だった
negative-past	=	友達じゃなかった

5. 学生
declarative	=	学生だ
negative	=	学生じゃない
past	=	学生だった
negative-past	=	学生じゃなかった

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Conjugation Exercise 2

In this second exercise, we are really going to test your conjugation knowledge as well as the vocabulary by translating some simple English sentences. Please note that while the positive, non-past state-of-being can be implied, for the purpose of this exercise, we will assume it's always declaratory. Don't forget that this creates a very firm and declaratory tone.

Sample: Is student. ＝学生だ。

1. Is college.	＝	大学だ。
2. Is not high school.	＝	高校じゃない。
3. Was teacher.	＝	先生だった。
4. Is adult.	＝	大人だ。
5. Was not child.	＝	子供じゃなかった。
6. This was the way it was.	＝	こうだった。
7. Wasn't that over there.	＝	あれじゃなかった。
8. Is not middle school.	＝	中学校じゃない。
9. Is friend.	＝	友達だ。
10. Was not car.	＝	車じゃなかった。
11. Was this.	＝	これだった。
12. That's not the way it is.	＝	そうじゃない。

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Question Answer Exercise

In this last exercise, we'll practice answering very simple questions using the state-of-being. The yes or no answer （うん or ううん） will be given and it is your job to complete the sentence. In deciding whether to use the declaratory 「だ」, I've decided to be sexist here and assume all males use the declaratory 「だ」 and all females use the implicit state-of-being (not the case in the real world).

Sample:
Ｑ）　学生？
Ａ）　ううん、学生じゃない。

Ｑ１）　友達？

Ａ１）　うん、。 (female)

Ｑ２）　学校？

Ａ２）　ううん、。

Ｑ３）　それだった？

Ａ３）　ううん、。

Ｑ４）　そう？ (Is that so?)

Ａ４）　うん、。 (male)

Ｑ５）　これ？

Ａ５）　ううん、。(object is away from the speaker)

Ｑ６）　先生だった？

Ａ６）　うん、。

Ｑ７）　小学校だった？

Ａ７）　ううん、。

Ｑ８）　子供？

Ａ８）　うん、。 (female)

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This page has last been revised on 2005/8/2
Added tenses for the conjugation exercise (2005/8/2)

Practical Particular Particles

Outline

Defining grammatical functions with particles
The 「は」 topic particle
The 「も」 inclusive topic particle
The 「が」 identifier particle

Defining grammatical functions with particles

We want to now make good use of what we learned in the last lesson by associating a noun with another noun. This is done with something called particles. Particles are one or two hiragana characters that attach to the end of a word to define what grammatical function that word is serving in the sentence. Using the correct particles is very important because the meaning of a sentence can completely change just by changing the particles. For example, the sentence "Eat fish." can become "The fish eats." simply by changing one particle.

The 「は」 topic particle

The first particle we will learn is the topic particle. The topic particle essentially identifies what it is that you're talking about, basically the topic of your sentence. Let's say a person says, "Not student." This is a perfectly valid sentence in Japanese but it doesn't tell us much without knowing what the sentence is talking about. The topic particle will allow us to express what our sentences are about. The topic particle is the character 「は」. Now, while this character is normally pronounced /ha/, it is pronounced /wa/ only when it is being used as the topic particle.

Example 1

ボブ：　アリスは？- Are you (Alice) student?
アリス：　、。- Yeah, I am.

Here, Bob is indicating that his question is about Alice. Notice how the 「だ」 is left out and yet the English translation has the word 'are' and 'am'. Since we know the topic is Alice, we don't need anything else to guess that Alice is a student. In fact, since Bob is asking a question, he can't attach 「だ」. That would be like trying to make a statement and asking a question at the same time.

Example 2

ボブ）　ジムは？- Jim is tomorrow?
アリス）　