Japanese Grammar Guide
This guide was created as a resource for those who want to learn Japanese grammar in a rational, intuitive way that makes sense in Japanese. The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view.
It is released under the Creative Commons License and is free to copy and distribute for non-commercial uses.
Before you begin
If your computer is not setup to display Japanese, you'll want to enable Japanese support to read the Japanese text.
The Original Guide
The original guide before the transition to this site is still available in various formats. It is not being maintained and may be out-of-date.
Zip File | Single Html Page | PDF Version
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Writing System
- Basic Grammar
- Essential Grammar
- Polite Form and Verb Stems （～です、～ます）
- Addressing People
- The Question Marker （か）
- Compound Sentences （て-form、から、ので、のに、が、けど、し、～たりする）
- Other uses of the te-form （～ている、～てある、～ておく、～ていく、～てくる）
- Potential Form
- Using する and なる with the に particle （～[よう]になる／する）
- Conditionals （と、なら、ば、たら）
- Expressing "must" or "have to" （～だめ、～いけない、～ならない、～ても）
- Desire and Suggestions （たい、欲しい、volitional、～たらどう）
- Performing an action on a subordinate clause （と、って）
- Defining and Describing （という）
- Trying something out or attempting to do something （～てみる、volitional+とする）
- Giving and Receiving （あげる、やる、くれる、もらう）
- Making requests （～ください、～ちょうだい、～なさい、command form）
- Numbers and Counting
- Casual Patterns and Slang
- Review and more gobi
- Special Expressions
- Causative and Passive Verbs
- Honorific and Humble Forms
- Things that happen unintentionally （～てしまう、～ちゃう／～じゃう）
- Special expressions with generic nouns （こと、ところ、もの）
- Expressing various levels of certainty （かもしれない、でしょう、だろう）
- Expressing amounts （だけ、のみ、しか、ばかり、すぎる、Amount+も、ほど、さ）
- Various ways to express similarity and hearsay （よう、～みたい、～そう、～そうだ、～らしい、～っぽい）
- Using 方 and よる for comparisons and other functions （より、の方、stem＋方、によって、によると）
- Saying something is easy or difficult to do （～やすい、～にくい）
- More negative verbs （ないで、ず、～ん、ぬ）
- Hypothesizing and Concluding （わけ、～とする）
- Expressing time-specific actions （ばかり、とたんに、ながら、まくる）
- Leaving something the way it is （まま、っぱなし）
- Advanced Topics
- Formal Expressions （である、ではない）
- Things that should be a certain way （はず、べき、べく、べからず）
- Expressing the minimum expectation （でさえ、ですら、おろか）
- Showing signs of something （～がる、ばかり、～めく）
- Formal expressions of non-feasibility （～ざるを得ない、やむを得ない、～かねる）
- Tendencies （～がち、～つつ、きらいがある）
- Advanced Volitional （まい、であろう、かろう）
- Covered by something （だらけ、まみれ、ずくめ）
- Advanced proximity of actions （が早いか、や否や、そばから）
- Others （思いきや、がてら、あげく）
This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.
Ignore the outline below, it is automatically generated and there's no way to turn it off.
えええ～すごく便利だね！このガイド～ ありがとう ＝）
えええ～すごく便利だね！このガイド～
ありがとう ＝）
Thanks for all the work you
Thanks for all the work you have put into this website. I have been in Japan 3 years and have learned most of what you included in your original guide
though practicing with friends and teachers.
However, using all those grammatical stuctures in a clear and natural way is still very difficult. Informal or contracted Japanese also throws me off too.
Are you going to include more informal Japanese?
Not curses or insults but differences between things like,
しなければならない
しなければいけない vs しなっくや (Is this spelled right?)
or stuff like
してはいけません vs しっちゃだめ (once again, this may be mispelled.)
うめえー vs 美味しい
These forms of Japanese grammar still confuse me and are not usually
taught in the classroom. I never hear teachers speak in this way.
However my friends do but it's difficult to pick up all those forms during
conversation. As soon as they see that I don't understand, they just start
using 'standard' grammar. Never letting me learn how to say what they originally
said.
Thanks again for everything!
Juan
This guide coupled with
This guide coupled with almost 5 years of "very slow-paced self studying," followed by 2 years of university study has opened new doors for me.
私について日本語を勉強する時にこのガイドは最初のを見ました。今までありがとうございます！
(Despite the amount of study I put into Japanese, I'm still somewhat unsure of the grammatical correctness, lol...)
If you ever decide to publish a hard copy of this, I will not hesitate to buy it!
Truly, thank you very much
Truly, thank you very much for creating this, and for updating it. I only read and use Japanese online, where the language is often casual or rough. From being shown how the slang grammar came from the regular grammar, I can understand it now.
Best wishes and good luck
Hi, First, I really like your
Hi,
First, I really like your Grammar, that much, that your site has become for me the first resource to check the latest Japanese grammar.
But what I do miss, or I am just too stupid to find it, the pdf of your Grammar in English, like it is in German, which I would really appreciate, to have this feature again, beacause, to surch in a PDF is much esiear, for me...., instead to surch through your blog, or you at least really want to publish it as a book? I would be the first who order it.
Well, still 頑張って、and don't stop with such excellent blogging.^^
Greets from Switzerland
I would like to thank Mr. Tae
I would like to thank Mr. Tae Kim for putting this site up. I have improved so much since I started learning from this site.
どうもありがとうございます！
ロレイン
Hi there, my husband and I
Hi there, my husband and I love learning Japanese here. AWESOME! AWESOME! AWESOME!
All the success to you.
Sophia
What is the difference
What is the difference between the grammar guide and the complete guide? Which should I study first?
The complete guide is a work
The complete guide is a work in progress. Once it gets in good enough shape, I will change the homepage to a page that explains the difference.
This site you have created is
This site you have created is fantastically helpful. Thank you so much.
こんにちわ、Tae
こんにちわ、Tae Kimさん。四年半以上ぐらい日本語を勉強しています。ずとてごわかったですが。このガイドで一歩一歩に日本語をマストするように近づいています！ありがとうございました
Aaron - South Africa
Hi: I just wanted to say
Hi:
I just wanted to say thank you for posting your guide. I studied Japanese in college and lived in the country for a while, but that was a few years ago and my skills have waned since then. I will return to Japan next week and I needed to review everything that I learned. Your guide not only acted as a comprehensive review, but also taught me new grammar points that I did not learn in class. Thank you very much!!!
I would like to thank you for
I would like to thank you for creating such a wonderful grammar guide. I've been learning Japanese for three or four years now but I'm still having great difficulties with understanding even simple sentences because I've never really learnt grammar properly. I do have two massive grammar books at home and I've read them both but they are actually very extensive and detailed scientific publications, not very suitable for an amateur like me. Your explanations are simple, clear and thanks to you I'm finally starting to understand Japanese ^^
Is there a pattern for
Is there a pattern for determining whether a verb has a corresponding noun? If you look at words such as 答える（答え）、楽しむ（楽しみ）、and others, there is an obvious Verb-Noun correlation. Is there a special pattern for figuring out when a word has such a pair?
Yup, my grammar book says
Yup, my grammar book says that most verbs can be used as a noun in the stem form. Cool, huh!
J
It's like you get a two for
It's like you get a two for one deal when learning verbs!
Good evening to the author of
Good evening to the author of the online grammar book and to all other learners.
Having passed through the writing system, I am of the opinion that there is little room left for improvement.
The links to kanji to Jim Breen's site do not display stroke direction and require reloading of the link for repetition, which is a little frustrating. Probably a better instance would be the Yamasa online dictionary, in particular I mean this form http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SearchKanji3?OpenForm
Otherwise, Mr Tae Kim, I wish you even more success and hope this guide becomes more rounded and popular as time goes by.
Mr. Kim, I have studied your
Mr. Kim,
I have studied your guide for almost one year.
I must say that it is the best language guide I have ever read.
心から、ありがとうございます！
ありがとう
I also wanted to add that this site is awesome. Seriously, there is no site as comprehensive and detailed, yet still easy to learn in any other language as this one. Thank you for this awesome site.
I also agree though that the old site layout was easier to navigate, and just the overall feel of it was like "this is for beginners" kinda thing. Still awesome though.
Excellent Site
Hi Mr. Kim! I just wanted to drop by and say that your site is superb! I also wanted to leave an open-ended question for all those who care to read: How come there isn't any resource out there that's as detailed, articulate, and thorough as this one is for other languages?
I've yet to find a Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. tutorial site that was as immensely helpful as this one is for Japanese. Anyways, keep up the great work!
すばらしい！
This is the best grammar guide I've seen on the net until now. I complement it with rikaichan plugin for firefox.
One note, the link for the Past-Tense page from this index does not work (although the link from the negative verb exercises to past-tense page is correct).
Thank you!
I'll be making sure that all of the easylsp.com translators know about this site.
Thanks!
<3 Tae Kim
I love this site, I memorized hiragana easily because of it but I still have yet to memorize katakana. I started trying to learn like 2 years ago but stopped because I got sooo busy but I think I have some extra time to spare now that I'm a senior in high school... I also might take Japanese as a minor when I go to college because I will eventually want to study abroad there for a semester or even a year (although, I'm not entirely sure if the year is a possibility but I'll look into it :])
So I'd feel good going into a class and having a feel for the language already, or some familiarity with it... I think it'd be important for me to learn a more polite and formal way of speaking to others as well as a very informal way but I can probably tell the differences already anyway without having someone teach me. We'll see. xD
アントニオ
This website is great, well-structured and covers a great field on japanese grammar. However it is not a good resource to learn vocabulary http://smart.fm, but this one is. Check it out, I started about a month ago and I'd rather to have found it before.
Tae kim先生, thank you so much for such great website!
アントニオカルロス
Offering help
Before I forget it, I would like to help if you want to translate the other topics for Brazilian Portuguese. It's not a so easy task, but I'd like to do something for you, since you've done so much for us all =)
Best Regards,
William
Wow! Fantastic!
WOW WOW WOW!!! What a fantastic thing it is!!!
I've been studying Japanese for almost 2 years, and I always made many mistakes, mainly with basic grammar. By the first time, I can say I'm understading something of Japanese hehe'.
I'm from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but I still use the English version, because the last time I came here, the Portuguese version was still incomplete. But no problems, because, for good lucky, I know English fluently *-*
Thank you so much, Tae Kim =)
William
ROFLmao
I think the same. Before this guide my japanese was too noob to be considered japanese, now I can learn in a safe way (I was learning on op.xisde but they teach polite language only and don't explain it's origins 0_o). I'm glad I found this guide in my frist year of study. (This year lol)
Oh and.. I'm from Brazil too ;D and I don't see any problem with english version either. Keep studying and let's learn this incredible language as ours third one; And thanks for tae kim for this wonderful tool; If you wanna learn vocabulary, I reccomend you this website: http://smart.fm << ITS GREAT!
じゃね、アントニオです。
I thought you guys were
I thought you guys were trying to spam the site with shameless plugs, but I just checked out smart.fm and it is indeed an excellent site. Logging in was painless since I used my google account, and I am now using it as an additional resource to study for the JLPT. Thanks for mentioning it!
Tae Kim, your guide is by far the best. I had already picked up some Japanese naturally from constant exposure, and your guide helped me solidify my knowledge whereas conventional textbooks seemed stiff and unhelpful. It is such a natural approach to language learning, and I am surprised it is not more widely used. Thank you so much! I recommend your guide to everyone.
Link redirection
The "http://www.guidetojapanese.org/" still redirects to "http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar". Do you plan to keep it this way?
Yes
Yes, for the time being.
New Look
Nice, it looks fresher than it was years ago. I'm sure this website has been, is now, and will now a tremendous help to all people learning Japanese.
-Tsubaki
Meaning and pronunciation: can't get them to work on Mac
Hi!
Great site! But unfortunately, I can't get the meaning and pronunciation to work. I'm using a Mac, tried with both Safari and Firefox. Same result. Cursor does display a ? when hovering a kanji, but nothing else.
Is your site Windows-only?
Larry
Not sure
It works fine on my mac...
It also working fine for me
It also working fine for me on linux without javascript enabled.
Props to you
I like the website. I have been studying Japanese for 8 years and I am now in South Korea teaching English. I am studying Korean now with my girlfriend, and finding it difficult to encounter opportunities to practice my Japanese. So, I wanted to keep it fresh and I stumbled upon here; and found it be a very nice general overview of Japanese grammar.
I'm in a similar situation.
I'm in a similar situation. Have studied Japanese on and off for over 10 years. I am also an English teacher in Seoul. Studying Korean has been too time consuming and difficult. I tried studying at the Seoul Global Village Center / Ichon Global Village Center. Classes are on weekends, but too basic. Please let me know if you come across a place where Japanese can be studied on weekends. Thanks.
pfdelaup@gmail.com
Word meaning and pronunciation missing?
Just a heads-up. :) There seems to be something wrong in the section "Acting on subordinate clauses". The meaning and pronunciation of the words, when you hover over the kanji, is missing.
What is the date of the printer-friendly vr?
Is the printer-friendly vr. up-to-date, or is it out dated like the pdf?
up-to-date
It is generated automatically so it is always up-to-date.
Japanese text not displaying correctly
Nice redesign, looks a lot better now. One issue though, all the Japanese text appears as weird squares. This is certainly a font problem, as I changed the font this page was displayed in and it works fine. Seems the default font doesn't support Japanese text or something of that sort. This might just be my computer, but I doubt it, because it displays Japanese text fine everywhere else.
OS/browser
What OS and browser are you using?
Vista and Firefox 3.5.
Vista and Firefox 3.5.
Darn
Ooh, that's one OS I don't have. I did remove the lang=en from the html tag. Maybe that'll solve your problem.
-Tae Kim
Nope. Interestingly, it
Nope. Interestingly, it displays kanji fine... It's not really a problem for me any more, as it took all of two seconds to change the font.
Typo
Just wanted to inform you about a little typo in the beginning
Before you begin
If you're computer, should say: if your computer
about the guide: I've been using from 3 months ago and I think I'm learning really fast, thanks
Could we have the old one back, please?
Hope I'm not flogging a dead horse here, but I very, very frequently pop "Tae Kim" into my browser address bar to have it direct me to this page, from which I could quickly find what I'm looking for. It'll be nice to see the old TOC back here..
TOC in main page
Ok, I've move the full TOC directly into this page. There doesn't seem to be a way to suppress the automatic TOC so there's two. Hope it's not too confusing but it's the best I can do.
Printer-Friendly, where is?
Ohhh, nice new flashy web site!
I cant find the Printer-Friendly link though??
Also, is there an update guide, so i can print it off today and then in the future see what updates have been made so i can print only the new pages?
Love your work!!!
New design
Gratz with your design and thanks for your work with the Japanese grammar guide. It has been a big help.
Regarding the new design, I visit your site because of the grammar and it is my impression that's what new visitors also are looking for. Today I visited you site for the first time with the new layout and it took me a few minutes to find the grammar guide. If I didn't knew the grammar guide had to be here somewhere, I would have left the site, believing that the site had nothing to offer. Regular visitors know this aren't true. So perhaps the site should try to accommodate the need of new users too, by introducing them to the site's core content on the very first page and then keep less-essential information on sub-pages.
Anyways, good luck with your new site and keep up the good work:)
Redirect
Good point. This is now the main page until I fill out the rest of the site.
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