First Post -- Basics of Japanese Grammar

Hi and welcome to my new blog! Through my blog, I hope to introduce the language and culture of Japan (including the food) to those who are interested. The format will probably evolve over time, but for now I'll try to introduce a simple grammatical concept or pattern every weekday, along with a vocabulary word that somehow highlights an interesting aspect of Japanese culture. Depending upon how much free time I have (and how much I want to procrastinate), some days may be more educational than others. 

Please give me feedback on what you like, don't like, and want to see more of. So without further ado...

Given the huge earthquake that rocked Japan, today's word of the day is "tsunami."

つなみ

津波

The above characters show how the word "tsunami" is written in hiragana (one of the two phonetic Japanese alphabets) and kanji (Chinese characters). This is the format in which the word of the day will be introduced (until you convince me otherwise).

The kanji that make up the word literally mean "harbor" and "wave." The word has been incorporated into the English language, since there is no word to describe the huge waves generated by an earthquake (the phrase "tidal wave" is sometimes used, but the waves have nothing to do with the tides).

Japanese Grammar Lesson 1: "I am [noun]."

For your first Japanese lesson, we'll work on the simplest type of sentence: "I am [noun]." In order to construct this type of sentence in Japanese, there are two things you need to know. First, in Japanese there is no word for the verb "to be" (at least, not in this context). Second, Japanese sentences are organized differently than English sentences (no surprise to many of you, I'm sure).

Before I continue, though, here is the basic lesson for those of you who just want to speak Japanese and don't care much about grammar. The phrase "I am an American" is "Watashi wa amerikajin desu." Now if you want to learn more about Japanese grammar, read on...

In English, we say, "I am an American." In other words, our sentences generally follow the form: subject (S), verb (V), object (O). This is true unless you are Yoda, who tends to speak like this: "Judge me by my size do you?" or "Truly wonderful the mind of a child is." In other words, his grammar tends to look like V O S, or O S V (more or less... you get the idea). In Japanese, sentences are structured: S O V. So the verb ends up coming at the end. In other words, the sentence: "I am an American" would end up looking like "I an American am."

So that's how the grammar works. Now we just need to change each word into Japanese, and you're good to go. A polite form of the word "I", which you should use for now, is "watashi" (I will always default to polite words in Japanese, unless I'm teaching swear words or something, because in Japan, it's always better to be overly polite than to be not polite enough). "American" is, not surprisingly, "amerikajin" ("jin" means person). Put them together and you end up with the following sentence: "Watashi wa amerikajin desu." 

What are these extra words, "wa" and "desu," you might ask. "Wa" is what is known as a "particle." We don't have them in the English language. They clue you into the grammatical job of various words in the sentence; "wa" here is telling us that "watashi" is the subject. I'll leave it at that for now. The word "desu" tells you the tense -- here, present tense.

So to recap, English: SVO; Japanese: SOV. "I am an American" becomes "Watashi wa amerikajin desu."

Your homework: The word for "you" is "anata." The word for "cat" is "neko." The word for "dog" is "inu." Figure out how to say: "You are a cat" and "Wan-chan is a dog" (assuming "Wan-chan" is the dog's name).

Pronunciation tip: There are only five vowel sounds in Japanese, and they happen to be the same five vowel sounds used in the Spanish language! Also, unlike the English language, where we tend to emphasize one syllable more than others within a word/sentence (remember iambic pentameter?), in Japanese, all syllables are emphasized equally.