Introductory Japanese Lessons (7)
Word Order
English is a subject-verb-object language. (so are French, Spanish, etc.) Japanese is a subject-object-verb language. (so are
Korean, Turkish, etc.) Generally the subject comes first, then the object and the verb
comes at the end of the sentence.
| subject | object | verb |
| Tanaka-san wa Mr. Tanaka |
ringo o apple |
tabemasu.
eat. |
| Tom-san wa Tom |
terebi o
TV |
mimashita. watched. |
"San" is a title of respect added to a name. (so it can not be used when
referring to oneself.)
"Wa" and "o" are
particles. They are like English prepositions, but
they always come after nouns. Particles are very important for proper Japanese
sentence structure. I will introduce them gradually later.
Composing questions in Japanese is easy! The word order remains the
same, and a sentence becomes a question by adding the particle "ka" at
the end. Question marks are not used in Japanese.
| Tanaka-san wa ringo o tabemasu ka. 田中さんはりんごを食べますか。 |
Does Mr. Tanaka eat apples? |
| Tom-san wa terebi o mimashita ka. トムさんはテレビを見ましたか。 |
Did Tom watch TV? |
