Your Gateway to Japanese Grammar: A Beginner's Guide

Japanese grammar basics for beginners can be explained simply by focusing on core concepts such as sentence structure, particles, verbs, and adjectives.

Basic Sentence Structure

Japanese sentences generally follow a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order, meaning the verb typically comes at the end of the sentence.

Particles

Particles are small words attached to nouns or phrases to indicate their grammatical role. The most important ones for beginners are:

• は (wa): Topic marker
• が (ga): Subject marker
• を (o): Object marker
• に (ni), で (de): Location/time/action context markers

Verbs

Japanese verbs conjugate according to tense (present, past), but do not change according to person or number. Verbs generally appear at the end of the sentence.

Adjectives

There are two main types of adjectives:

• い-adjectives, which conjugate to show tense.
• な-adjectives, which behave more like nouns and need a な when modifying a noun.

Politeness

Politeness levels affect verb endings and expressions, but beginners usually start with the polite form ending in ます (masu).

This framework provides a simple introduction to the basics of Japanese grammar for beginners.

References

• Absolute Beginners’ Business Japanese

• A DDL approach to learning noun and verb phrases in the beginner level EFL classroom

• Beginner Level EFL DDL Using a Parallel Web-Based Concordancer

• Understanding the Use of O and Ga Particles in Japanese Sentences for Japanese Language Learners

• The learner as lexicographer: using monolingual and bilingual corpora to deepen vocabulary knowledge

• TENSES, ASPECTS, AND CAPITAL VERBS IN KAGUYA HIME’S FAIRY TALE「ぐ や 姫 の 物語」BY TAKAHASHI SOUKO

• Direct and Indirect Language Learning Strategies in Japanese Language Acquisition

• Slang Abbreviation in Japanese and Indonesian Written Language: Origins, Process, Similarities, and Differences

• Lexical Category and Downstep in Japanese

• Something visible in Japanese

• The semantic roles of ‘kaku-joshi’ in Japanese textbooks

• The Diachronic Shift of Japanese Transitive/Unaccusative Verb Pairs

• Junctural Alignment in Kyoto Japanese Compound Nouns

• Japanese linguistics, The Japanese language I

• The Light Verb “Suru” in Japanese Lexical-Conceptual Structure and Sources of Leaning Difficulty

• Japanese Adjective Conjugation Patterns and Sources of Difficulty in Foreign Language Learning

• Sentence Suggestion of Japanese Functional Expressions for Chinese-speaking Learners

• Inverting and Modeling Morphological Inflection

• Parsed Corpus as a Source for Testing Generalizations in Japanese Syntax