Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Particles

Japanese forms involved:
All form

This post is a continuation of my previous post on tenses, you may check out if you missed it. I strongly recommend understanding Japanese verbs and adjectives first before continuing this section.

Introduction

In the 1st post, I mentioned a bit regarding particles. It's not the Physics's kind of science particles. In Japanese it is called 助詞 (joshi), or "helper", "conneector", that kind of meaning. They are used to connect the sentences, much like "and", "of", "however", "because", "by the way"...of English, you get what I mean. They also have particles that cannot be literally translated into English.

I think that Wikipedia summarized the Japanese particles pretty well, you may refer it for complete guidelines.

You may see that a lot of other grammars are mixed to form a sentence. This is how the Japanese language works. For now, I will explain the grammar from the particle's perspective. We will look in depth on the grammar in the next post from the perspective of verb's forms.

If you are a beginner, that's ok, I'll try to cover the basic one, the one-word particles.
Starting with the most popular の.

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"の"

1.) の is commonly used as possession particle, such as
車の速さ(speed of a car),
犬の店(shop of dogs),
日本の文化(Japanese culture),
私の財布(my wallet).
何の話？(What you sayin'?)

Sometimes in English, the words included the context of possession such as "his", "our", "country+ese", in Japanese you just need to add の.

2.) Other than possession, it can be used as question marker in casual speaking ending with の,
どこにいるの？(Where are you?)
そうなの？(Is that so?)

It performs the same as か, but with an intention of seeking explanations for their question.

Sometimes they speak too fast, they simply replace の with ん before ending with other suffixes to save the tongue movement, much like "going to" becomes "gonna" in English, for example
どこにいるんですか？(Where are you? (polite), ended with か)
そうなんだ。(I see / I mean it) (it is a statement, not a question, will explain below)

3.) As you can see, in the last example, actually the sentence got 2 particles in playing, "な" and "の". "な" in this case it treats the whole previous sentence as an object, much like a na-adjectives, following by "の" to act as sentence marker. So when you see （。。。なのです／。。。なんだ）, it means they are making a statement to emphasize or explain their position or idea.

4.) It can also act as nominalization, converting literally anything into a noun, for example:
食べるのは好きです。I like (the act of) eating (verb to noun)
良いのはこれです。This is the good one. (i-adjective to noun)
綺麗なのはあれです。That is the pretty one. (na-adjective to noun)

(食べるのは好きです。) is equivalent to (食べることが好きです）、こと also also act as nominalization particle. Also, ”が” particle has been used here so I will discuss "が“ particles right away.

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"は”、”が”

In case of the particle, "は” is read as "wa", not "ha".

は and が behave similarly in many cases but their purposes are fundamentally different.

は is a topic marker. Whenever you want to talk about something, use は to make something as a topic of a sentence. For example:
富士山は高いです。The Fuji Mountain is high
この宿題はとても難しいです。This homework is very difficult

が is a pointer. Whenever you want to pinpoint on something and describe something on it, use が , for example:
あなたが好き。I like you.
この本が重い。This book is heavy.

* この本は重い also correct, but in the sense of Japanese, the book becomes a general topic of the sentence. 

が can be used as "but", for example:
この本が好きですが、値段は高いです。I like this book, but the price is expensive.

the 1st が is a pointer, 2nd が is "but", 3rd は is topic marker. Hence the price of the book is the main topic of the sentence. Now can you see the difference between は and が? Here is the simplest example that I can think of:
ここは何があったの？What happened here?

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”に”, ”へ”

In case of the particle,  “へ” is read as "e", not "he". 
に and へ both mean "to", they behave similarly in many cases but their usage is fundamentally different.

へ is used to point to a physical destination, for example:
日本へようこそ。Welcome to Japan.
どこへ行くの？Where are you going?

In case of に，どこに行くの？ also make sense. However, に can be pointed to non-physical and abstract context as well, such as time, an action, a statement, etc. For example:
友達を迎えに行く。I will go to pick up my friend. (verb stem grammar)
寝る前に、歯を磨いてください。Please brush your teeth before going to bed.
誤解に巻き込まれた。I was caught in a misunderstanding.

に also being used as adverb converter, For example:
そうしないと遅刻になる。Will become late if not do so. 
楽しい一日が終わりになる。The fun day is over. (verb stem grammar)
真実が明らかになる。The truth becomes clear. 

*Did you see how が is being used just now? Good.

To be honest, に is more complicated than you think, it can be used in many ways. For example:
友達に送る。Send to friend.
馬に乗る。ride "onto" horse.
電車に乗る。take "into" a train
店に入る。enter "into" store
彼に触られた。touched "by" him (passive verb grammar)

So it didn't make sense to think in English sense. Learning Japanese essentially means think in the Japanese way. に in Japanese only means "to", something to be pointed to by verbs. If you treat the verbs as an object, from that object's perspective (I mean verbs), に perfectly make sense.

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”を”
を particle is served as one and one purpose only as a directive particle.

English sentence is like SVO (subject verb object), but Japanses is SOV( subject object verb). In order to clarify the relationship between the object and verb, を particle is necessary, or maybe not casually. For example:

日本語を学ぶ。learn (on) Japanese
日本語を話す。speak (on) Japanese
水を飲む。drink water
電車を出る。leave "from" the train
橋を渡る。crosss "over" the bridge

So you may confuse when to use を or に in correspond to verbs. Remember, treat the verbs as objects, then from the verb's perspective, を perfectly make sense too. Don't try to crack the code in English, you will never succeed.

Just be careful about the uses of particles, Changes of particles can completely change the meaning of a sentence. For example:
ケーキを食べる。I eat (directly on the) cake. The action is directed to the cake. 
ケーキが食べる。The cake eats (the cake becomes alive?)
ケーキに食べられる。I ate by the cake (the cake becomes a monster?)

Or, to avoid misunderstanding and all the complexities, just omit を or に, just be like:
ケーキ食べる。I eat the cake. 
電車出る。leave the train
電車乗る。take the train

Casually it is fine, but you won't get marks in the essay, I think.

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”ね”、”よ”、”な”

ね、よ、and な are widely used for ending. They are used to make assertions, For example:
可愛いね。It's cute (, isn't it?)
可愛いよ。It's cute (, you know.)
可愛いな。It's cute (soo cute!)

They look the same, but the inherent intentions are different.
可愛いね。is that the speaker is seeking for agreement. If you hear this, you have to reply "yes", "no", or say something.
可愛いよ。is literally telling you the idea, the fact. If you hear this, you can act as you get it.
可愛いな。is literally assertion. If you hear this, you can do nothing.

In terms of na-adjectives, it will be like:
綺麗ね。It's pretty (, isn't it?)
綺麗よ。It's pretty (, you know.)
綺麗なあ。It's pretty (, huh)

よ can be replaced with ぞ or ぜ for more masculine sound.

But be careful on な. It only mixed well with adjectives for this function. If you mixed with verbs or other particles it completely becomes another grammar and totally different in meaning.

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"か" (not が）

Note, is "ka", not "ga".

か is generally used for question marks. For example:
食べましたか。Had you eat?
そうですか。Is that so?

そうか。I see...

Sometimes they used かい in casual speaking, or even omit particles and depends on the sound level of speaking, such as:
食べたかい？
食べたの？
食べた？(from low to high sound)

but beware, か can mix with other particles to form different meaning, such as:

食べたかな。I guess I ate it.

食べたかしら。I wonder if I ate it

食べでしょうかな。I wonder if I eat it (verb stem grammar)

食べるものか。As if I will eat it! / I would never eat it. (A lot of online translation don't work well for this phrase.)

Clear? So don't use か for granted.

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Last but not least,

”と”

と is serves as listing or linking, such as:
私と母と父。I, mother, and father.
椅子と机。chair and table.
私と付き合う。Date "with" me.

と can also be used as conditional formattings, such as:
食べると健康になる。Will become healthy if eat it.
食べないと死になる。Will be dead if not eat it.

と is often used with "言う" to wrap a statement. For example:
彼と結婚したと言うことは本当？Is that true "that" you married "with" him?
一目ぼれて結婚すると言う話もある。There is also a story "that" gets married at a glance.

The first と is "with", the second と + 言う is "that". ということは or というのは is sometimes lengthy, they simply replaced with って in casual speaking, such as:
彼と結婚したって本当？Is that true "that" you married "with" him?

########################################### Yeah. there are more particles of course, but here I try to explain the basic one. Hopefully, you gained some insight about the mechanism of Japanese language. Next will be on grammar in the perspective of verb's form. I can assure you, you gonna "love" it. 

Jump to post:

Lesson 1, Japanese Verbs

Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns 

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Japanese Tenses

Japanese forms involved:

te-form, ta-form, nai-form, root-form, masu-form

Last articles were about verbs, nouns, and adjectives. If you didn't read them yet, I recommend you to check them out.

Japanese tenses are more or less the same as English one, but not exactly the same.

For the recap, in English, we learned the verb tenses like this:

like so as summarized below

Nostalgic huh. In Japanese, actually is simpler in native's perspective.

In Japanese, they don't have perfect and future tenses, but they do have simple and continuous tense.

They also don't have 3rd form verb such as "eaten", if so, they simply called it passive form.

So if you want to see the Japanese tenses in English's perspective, here you have it:

It's nonsense, you see, they don't have the future tense, their future tense is equivalent to present tense.

They don't have perfect tense. 

If something has done or had done or will have done or did, it's done! 

If something has been doing or is doing, will be doing or will have been doing, it's just doing!

If something had been doing or was doing, it was just doing!

arr. I'm not native English speaker, I got my headache too. Why English be so complicated. 

Ok, to be fair, here is what English complicated at, Japanese will be complicated at grammar usage. Fair enough?

Ok, in Japanese, tenses are simple. Here's how:

1.) I don't care you do or going to do, just do it.

2.) I don't care you did or just did or will have did, its considered done.

3.) I don't care you will be going to do or just doing now or will have or have been doing in the future. If the action is continuous, it is just doing.

4.) I don't' care you were doing or had been doing. If the action was continuous, it was just doing.

*Beware, te-form is involved in continuous tenses, make sure you know the verb's grouping.
*Beware, ta-form is involved in past tenses, make sure you know the verb's grouping.

So it depends on context to see if the verbs belong to what state of tenses. For example:

昨日は食べていた。I was eating yesterday.

昨日から食べていた。I had been eating since yesterday.

昨日から食べている。I have been eating since yesterday.

明日は食べている。I will be eating tomorrow.

明日は食べる。I will eat tomorrow.

今は食べる。I eat now.

昨日は食べた。I ate/I have eaten yesterday.

Ok, how about not eating? Simple, nai-form and nakatta-form. For example

昨日は食べていなかった。I was not eating yesterday.

昨日から食べていなかった。I had not been eating since yesterday.

昨日から食べていない。I have not been eating since yesterday.

明日は食べてない。I will not be eating tomorrow.

明日は食べない。I will not eat tomorrow.

今は食べない。I don't eat now.

昨日は食べなかった。I didn't eat yesterday 

In many cases, they just omit い from te-form grammar so that to speak faster casually. Such as

食べてなかった

食べてない

If you want to be polite, use masu-form. 

That's it for tenses. Or is it?

If the verbs have tenses, how about nouns and adjectives?

Yes, they are! Just like English. Arr, I lazy to explain the rest, but I got a better idea. Below is the table of tenses and forms for all verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Hope that you can clear your mind with it. Just note that i-adjective changes differently than other words.

By the way, adjectives and nouns don't have past continuous tense.

Here got some observations:

Highlighted in light blue, if you see closely, the い in words ended with ない is changing like an i-adjective. Yes, in fact, the verbs nai-form can be an adjective as well (learned from the last post). I mean, the changes of い  of nai-form and i-adjectives are similar. For clarity, below is the forms used for tenses:

Before nai-form, everything looks different, but after adding nai-form, everything looks similar.

So ない is a special existence in Japanese, much like π in Mathematics, although it literally means "nothing". Does that means Japanese they didn't consider nothing as "nothing"?
Anyway, at least that simplifies the learning.

Secondly, on the green cells, で is much like て, in fact, if you want to connect a word or sentence continuously, just add で or use て-form, simple.

From last post you learned that nai-form is responsible for negativity. Here you can learn that te-form is responsible for continuity, whilst ta-form is responsible for the past tense.

That pretty wraps up the tenses, hope that you discovered some essence of Japanese grammar, next on particles.

Jump to post:

Lesson 1, Japanese Verbs

Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns 

Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars

Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns

Adjectives, Nouns, and Adverbs

Japanese forms involved:

te-form, ta-form, nai-form, root-form, verb stem

I will like to explain these in the last post but it seems that they deserve their own article.

Other than verbs, Japanese adjectives can sometimes be complicated, because noun can be used as adjectives, but adjectives can be used as nouns too. They are capable of swapping position in the grammar. Believe it or not, te-form also exist in adjectives.

Okok, here is the point. There are 2 kinds of adjectives, i-adjectives, and na-adjectives.

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い Adjectives

i-adjectives are pure adjectives, such as:

- 美しい beautiful

- 楽しい enjoying

- 赤い red

For example:

赤い車 red car

重い荷物 heavy luggage

i-adjectives can be converted to nouns by changing い to さ, such as:

重さ the heaviness (of....)

速さ the speed (of....)

高さ the height (of....)

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な Adjectives

na-adjectives are technically noun or adverb, but it can be used as adjectives, aka quasi-adjective, such as:

- 綺麗 pretty

- 豪華 gorgeous

For example:

綺麗な写真 beautiful picture

豪華な家 gorgeous/luxurious house

As you can see, 豪華 (gorgeous) is adjective in English but in Japanese its idea is more like a noun, a state of gorgeous, luxury, splendid etc. Strictly speaking is not a pure adjective. Hence by adding な, the nouns will be converted into adjectives. Meanwhile, i-adjectives can be used directly as it is. 

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Nouns as adjective

Speaking of nouns they can be used to describe something too, effectively become adjectives. Just add の between them then it is done! That's why の is the 1st particle to learn as it is a very powerful particle in Japanese. For example:

雨の夜 rainy night

海洋の色 oceanic color 

Sometimes, they just omitted the の and becomes 雨夜 (amayo) or 海洋色.

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Verbs as adjective

Also, the verb's casual format (root-form, nai-form, ta-form and nakatta-form) can be used as adjectives. Root-form is too important to be ignored, it is like the source of life of the Japanese Language, so it is named root-form. You may learn masu-form later but you can't ignore the root-form at the 1st place.

For example:

終わる日 end of day

終わらない日々 endless days (or daily life, depending on context)

食べたケーキ cake (that has been eaten)

食べなかった薬 medicine (that has not been consumed)

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Everything as adverb

In terms of adverbs, に is a very powerful particle too. It can convert almost any adjectives (except i-adjectives), noun or verb stem into adverbs. 

あなたは私の物になる。(Just kidding, don't translate it)

Here is the example of form changes of adjectives and noun.

desu-form is used for ending of formal sentences if they are not ended with verbs.

In case of te-form, you can see that て／で are like brothers. In fact, they function exactly the same but will be explained in details on next post.

You also can see that there is a mixed bag of Japanese form in the example. Especially the nai-form, it is the basis for saying "no" in Japanese, it also serves as an important identity in Japanese. We will see it in the next post.

There is something that adjectives and nouns are similar to verbs, they have tenses too. Actually tenses are included in this example but will explain in detail in next article together with verbs.

Jump to post:

Lesson 1, Japanese Verbs 

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars

Lesson 1, get to the right track with Verbs

Japanese Verbs are special

I started learning Japanese when I was in first year of university. Why? The purpose is to get academic fulfillment points, to be honest, but the more I learned about the Japanese Language, the more I get addicted to it.

My personal experience

I started learning Japanese with Hiragana, and since I know Chinese, I have a certain advantage in Kanji (but soon find out it might be a burden, later on this).

1st level was not that hard, I mean, all those 食べます、飲みます、休みます。。。simple verbs.

Ok, so after the 1st level, it's time for 2nd level, also for academic point, no because of having an interest in Japanese. But then, many things changed drastically, getting used to Katagana is one of them, but I think there is more serious problem need to be taken care of. They introduced te-form, which is the most important form because it has wide application in grammar. Then I stuck there because all those "masu" verbs being taught make no sense. It was like I need to remember multiple formats for literally a verb, for me it was just redundant. Some te-form verbs even sound the same but are different verbs. I don't believe that the Japanese could be that stupid in their language system. I also realized that there are many other forms like nai-form, ta-form and so on which will be learned in level 3 class. That kind of vocabulary memorization simply will not work, the memory will be exploded exponentially if I was going to learn them as new verb every time.

Then I decided to do a bit research on it instead of fully rely on the textbook. It was right a few weeks before my exam, I found the key to learn it, but I don't have much time to relearn all those grammar so I just merely passed my 2nd level test. That being said, I started gaining interest in Japanese and tried to correct myself on what I'd learned. So this time for 3rd level class, I enrolled not because of getting points, it's purely on interest. I came prepared so everything passed in flying color despite many colleagues struggles, to be honest, getting A in the exam is a piece of cake. Except for the Kanji, I was getting demerit because of wrongly written Kanji, so I sometimes scrawled the writing in the hope that the teacher won't notice it. Confusion between Japanese Kanji and Chinese writing can be a headache, It is also quite embarrassing to accidentally read Chinese in Japanese.

Personal thought

Frankly speaking, a lot of people are innocent when they are learning the Japanese Language as a beginner. Yes, I am criticizing the way they teach Japanese in a language school or whatever place. If you are a teacher, I'm sorry, but I'm just telling you my feeling of being taught Japanese for the 1st time. I mean, teaching the basic of writing is fine but the grammar, I think you should use a better way.

I won't mention the writing format (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji), you can learn for yourself. What I will like to emphasize in this post are the verb and related grammars, and the proper way to learn it.

Hiragana and Katagana are fine, it may take some time to practice. Kanji is basically Chinese word so if you know Chinese, great. If not, you can learn better than Chinese because you don't have a mixed bag of memory between Japanese Kanji and true Chinese writing, they have subtle differences in many ways.

List of Hiragana and Katagana

You probably need to get familiar with Hiragana and Katakana, and some Kanji 1st before you continue for grammar and vocabulary. Yes, please start learning Kanji even if you are a beginner, that will make your life easier later, the Japanese adapted Kanji without reason though.

Here we go.

It still takes time to learn everything, it is part of the learning curve, but the point is where you should start the learning? Did you see that? Where you should start learning Japanese so that it is the easiest route and trouble-free later in advanced grammar?

Especially Japanese verb, because Japanese has only limited writing form in Hiragana, also it is not fully alphabet like a to z, it cannot just cascade multiple Hiragana like English all the time. Hence their verb can undergo many forms of changes in order to fit different grammars. 

For example, to eat "食べる", it can be transformed into:
masu form: 食べます／ません／ました／ませんでした
root form: 食べる
nai form: 食べない／なかった
ta form: 食べた
te form: 食べて
conditional: 食べたら
potential:食べられる
imperative:食べろ
volitional:食べよう
passive:食べられる
causative:食べさせる

So, yeah, Japanese makes their verb changes as part of their grammar integration, so you probably need to pay attention to their verb transformation. But once you get the idea, everything will be as simple as ABC or math, literally.

The Root-form

There is a key idea to all those verb form changes. In the example, you may see that the verb ends with "る" appeared more frequently than any other forms. Yes, the key to learning Japanese verb is to memorize its "root-form", like ”食べる". Why? Why not the "masu" form in most of the textbook? Maybe Japanese care about politeness more than any other languages.

Here is why. In Japanese, there are 3 groups of verbs. Each of them has different rules for transformations. The one that determines which verb ends up in which group is the second last Hiragana of the verb. Not all verbs can fit the rules of grouping so there are exceptions too.

Referring to the 1st row of Hiragana (あいうえお), the verb with their last-second word ends with sounds（あ、う、お）will end up as Group 1 verb. Whilst the verb with their last-second word ends with sounds（い、え）will be Group 2 verb. Lastly, the verb that did not fit in or has a special transformation will be Group 3 verb. 

 

* NA = not applicable

There are quite a number of exception that seems like Group 2 verbs but it actually is Group 1 verb, try to take note on that (Why? Some people explain that because the reading is part of the Kanji writing and not read as separate Hiragana writing, which makes sense too as shown in the example, but there may have other reasons too, I don't know, I'm not Japanese). Also, there are Group 1 verbs with special cases too but will discuss it later.

Ok, are you still following? Good. So as you can see, Group 1 verb can end with different "う" column word like く、ぶ、る、む、etc. but Group 2 verbs all ended with る only. In the meantime, the form that changes the verb to end with る will automatically become Group 2 verb (potential, passive and causative form). If you are a beginner, you may not need to learn these form yet but, you will catch it up eventually.

I think it is better to explain the verb by groups so that to clarify some of the complications.

I also prepared some tables for clarity.

TLDR,

- root-form = casual of masu-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- nai-form = casual of masu-neg-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- ta-form = casual of masu-past-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- nakatta-form = casual of masu-past-neg-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- te-form = for general purpose grammar fitting

- other forms function exactly as what they named.

- verb stem = verb's masu-form minus the 'masu' suffix, very important in many cases too, will be discussed in details in another post since many grammars make use of verb stem.

Ok, do not be fear, I know the table looks scary, but it is for my personal reference, you only need to focus on the root-form. Once you get which verb is which group, then only you learn other forms.

Group 1 Verb

Above is the summary for Group 1 verb. Basically, the pattern of changes is similar, i.e. changes of the last-second word by mean of (あいうえお) column shifting as shown below:

Except for ta-form and te-form, they do not follow the pattern. So next time when you want to use the particular verb, make sure you know which group it belongs to, then you will be able to use the ta-form and te-form grammars correctly. Do remember some exception る verbs too.

Take note on 行く and ある, they behave quite differently in a certain form as highlighted in the table. They are the special one.

Group 2 & 3 Verbs

Regarding Group 2 verbs, the form changes are totally different from Group 1 Verb, but in a much simpler manner. No fancy word changes, just replace the る with corresponding appendices. It's potential form and passive form are the same so it may cause confusion, depending on the context of the conversation.

As you can see for Group 3 Verbs, that is する and 来る, their form can't fit either Group 1 or 2, hence they are special, sometimes their words completely changed into another word. It is usually used to attach to noun so that it can become a verb. For example:

結婚する to marry

連絡する to contact

ゲームする to play game

Ok, that roughly wraps up everything about Japanese Verb. Similar to English, their verbs have tenses such as past tense, present tense and future tense, but they will be explained in another post. Hope that it helps and make you gain more interest in the Japanese Language.

ここまで日本語の動詞の解説をまとめます。上のノットがあなたに役に立てれば嬉しいです。

* 役に立てれば =  役に立つ（root-form) + (potential form) + (conditional form), more specifically:

 役に立つ（root-form) + (potential form) = 役に立てる

In the meantime, the form changed the verb into Group 2, so 

役に立てる + (conditional form) = 役に立てれば

which means (to be helpful + can + if), or (if can be helpful). See I told you, is literally math. 

So, that concludes everything about verbs. The grammars that involve verb's forms can be a bit complicated which will be posted in other articles. 

The Japanese Forms are the building block of entire Japanese grammar so make sure you get it right at the start. 

If you are a beginner, it's ok to learn other casual forms other than masu form because masu form is only for polite manner. Politeness is important, but the basics still need to be known from the start.

Next article will be adjectives.

Oops, I forgot explaining the particles, I guess that's fine, they will be discussed in depth in another post too. Just focus on the root-form and that's all for this post.

Jump to post:

Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns 

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars

日本語を学ぶことはとても楽しいですよ！諦めないでもっと頑張りなさいね！