Japanese grammar

How fast can you learn to understand Japanese? Let's find out.

You can switch between rōmaji and Japanese script using the toggle below (or by pressing the r and j keys), but if you're serious you should learn to read kana. I've provided furigana (kana reading aid) everywhere, so you don't need to know any kanji, but if you're serious you should learn those too.

If you don't know a word, just paste it into jisho.

Affirmative and negative statements

Sentences end in verbs. A verb in its default, present-tense form ends in an u うsound.

waは is a type of word called a particle, which can be attached to the end of another word to mark its grammatical purpose. Although it's written with the kana haは, when used as a particle, it's pronounced waわ. In this case, watashi-wa私わたしは means that the sentence is about 私わたしwatashi (the standard first-person pronoun; I).

This sentence ends with the verb だda, which roughly means "is", or "to be". This is the only present-tense verb that doesn't end in an u うsound, so it conjugates irregularly. Let's quickly memorize those conjugations.

When talking about the past, だda becomes だったdatta:

Oops, another particle. のno works exactly like apostrophe-s does in English. Xの-no Y means X's Y.

We also need to be able to negate our statements. Here are the negative forms of だda (is) and だったdatta (was).

だda becomes じゃないjanai in the negative form. Like I said above, it's irregular.

だったdatta becomes じゃなかったjanakatta when negated; or rather, the present-tense negative じゃないjanai becomes the past-tense negative じゃなかったjanakatta. As in English, the negative past is often used when rejecting a hypothesis.

To summarize the forms of だda:

Regular verbs I

Now that we've seen the four basic forms of the irregular verb だda, let's figure out how to conjugate regular verbs. There are two main kinds of verbs: ichidan and godan. Ichidan verbs are simpler, so we can deal with them all at once.

Ichidan verbs always end in ruる in the present tense, but not all verbs that end in ruる are ichidan verbs. To conjugate an ichidan verb, you'll replace the final ruる with something else.

Form the past tense of an ichidan verb by replacing ruる with taた. In this case, using the verb miru見み る (to see):

Aha, a new particle. oを marks the object of an action. Although it's written with the kana woを, it's pronounced oお.

The negative form of an ichidan verb is created by replacing ruる with naiない. For example, here's the negative of 食たべるtaberu, to eat:

Remember how じゃないjanai (is not) became じゃなかったjanakatta (was not)? Turns out that's a regular pattern. If something ends in naiない in the negative form, the negative past is formed by replacing naiない with nakattaなかった. In the following example we use the verb wasureru忘れる → wasurenai忘れない → wasurenakatta忘れなかった:

あのano (that) is an adjective that can be placed before nouns just like in English.

Here's the summary of the conjugations we just learned, again using 食た べるtaberu (to eat) as an example:

Adjectives I

What if we want to describe things? The first class of adjectives, called いi-adjectives, end in いi and can be placed directly before a noun:

Here すごいsugoi (incredible, amazing) describes 物ものmono (thing). By the way, Japanese allows you to leave out the topic (in this case, 私わたし watashi) if it's implied by context, as it is above. In fact, this way of speaking is the most common, so I'm going to use it frequently from now on.

It's also possible to use いi-adjectives with waは, in the pattern X-wa はY:

とてもtotemo means "very", and you can usually stick it before adjectives. The important thing to note here is that we didn't add だda (is) to the end of the sentence. You cannot use だda with いi-adjectives; in some sense the "is" is implied.

いi-adjectives can also be conjugated. In the past tense, the final いi becomes かったkatta; in the next example, samui寒さむ い (cold) becomes samukatta寒さむ かった (was cold):

Next, the negative form:

The adjective 温あたた かいatatakai means pleasantly warm. Swap out the last いi for くないkunai to get the negative 温あたた かくないatatakakunai (bit of a mouthful).

The past negative follows the usual rule for things ending in ないnai, so I'll skip the example and just give you the conjugation table for かわいいkawaii (cute):

And of course these conjugated forms can be placed before nouns just like the base form. Using the negative of 面白おもしろいomoshiroi (interesting):

Verbs are adjectives

In the previous section, you might have noticed some overlap between verbs and いi-adjectives. Both can be used to end sentences, and both can be conjugated. The title of this section spoils the punchline: both can be used to describe nouns.

Placing a verb before a noun indicates that the noun is (not) performing or has (not) performed the verb. 死しんだshinda is the past tense of 死しぬshinu (to die); in this example, 死し んだ人々 ひとびとshinda hitobito means "people who have died."

死しぬshinu is our first glimpse of the other category of verbs: godan verbs. The conjugation of a godan verb depends on the last kana. In this case, 死しぬshinu ends in ぬnu, so we'll refer to 死し ぬshinu as a ぬnu-class godan verb. I'll introduce the classes one by one whenever it's convenient, so you don't have to memorize all of them at once.

Here's how to process the conjugation structure of a class of godan verbs:

• Memorize the past tense; there's no pattern.
• The negative is formed by taking the final kana (ぬnu) and replacing the vowel with "a" (so ぬnu becomes なna), and then adding ないnai.
• The past negative is as usual: ないnai becomes なかったnakatta.

So for each class of godan verb, you only need to memorize the past tense. Everything else follows a standard rule.

Anyway, we were talking about verbs as adjectives. Not only individual verbs, but also entire clauses can be used as descriptors:

Two をo's in one sentence! Here, 願ねがいを叶かなえる negai-o kanaeru is an adjective phrase describing 石いしishi (stone). 探さがすsagasu (to look for) is a すsu-class godan verb, and I'll end this section with its conjugation table:

The subject particle

From here on out I'm going to assume you're studying seriously and drop the romaji. This will save a lot of my time, and in any case it's easy to memorize kana. I recommend using realkana.

The particle が marks the grammatical subject: the thing that is doing the verb. Until now, we've used は to mark the subject, but は and が serve slightly different purposes and are not always interchangeable—the correct term for the word marked by は is the topic.

Statements can be viewed as answers to particular questions, and this is a straightforward way of understanding the difference between は and が. The above sentence reads as the answer to "who is strong?"

In contrast, the above sentence reads as the answer to "what stands out about you?" or "are you weak or strong?"

This pattern of using は and が together is very common: は sets the topic for the sentence, and が marks the subject in a clause that elaborates on the topic. The literal translation "as for him, eyes are red" sounds awkward in English, so we use a possessive (his eyes) instead.

Don't worry too much if you don't understand the difference between は and が yet. The philosophy of this guide is that you learn Japanese by reading Japanese, not by reading English. Let's push on.

Existence verbs

いる and ある are verbs that both mean "to exist." The former is a regular ichidan verb, and the latter is irregular.

いる is used for humans and animals, and ある is used for inanimate objects. There are some edge cases; for example, robots can be used with either depending on what the speaker wants to emphasize.

New particle! に has many different uses in various contexts, so I'll introduce them one by one. For now, just know that when に marks a place, as above, it usually means "at" or "in" that place.

Both いる and ある can also mean "to have" in certain contexts.

In this sentence, 二人ふたり (two people) is a noun that's behaving like an adverb, which is why it's placed somewhat haphazardly before the verb with no associated particles. Many Japanese nouns can be used adverbially, especially those related to counting, so take a moment to make sure you understand this example. By the way, it's possible for nouns to act adverbially even in English; e.g. "Tuesday" in "I'll talk to you next Tuesday."

This is a good opportunity to talk about counting. To count items, you'll attach a number (一いち 、二に、三さん) to a kind of word called a counter. Each counter is specific to a category of things, so you'll need to know the correct one. Here are some basic counters to get you started:

As you can see, the readings for counters tend to be irregular, so be careful when memorizing them. Take a look at this Tofugu article for more on counters.