lost photos

i couldnt find a pen drive of photos from Tenerife so to prevent further loss i will start uploading a lot of photos on this blog and facebook.

Daily Races

I was away from the game for a bit: today's study: Spanish flashcards 1 hour. Watched Lupin films in Japanese.

An incoherent article on understanding sentences

check dictionaries

check morphology

sezuni se is causative zuni is without

For the example of hokorippoku look at morphology: Ku means adverb and therefore it is simply the adverbial form hokorippoi

To shita is Just past of to suru

When you cannot understand a word write down semantic elements like ku zu etc

Write what each part means with Furiei

Check humble and honorific verbs as these are not in grammar books: te oru was not in my book it was simply te iru.

analyze with makino and furi ei ad arrows for ESU. Draw an arrow from part to part. From the part that gives to the part that takes

strip out unnecessary lexis and just analyze grammatical skeleton.

Put nouns adjectives and other things in different colours.put prepositions and conjunctions in different colors

search internet for more grammar books (Mongolia)

Search for more examples of phrase to fathom out from other contexts, picture and numbers etc

Ask a Japanese person but DO NOT GIVE THE ANSWE YOU WANT IN THJE QUESTION

For the example of “GE” Look where it is: at the end: it is a suffix: look up ge: doesn’t come up, remove nigiri, ke.

Makino condensed

1 modifier before modified

Makino calls a modified and a modifier an ESU

Recognising ESUs is a must for reading Japanese

Guideline 1: A modified element is typically a noun, a relative clasue or a nominaliser a coordinate or subordinate conjuction, an adjective a verb or a particle

Guideline 2 If a thing before the modified element modifies something after the modified element then that thing is outside the ESU

Guideline 3 noun phrase +wa and noun phrase + mo is often said to be outside ESU (But make note)

Guideline 4 when two sentences are combined by ga sentence one is often outside the ESU of the modified element of sentence two. With te it depends on context

Guidenline five when a modified element is a modal ir usually goes to the beginning of the sentence even if it is a wa/mo phrase

Guideline 6 when the modified element is the quote marker to guideline three is over ridden

Some modified elements allow their ESU to extend beyond the sentence boundary especially sentence initial conjunctions

Book 2

Sentence initial, preverbal (modifier) modified Towards better reading comprehension

B Key elements

verbals,

nps, nouns

pronominal plus noun

demonstrative + noun

adjective + noun

noun+ no + noun

noun/verb + compound particle (pronominal; verb) + verb

relative clause + noun

noun sentence to iu + noun

sentence + nominaliser

noun to noun

embedded interrogative sentences

PREVERBAL ADVERBIALS

Adverbs

Adjectives ku

Adverbial auxillaries

Quantifiers,takusan

Phonestheme

Quotation + to

Noun verb + compound article

Verb te

Verb masu + ni

SENTENCE INITIAL ELEMENTS

Sentence initial conjunctions

Sentence initial adverbials

Sentential topics unlike preverbal wa modifies everything that follows

Sentence initial dependent clauses

C VERBAL CONNECTIVE FORMS

Te ku ari

Negative connective forms

COMPOUND SENTENCES

E complex sentences

A complex sentence is a sentence which is dependent on another clause

1 relative clauses

2 internal sentences before to iu + noun

Internal sentence before compound particle + compound particle

Sentence + nominaliser

Embedded interrogative sentences

Clause before adverbial forms of auxillary adjectives

Internal sentences as indirect quotations

Sentence initial dependent clauses

Refer to (35)

Missing elements f

Guidelines

Guideline 1 Identify major clause breaks: ga,ba, kara, node

|Guideline 2 identiy the skeleton of each major clause. The major elements who what when where why

Guideline 3 idetify the scope of all conjunctions nominalisers nouns nominalisers quotative markers and auxillaries. SEE ESUs.

Guideline 4 identify modified and modifier accurately when there are ambiguities

Guideline 5 identify each elements modified constituents

lexical items

Look up in dictionary

do a google search

google image search

type into wikipedia and translate if it is a name of a company like the seaweed brigade

analyze morphology as in ame kake ame m,eans net and kake means brackets

carters lexis thing

appendix

Examples of esu marking

私の一番好きの作曲家は緑琴です。

ｔｈis shows that the ichiban goes to suki and not composer.

智子が作ったケーキです

リサは来年日本へ行くらしい

Rasii changes, effects everything it goes after

私は中学に入った時に父が買ってくれた小さな辞書をまだ使っている。

Adjective jisho am still using

Arrows may also be used on pen and paper

Demarcate(mark) boundaries in meaning

Slice sentences up de ari marks an end of a sentence: think of it like cutting sushi.

Slice after nothing in first part qualifies anything in second part

Cut them up

Article on learning grammar I wrote...

How to learn Japanese grammar

How grammar as opposed to what grammar is

Describing grammar as opposed to listing

After having mastered kanji the next step in learning Japanese will be grammar. The reason why grammar is next is because if one learns one grammatical structure one can read many sentences.

For example if one learns that x ですtranslates into English as it’s an x one can understand a great many sentences: 本です、猫です、犬です、猿です。However if you learn a piece of vocabulary you just learn one ‘thing’ which cannot be learnt in that many situations. Learning grammar is a key to learning a language. Language is a good example of where the whole is more than the some of the parts

Myths about Japanese Grammar

Myth 1

Japanese grammar is simple

Truth

Japanese grammar is different to Euopean grammar. Whereas French has ‘conjugations’ Japanese does not. To be is desu in all ‘persons’ in Japanese. This does not mean that Japanese is easy. The very fact that Japanese is so different to the English Brain makes it harder to learn.

New statement: Japanese grammar is different. Some parts are harder, some parts are easier.

Myth 2: there are only 2 irregular verbs in Japanese kuru and suru

Truth aru is irregular, iku is irregular, many verbs are irregular in the honorific. Using European language terms like ‘irregular verbs’ is a silly way to look at Japanese grammar. The verb ai suru does not conjugate like other verbs

New statement: Japanese has many verbs that could be judged to be irregular although the verbal system is better behaved than French.

Myth 3: Japanese grammar is written with hiragana kanji are never used in grammar

New statement Kanji are sometimes used in grammar, and if one knows this kanji one will go on to know the grammar. Just as in german if you know that krank means ill and haus means house you will know hospital, so in Japanese Kanji and other motivated symbols can tell you the meaning

Types of grammar

Verb ‘conjugations’ Conjugation Grammar

which ‘tense’ the verb changes into. This bit is added on to the verb and the sound and spelling of the verb changes when it’s added on. Adjectives also conjugate in Japanese.

For example 読むbecomes読んだin the past tense.

‘Vocabulary Grammar’ ‘No New Rule grammar’

this grammar can be learnt as vocabulary. All that needs to be remembered is it’s meaning and where it goes in the sentence. For example など、ほとんど、can simply be remembered as ‘ and so on’ and ‘hardly’ respectively. Kono is simply this and all that need be remembered is that it goes before the noun. No major further explanation is needed. Makino’s entry for滅多にない

is simply　one page long the entry for の is x pages long. This grammar is the easiest grammar type to remember. This grammar may be quite easily be remembered by way of translation.

‘derivational morphology’

although grammar this is treated in a separate chapter.

New rule Grammar

Stuff that changes the meaning of the sentence and has it’s own rules of usage. Stuff with no direct equivalent translation in English

Grammar like’と　で　に These grammars need teaching of the rules surrounding them. Whereas hotondo can safely be translated as ‘scarcely’ The majority of the time で has no similar ‘direct’, ‘normal’ translation in English. It’s meaning depends on what other words it is used with whereas hotondo’s meaning does not. Further explanation is needed. Explanation of usage is needed. When teaching nomi one needs to understand what it qualifies. Is ｘのｙ x’s y or Y’s x? Further explanation is needed. This grammar is separate to conjugation grammar as the verb before it does not change. This grammar changes the sentence, but nothing else in the sentence need change grammatically. In order to say I want to go you must change the verb before adding an auxillary, but for this type of grammar nothing need be changed. For otoko no piano, only no is added and nothing else changes. One needs to understand what effect this grammar has on other words in the sentence: In otoko no piano is it the piano the property of the boy or the boy the property of the piano?

Some grammars fit into several categories for example てほしい is a conjugation grammar as the verb may be changed before adding te, but when adding hoshii nothing else need be chang

ed.

Grammar has been described as the rules governing words. Words belong to classes and if you read a grammar of Japanese IE Jonathan Bunt’s you will see Grammar put into classes. Grammar is best learnt in the beginning in word classes. Words fit into the following classes

• adjectives
• adverbs
• interjections
• nouns
• verbs (except auxiliary verbs)

• Closed word classes:
  • auxiliary verbs
  • clitics
  • coverbs
  • conjunctions
  • determiners (articles, quantifiers, demonstrative adjectives, and possessive adjectives)
  • particles
  • measure words
  • adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions)
  • preverbs
  • pronouns
  • contractions
  • cardinal numbers
• Relative clauses
• One should learn via makino and furiei which part of speech is doing what to what

word order and sentence structure

word order in Japanese is basically subject object verb, which means that the sentence ends in a verb, the copula or an I adjective

The basic sentences in Japanese are ( see makino, oxford japanese dictionary )

After having understood the above you should actually start to learn grammar.

First of all Get hold of, buy, loan, steal several grammar books. Somewhere between three or ten. If you do not understand something in one grammar book, refer to it in another, then another and so on. I have often not understood something in seven books and then understood in the eighth as the point was explained differently. I cannot underestimate how important it is to use as many grammar books as humanly possible

The first grammar we will study will be closed class like demonstratives as these are simpler than verbs to understand. Check that you understand this grammar and after having understood it learn it parrot fashion. DO not learn without understanding.

Things likeあの means that one over there are not hard to remember. These may be learnt like vocabulary

Next study pronouns. These may be learnt like vocabulary. Ie Boku=I, rough male. On one side write the Japanese on the other write a translation and note on usage. For kanojo note that it is not often used and that it may also mean girlfriend. N Japanese pronouns are used very differently to English pronouns. Note translations but also note usage.

There is no real equivalent to ‘it’ in Japanese

Possessive pronouns these are used in Japanese, but not as much as in English:

They are formed by taking a subject pronoun and adding no

Watashi no kuruma my car

Relative clauses　: Yes it really is that simple

In Japanese grammar there is no word for that in the sense ‘The mouse that roared”

To make this statement the describer or “modifying element” goes in front of the described or “modified element” and there is no “connector” between these two elements.

In English the modified (mouse) goes first and then we have ‘that’ and we have the modifier roared.

In Japanese we have the reverse but without the‘ that‘

た鼠 the that .

So to make the relative clause in Japanese you simply take a verb and but it before the NOUN.

The person who brought the pen ペンをった

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　読んだ猫

The cat that read the book 本をんだ

The cat that reads the book 　　　　　　　　　　　　本を読む猫

The cat that reads the book 　　　　　　　　　　本を読んでいる猫　　　

The tv programme that I watched た

It really is that simple to make the relative clause. You put the modifier before the modified, and that’s it.

In all reality there are relative clauses in Japanese, they just aren’t marked.

Now we will come to nouns and note one of the myths of Japanese: Japanese does not have plurals: This isn’t strictly true: Japanese pluralises with duplication, etc (seemakino3)

something which

modifies a noun is an adjective in the red car red modifies car the red car. In my grammar explanations the modifier is shown in coloured font, and the modified is shown in with a background color the same color as the font as the modifier.　赤い車

this concept was invented by myself to explain the concept of modified and modifier in Japanese which is one of the most important concept in Japanese grammar.

Adjectives in Japanese are traditionallt divided into two camps although there are further divisions with in these camps

The first group if adjectives is called ‘I’ adjectives as these adjectives always end in ‘I’

An ‘I’ adjective may end in ai: ‘umai’ ii oisii ui ‘samui’ or omosiroi. No ‘I’ adjective ends in ei.

‘I’ adjectives are often caused verbal adjectives as they change there endings like verbs.

The second group is ‘na’ adjectives

When used in the attributive sense, which means when they are used before a noun they have to have a na in between them and the noun: shizuka na machi.

When these adjectives are used predicatively, this meaning at the end of a sentence they need the copula or desu.: machi wa shizuka desu.

Unlike I adjectives na adjectives do not change their form to show tense mood and aspect although the copula does change

Some na adjectives end in I but these can be easily spotted as they end in ei and as is written above no ‘I’ adjective can end in ‘ei’

There are several I adjectives with na forms in front of a noun although these are not na adjectives.

Although Japanese is said to be a regular language there are irregular adverbs

Onaji reqires desu at the end oif a sentence but one may not say onaji na machi, but should say onaji machi

Chiikaku tooi and ooi are not used before nouns in the I form, instead we say tookuno: we take off one I and add a kuno.

We now get onto grammar that is extremely different to English

Next study postpositions and conjunctions as these too should be easier to remember as they may be learn like vocabulary. When learning them note the similarities and differences between their English translations. でdoes not just mean at, but has many different depending on context. Be extremely cautious of learning by translation. Don’t just learn one translation but learn the rules associated with it.

Sometimes when doing furiei with makino symbols like + and- can be used to show with or without

respectfully. 　Arrows may also be used, for example　恵美智子. This arrow shows, reminds that megumi is in someway related with tomoko.

ペン家族　A family without a pen. Arrow shows that the pen is lacking

For prepositions, arrows may also be used ロンドンへ行きました　to show that ‘he’ goes to rondon and not ikimasita. These arrows and symbols are a type of metalanguage, a language that defines another language. This is useful for learning and understanding: you are making a model of the language

Makino splits Japanese conjunctions into several camps, perhaps following halliday:

Conjunctions which indicate cause and effect a

Conjunctions which mean but

Conjunctions which mean and

Conjunctions which mean or

Conjunctions which mean to change the subject

Conjunctions which indicate paraphrasing

Conjunctions which mean for example

Conjunctions which mark a reason for something

Conjunctionsnwhich indicate contrast

Now study counter words: Note that these are learnt in English and also note that they are much more common in Japanese. After understanding their concept learn each vocabulary counter 1-10 like vocabulary. Think of it like slices of pizza.

Counters are a concept best described by equivalence

if you go a beach you do not say to your children “there are many sands” you say to them “there are many grains of sand” and grains is a counter although this term is not used in English as much.

Other examples of English counters:

Slices: There are six slices of bread.

In Japanese this system is much more developed

Counters often use the ichi ni san shi go roku nana hachi kyuu juu sequence as opposed to the hitotsu futatsu mittsu sequence

Kuruma nidai means two cars.

If an article is present the number and counter is usually placed after the noun and particle

Neko wo 6biki wo kaitai

The pattern

X y no z

May also be used where x=a number y= a counter and z= a noun

8piki no sai: 8 rhinoceroses

articles: note that Japanese does not have these, but also note ある町 is probably best translated as a town and not “A certain town”.

Now we will come to verbs and adjectives which are the hardest parts of Japanese to learn as they are so unlike English verbs and adjectives in the way they function. This is what makes \Japanese difficult , it’s difference to European languages. DO NOT TRY TO COMPARE THE JAPANESE VERBAL SYSTEM TO THE EUROPEAN Verbal SYSTEM although pronouns and demonstratives can to a certain extent be translated, explained, by means of a European example the verbal and adjectival system may never be. It is just too different.

I will first try to describe the verbal system

Unlike European verbs verbs do not conjugate for person: I go is the same as he goes in Japanese.

Japanese verbs mark in there form: levels of formality. TWO tenses: Past and Non-Past

If the last mora of a verb is た　だ this shows that the verb is in the past tense and that the action the verb describes happened in the past if we read　“僕はホンを読んだ “ knowing that x is a verb we know that the verb happens in the past without knowing anymore information

Voice. The passive and active voice are marked, though the passive voice can mean polite or potential depending upon context

Whereas in languages such as French and Spanish auxillary verbs are added in front of the verb to make a two verb construction in Japanese they are added to the end. Most of what is Japanese verbs is added to the end of verbs.

Whereas in French one must learn how to conjugate verbs for person in Japanese the main battle with verbs is learning how to add auxillaries.

To change a Japanese verb you add things to the end and not to the front. But before adding these things you must change a part of the original verb

When grammarians describe Japanese verbs they start with the plain form, and this is how we will start. The plain form of a verb is easily recognized, it’s final sound is “U”.

In Japanese there are two types of verbs “ichidan” and “Godan” as well as two very irregular verbs “Suru “ “Kuru” and quite a large amount of quite irregular verbs. To continue the analogy of Frech grammar Kuru and Suru could be seen as being like avoir and etre whereas the likes of iku and aru and ai suru could be perceived as being mangers and allers

All verbs which fall into the ichidan group act entirely the same where as within the godan group there are subgroups which act differently. Because of this we will address ichidan verbs first. As the name implies this verb only needs one “step” to change it to a state where an auxillary may be added.

A n example of an ichidan verb is食べる, which may be glossed as “eat”. To say I eat one would say Watashi wa taberu” but this verb is in the plain style which is used for informal speech: see politeness in Japanese. In Japanese the next highest level of politeness is marked with masu. To make taberu polite one must add masu.

Before adding masu we must take the last kana of the ichidan verb away: for 食べるwe take away ru　たべる,たべ

We are now left with たべ and all that is that is left to do now is add no masu, and we have have apolite form of the verb食べます

All verbs which are ichidan verbs follow this simple rule. A good dictionary will say which group a verb belongs to

Other auxillaries are added to ru verbs in exactly the same way: simply take off the last kana and add the auxillary

The auxillary tai simply means to want to do something: tabetai simply means I WANT TO eat.

たべる

たべ

食べたい

いる

い

いたい

Nai simply means “not” and is known in grammar as the negative version (Halliday) for ichidan verbs youn simply add it after taking off the last kana:

たべる、たべ、たべない　I don’t eat

Must is formed by the auxillary なければなりません、or more informally なければならない

Again you simply add it after you have cut off the last kana.

To add auxillaries to ichidan verbs all you need to do is remember which kana to take off( the last one) and which series of kana mean which things, and that you must add the auxillary after you have taken the last kana off

(chart of main auxillaries)

Godan verbs have groups within the godan group. Some auxillaries are added in exactly the same way to every godan verb, where as others are added in a different way . We will first describe each group of godan verbs

Good article on Japanese Grammar I found online

Outline

1. The problem with conventional textbooks
2. A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar
3. What is not covered in this guide?
4. Suggestions
5. Requirements
    
   The problem with conventional textbooks
   The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals.
6. They want readers to be able to use functional and polite Japanese as quickly as possible.
7. They don't want to scare readers away with terrifying Japanese script and Chinese characters.
8. They want to teach you how to say English phrases in Japanese.

Traditionally with romance languages such as Spanish, these goals presented no problems or were nonexistent due to the similarities to English. However, because Japanese is different in just about every way down to the fundamental ways of thinking, these goals create many of the confusing textbooks you see on the market today. They are usually filled with complicated rules and countless number of grammar for specific English phrases. They also contain almost no kanji and so when you finally arrive in Japan, lo and behold, you discover you can't read menus, maps, or essentially anything at all because the book decided you weren't smart enough to memorize Chinese characters.

The root of this problem lies in the fact that these textbooks try to teach you Japanese with English. They want to teach you on the first page how to say, "Hi, my name is Smith," but they don't tell you about all the arbitrary decisions that were made behind your back. They probably decided to use the polite form even though learning the polite form before the dictionary form makes no sense. They also might have decided to include the subject even though it's not necessary and excluded most of the time. In fact, the most common way to say something like "My name is Smith" in Japanese is to say "am Smith". That's because most of the information is understood from the context and is therefore excluded. But does the textbook explain the way things work in Japanese fundamentally? No, because they're too busy trying to push you out the door with "useful" phrases right off the bat. The result is a confusing mess of "use this if you want to say this" type of text and the reader is left with a feeling of confusion about how things actually work.

The solution to this problem is to explain Japanese from a Japanese point of view. Take Japanese and explain how it works and forget about trying to force what you want to say in English into Japanese. To go along with this, it is also important to explain things in an order that makes sense in Japanese. If you need to know [A] in order to understand [B], don't cover [B] first just because you want to teach a certain phrase.

Essentially, what we need is a Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar.

A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar

This guide is an attempt to systematically build up the grammatical structures that make up the Japanese language in a way that makes sense in Japanese. It may not be a practical tool for quickly learning immediately useful Japanese phrases (for example, common phrases for travel). However, it will logically create grammatical building blocks that will result in a solid grammatical foundation. For those of you who have learned Japanese from textbooks, you may see some big differences in how the material is ordered and presented. This is because this guide does not seek to forcibly create artificial ties between English and Japanese by presenting the material in a way that makes sense in English. Instead, examples with translations will show how ideas are expressed in Japanese resulting in simpler explanations that are easier to understand.

In the beginning, the English translations for the examples will also be as literal as possible to convey the Japanese sense of the meaning. This will often result in grammatically incorrect translations in English. For example, the translations might not have a subject because Japanese does not require one. In addition, since the articles "the" and "a" do not exist in Japanese, the translations will not have them as well. And since Japanese does not distinguish between a future action and a general statement (such as "I will go to the store" vs. "I go to the store"), no distinction will necessarily be made in the translation. It is my hope that the explanation of the examples will convey an accurate sense of what the sentences actually mean in Japanese. Once the reader becomes familiar and comfortable thinking in Japanese, the translations will be less literal in order to make the sentences more readable and focused on the more advanced topics.

Be aware that there are advantages and disadvantages to systematically building a grammatical foundation from the ground up. In Japanese, the most fundamental grammatical concepts are the most difficult to grasp and the most common words have the most exceptions. This means that the hardest part of the language will come first. Textbooks usually don't take this approach; afraid that this will scare away or frustrate those interested in the language. Instead, they try to delay going deeply into the hardest conjugation rules with patchwork and gimmicks so that they can start teaching useful expressions right away. (I'm talking about the past-tense conjugation for verbs in particular) This is a fine approach for some, however; it can create more confusion and trouble along the way much like building a house on a poor foundation. The hard parts must be covered no matter what. However, if you cover them in the beginning, the easier bits will be all that easier because they'll fit nicely on top of the foundation you have built. Japanese is syntactically much more consistent than English. If you learn the hardest conjugation rules, most of remaining grammar builds upon similar or identical rules. The only difficult part from there on is sorting out and remembering all the various possible expressions and combinations in order to use them in the correct situations.

※Before you start using this guide, please note that half brackets like these: 「」 are the Japanese version of quotation marks.

What is not covered in this guide?

The primary principle in deciding what to cover in this guide is by asking myself, "What cannot be looked up in a dictionary?" or "What is poorly explained in a dictionary?" In working on this guide, it soon became apparent that it was not possible to discuss the unique properties of each individual word that doesn't correspond well to English. (I tried making vocabulary lists but soon gave up.) Occasionally, there will be a description of the properties of specific words when the context is appropriate and the property is exceptional enough. However, in general, learning the nuance of each and every word is left to the reader. For example, you will not see an explanation that the word for "tall" can either mean tall or expensive, or that "dirty" can mean sneaky or unfair but cannot mean sexually perverted. The edict dictionary, which can be found here (mirrors also available) is an extensive dictionary that not only contains much more entries than conventional dictionaries in bookstores, it also often contains example sentences. It will help you learn vocabulary much better than I ever could. I also suggest not wasting any money on buying a Japanese-English, English-Japanese paper dictionary as most currently in print in the US market are woefully inadequate. (Wow, it's free and it's better! Remind anyone of open-source?)

Suggestions

My advice to you when practicing Japanese: if you find yourself trying to figure out how to say an English thought in Japanese, save yourself the trouble and quit because you won't get it right almost 100% of the time. You should always keep this in mind: If you don't know how to say it already, then you don't know how to say it. Instead, if you can, ask someone right away how to say it in Japanese including a full explanation of its use and start your practice from Japanese. Language is not a math problem; you don't have to figure out the answer. If you practice from the answer, you will develop good habits that will help you formulate correct and natural Japanese sentences.

This is why I'm a firm believer of learning by example. Examples and experience will be your main tools in mastering Japanese. Therefore, even if you don't get something completely the first time right away, just move on and keep referring back as you see more examples. This will allow you to get a better sense of how it's used in many different contexts. Unfortunately, writing up examples takes time and is slow going. (I'm trying my best!) But lucky for you, Japanese is everywhere, especially on the web. I recommend practicing Japanese as much as possible and referring to this guide only when you cannot understand the grammar. The Internet alone has a rich variety of reading materials including websites, bulletin boards, and online chat. Buying Japanese books or comic books is also an excellent (and fun) way to increase vocabulary and practice reading skills. Also, I believe that it is impossible to learn correct speaking and listening skills without a model. Practicing listening and speaking skills with fluent speakers of Japanese is a must if you wish to master conversational skills. While listening materials such as tapes and T.V. can be very educational, there is nothing better than a real human with which to learn pronunciation, intonation, and natural conversation flow. If you have specific questions that are not addressed in this guide, you can discuss them at the Japanese grammar guide forum.

www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/

Don't feel discouraged by the vast amount of material that you will need to master. Remember, every new word or grammar learned is one step closer to mastering the language!

Requirements

Since Japanese is written in Japanese in this guide (as it should be and NOT in romaji) your browser must be able to display Japanese fonts. If 「こんにちは」 does not look like (minus differences in fonts), then you need to install Japanese language support or use some kind of gateway to convert the characters. Links to instructions and a translation gateway are below.

Japanese Language Support Translation Gateway (Considerably slower)

Also, please make sure you have a recent browser to enjoy all the benefits of stylesheets. I recommend Firefox.

Don't worry about having to manually look up all the Kanji and vocabulary. You can go to the WWWJDIC and paste all the examples there to quickly look up most of the words.

All the material presented here including examples is original except for some of the common terminology and when explicitly stated otherwise. I hope you enjoy this guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which is to say, frustrating and time-consuming yet somehow strangely mixed with an enormous feeling of satisfaction.

There are bound to be (many) small errors and typos especially since I wrote this in ed, haha, just kidding! (Sorry, nerd joke). I actually wrote this in Notepad which has no spellcheck, so please forgive the numerous typos! Please post any feedback, corrections, and/or suggestions at the Japanese Grammar Guide Forum

Well, no more chit-chat. Happy learning!

-Tae Kim

For more information, please send e-mail to "Mash Satou." <SGQ00310@$nifty.ne.jp> (remove '$' followed by '@' when sending). Please contain a keyword "grammar" to the title of your e-mail, when you send it to me. Since my mail box is full of SPAMs, I am sorry to miss your sincere mail without this keyword "grammar".

Last Updated on Sep.27/2006 : Access Counter since Aug.08/2001

Mirror sites are the following.

• http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/index.htm
• http://www.maedera.com/home/jgrammar/index.htm

A Logical Japanese Grammar

Welcome to my "A Logical Japanese Grammar" page. I would like to introduce wonderful and logical Japanese grammar. Japanese has a strange grammar that is quit different from most European languages. However, you can easily understand and be familiar with it after you know the simple and logical grammar of Japanese. It has a few exceptions and uniformed rules. I hope this article helps you learn Japanese more deeply.

I am sorry I am still constructing these pages and columns. There might be many blanks but I will update them frequently. I am happy you may check this page once a week.

• Let's go to the table of contents.
• Please feel free to link this page "http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/".
• You can get a PDF version from this package.
• Interesting topics about Japanese Grammar コラム統計計算文法考 ( May.07/2009 )

• What's new.
  • Kanji Cards ( Dec.29/2003, Sep.27/2006 )

Table of Contents

• Pronunciation
  • Phonemes ( Dec.7/ 2002 )
  • Syllables ( Dec.7/ 2002 )
  • Accents ( Dec.7/ 2002 )
• Loan Words from English
  • English Phonemes ( Dec.07/2002 )
  • Rules to Kana Syllables ( Dec.07/2002 )
  • Samples ( Dec.07/2002, Jul.03/2006 )
• Introduction
  • Parts of Speech ( Dec. 8 2002 )
  • Word Orders ( Dec. 8 2002 )
  • Correspondence of Pronouns, Cases, Articles, Interrogatives ( Dec.09/2002 )
• Nouns, Adjectival Nouns, Verbal Nouns
  • Ordinary Nouns ( Dec.10/2002 )
  • Adjectival Nouns ( Dec.10/2002 )
  • Verbal Nouns ( Dec.11/2002 )
  • Numerals and Classifiers ( Dec.11/2002 )
• Verbs, Adjectival Verbs, Auxiliary Verbs
  • The Verbal Conjugation ( Dec.14/2002 )
  • Polite ( Dec.18/2002 )
  • Negative ( Dec.18/2002 )
  • Tense ( Dec.18/2002 )
  • Mood ( Dec.18/2002 )
  • Existence ( Dec.28/2002 )
  • Copula ( Jan.14/2003 )
  • Adjectival Verbs ( Jan.18/2003 )
  • Voices ( Feb.01/2003, Apr.06/2003 )
  • Auxiliary Verbs ( May.23/2003 )
  • Moving and Giving Verbs ( May.27/2003 )
  • Supplemental Verbs ( Jun.30/2003 )
• Particles (Jul.14/2003)
  • Case Particles (Jul.27/2004)
  • Nominal Particles (Sep.04/2004)
  • Topical Particles (Mar.28/2005)
  • Adverbial Particles
  • Ending Particles
  • Conjunctive Particles
  • Interjective Particles
• Conjunctives, Interjections
  • Conjunctives
  • Interjections
• Demonstrative
• Adnominal, Adverbs
  • Adverbs to modify Verbs
  • Adnominal To modify Nouns
• Special Topics
  • Readings of Kanji ( Oct.27/2001, Jan.12/2006 )
  • Kanji Cards ( Dec.29/2003, Sep.27/2006 )
  • Uniformed Regular Verbal Conjugation of Japanese ( Oct.14/2001, Nov.12/2005 )
  • A Japanese Conjugation Builder ( Oct.19/2003, Jan.01/2006 )
    • Download the package for your local PC.
  • Columns about Japanese Statistical Grammar (written in Japanese) ( Jan.29/2008 )

Java Applets are designed for JRE 1.3.1 and over in "Kanji Cards" and "A Japanese Conjucation Builfer".

Special Thanks to

• Japanese Language ( http://japanese.about.com/ )
• A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar ( http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ )
• Japanese for the Western Brain ( http://kimallen.sheepdogdesign.net/Japanese/index.html )
• Kotoba no Sanpo-michi ( http://homepage1.nifty.com/forty-sixer/kotoba.htm )
• Nihon-go ni shugo 'wa iranai ( http://blog.goo.ne.jp/shugohairanai )
• CAJLE home page ( http://www.jliu.org/CAJLE/ )

Interesting Topics

• Jim Breen's Japanese Page ( http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html )
• Collin's Japanese Language & Culture Page ( http://www.epochrypha.com/japanese/ )
• Japanese in the Age of Technology ( http://www.honco.net/japanese/index.html )
• Omniglot ( http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm )

1. Purchase a book that contains information about Japanese lettering. Study and learn how to write the Japanese alphabet. The book should explain the pronunciation and phonics of Japanese words and of the Japanese alphabet.
2. Step 2

Next you must learn how adjectives, nouns and verbs make up the Japanese language. You can learn how to pronounce Japanese words with more clarity by purchasing a Japanese language learning CD or tape.

3. Step 3

Find websites that offer insight on Japanese grammar such as Japanese.about.com.

Step-by-Step Learning

4. Step 1

Learn Hiragana and Katakana. These are the two basic forms of the Japanese alphabet.

5. Step 2

Study and learn the applications of the Japanese verbs, nouns and adjectives called Kanji.

6. Step 3

Next, become knowledgeable about the structure of Japanese grammar by learning how to combine the Kanji to make sentences coherent.

7. Step 4

After you have learned the Japanese letters and the pronunciation, you must learn the particles of the Japanese language. Two of the particles are the Inclusive Particle and the Vague Listing Particle.These particles combine the Japanese words in conjunction form like the word "but" and the word "and."

8. Step 5

Lastly, practice putting sentences together by combining the Inclusive Particles, Kanji and the forms of the Japanese alphabet.

Tips & Warnings

• Learning Japanese may be easier for some by taking a class. Check with your local college for continuing education classes or for individuals who may teach a Japanese grammar course. Watch a Japanese foreign film to practice Japanese pronunciation.