Grammar

Japanese grammar has the following features:

1. The basic sentence structure of a Japanese sentence is TOPIC:COMMENT.

For example:

Kochira wa, Sangaa san desu.

Kochira is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. This means "as for this person."

The verb is desu ("be").

Sangaa san desu is the comment.

Therefore, this loosely translates to:

"As for this person, (it) is Mr. Sanger."

Therefore Japanese, like Chinese, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it marks topic separately from subject, and the two do not always coincide.

2. Japanese nouns in general have neither number nor gender. Thus hon (book) can be used for the singular or plural. However, in the case of certain native words (of proto-Japanese rather than Chinese origin) plurality may be indicated by reduplication. For example, hito means "person" whilst hitobito means "people"; ware means "I" whilst wareware means "we". Sometimes suffixes may also indicate plurality. Examples include the suffixes tachi and ra: watashi, meaning "I", becomes watashitachi, meaning "we", and kare (him) becomes karera (them).

3. Though there is no set word order per se, verbs normally come at the end of a sentence.

4. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: the present (sometimes, because the same form is used for both the present and future, called the "non-past") and the past. The present tense (or imperfect tense) in Japanese serves the function of the simple present and the future tense, while the past tense (or perfect tense) in Japanese serves the function of the simple past tense. The distinction is between actions which are completed (perfect) or are not yet completed (imperfect). The present perfect, present continuous, present perfect continuous, future perfect, future continuous, and future perfect continuous are usually expressed as a gerund (-te form) plus the auxiliary form imasu/iru. Similarly, the past perfect, past continuous, and past perfect continuous are usually expressed with the gerund plus the past tense of imasu/iru. For some verbs, that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form regularly indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others, that represent a change of state, the -te iru form regularly indicates a perfect tense. For example, kite imasu regularly means "I have come", and not "I am coming", but tabete imasu regularly means "I am eating", and not "I have eaten". Note that in this form the initial i of imasu/iru is often not voiced, especially in casual speech and the speech of young people. The exact meaning is determined from the context, as Japanese tenses do not always map one-to-one to English tenses. In addition, Japanese verbs are also conjugated to show various moods.

5. Adjectives are inflected to show the present, past, affirmative and negative.

6. The grammatical function of nouns like possession, direct object, indirect object etc. are indicated by postposition particles, like ha and no above. Particles play an extremely important function in Japanese.

7. Japanese has many ways to express different levels of politeness, including special verbs, verbs indicating relative status, use of different nouns, etc., as was shown above.

8. The verb desu/da is not a copula in the western sense of the verb "to be". In the sentences above, it has played the copulative function of equality, that is: A = B. However a separate function of "to be" is to indicate existence, for which the verbs arimasu/aru and imasu/iru are used for inanimate and animate things respectively.

9. Derived forms of words occur often in Japanese. Nouns can be made into verbs, adjectives into nouns, gerunds, and other forms, and so on. Verbs, in addition to other derived forms, have one (the -tai form) which is an adjective meaning "want to do X"; e.g., tabetai desu means "I want to eat".