An Introduction to Japanese

Syntax, Grammar & Language

© 2009-2010, Michiel Kamermans, all rights reserved Draft

copy — based on grammar.nihongoresources.com This
draft may not be reproduced in whole or in part.

April 26, 2010

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 Table of Contents

1 The syntax 1
1.1 The kana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 The basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Writing the kana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 Pronouncing Japanese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.4 Hiragana and katakana differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2 Writing spoken japanese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.1 Katakana specific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2.2 Punctuation and writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3 Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.1 Types of Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3.2 Writing Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.3.3 Reading kanji: furigana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.4 Reading quirks: compound words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3.5 Looking up kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3.6 Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4 Words and word classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.4.1 Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.4.2 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.4.3 Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.4.4 Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4.5 Nominalisers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.4.6 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.4.7 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.4.8 Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.4.9 Prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.4.10 Onomatopoeia and mimesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.4.11 Compound words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.5 Sentence structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.5.1 Word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.5.2 Emphasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
1.6 Pitch and accents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
1.7 Gender roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

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 1.8 Context language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

2 Verb grammar 45
2.1 Inflecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.1.1 Inflection bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.1.2 Basic inflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.1.3 Basic inflections for irregular verbs and verbal adjectives . . . . 55
2.1.4 In summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.2 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.3 Noun inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.3.1 Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.3.2 Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4 Pronouns: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.5 Special verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.5.1 Becoming: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.5.2 Being: ‚ ‚ ‚ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2.5.3 Doing: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.5.4 Possessive: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.5.5 Negative presence: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.6 More Verb Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

3 More grammar 81
3.1 Revisits and simple inflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.1.1 Politeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.1.2 A ributive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.1.3 Adverbial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.1.4 Noun forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.1.5 More negatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.1.6 Basic inflections summarised . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.2 Further inflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.2.1 Conjunctive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.2.2 Continuative: form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.2.3 Special form conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.2.4 Representative listing: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.2.5 Conditional: ‚ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.2.6 Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
3.2.7 Pseudo-future: / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.2.8 Hypothetical: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.2.9 Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

3.2.10 Requesting: ‚ — . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

3.2.11 Passive: / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.2.12 Causative: / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
3.2.13 Causative passive: / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

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 3.2.14 Potential . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3.3 Formal speech pa erns . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3.3.1 Humble verb pa erns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
3.3.2 Honorific verb pa erns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.4 Classical adjectives . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

4 Particles 147
4.1 Prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.1.1 The honorific prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.1.2 Negating prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
4.1.3 Assorted prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
4.2 Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.2.1 Essential particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.2.2 Emphatic particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
4.2.3 Further particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
4.2.4 Enrichment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
4.3 Translating prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
4.3.1 Prepositions already covered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
4.3.2 Prepositions translating to conceptual temporal or location nouns210
4.3.3 The conceptual nouns list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
4.4 In Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

5 Counters and counting 221

5.1 Counting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
5.1.1 Rules for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

5.1.2 Rules for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

5.1.3 Rules for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
5.1.4 Rules for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
5.1.5 Rules for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
5.1.6 How many? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
5.1.7 The rules in summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
5.2 Ranges and estimations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
5.3 Counters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
5.3.1 Numerical counters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5.3.2 General counters for articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
5.3.3 Counters for living things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5.3.4 Occurrences and ranking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
5.3.5 Counting time related units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
5.3.6 Additional words for quantification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
5.4 Using numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 5.4.1 Telling time
and date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

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5.4.2 Basic arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
5.4.3 More advanced mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

6 Language pa erns 269

6.1 Comparisons‚ preferences and choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
6.1.1 Binary choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
6.1.2 Open choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
6.1.3 Comparison through likeness‚ and impressions . . . . . . . . . 271
6.1.4 Discussing possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
6.1.5 Discussing certainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
6.2 Nominalising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
6.2.1 Back referral‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
6.2.2 Abstract conceptualisation‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
6.2.3 Real conceptualisation‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
6.2.4 Illustrating a circumstance‚ case or occasion‚ using . . . . . 285
6.2.5 Indicating a moment of opportunity‚ using . . . . . . . . . 286
6.2.6 Describing an occurrence‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
6.2.7 Indicating a specific time or event‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
6.2.8 Stating an expectation‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
6.2.9 Stating a social expectation or custom‚ using . . . . . . . . 288
6.2.10 Indicating a moment in time‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
6.2.11 Stating an intention‚ using. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
6.2.12 Stating a situational explanation‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
6.2.13 Describing a way‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
6.2.14 Indicating an exact manner‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
6.2.15 Stating purpose‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
6.2.16 Indicating apparent behaviour‚ using . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
6.2.17 Talking about a ‘something’‚ using. . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
6.3 Social language pa erns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
6.3.1 Showing and demanding face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
6.3.2 Addressing people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
6.4 Acknowledging social status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
6.4.1 Giving and receiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
6.4.2 Indirect speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
6.5 More advanced grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

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Appendices

A Conjugation Schemes 325

A.1 Bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
A.1.1 Regular verbs: verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
A.1.2 Regular verbs: verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
A.1.3 Irregular verbs: ( / ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
A.1.4 Irregular verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
A.1.5 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
A.1.6 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
A.1.7 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
A.1.8 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
A.1.9 Verbal adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
A.1.10 Special bases for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
A.1.11 Special bases for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
A.1.12 Special bases for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
A.1.13 Special bases for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
A.1.14 Special bases for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
A.2 Conjugation schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
A.2.1 Regular verbs: verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
A.2.2 Regular verbs: verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
A.2.3 Irregular verbs: ( / ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
A.2.4 Irregular verbs: ( ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
A.2.5 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
A.2.6 Special verbs: / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
A.2.7 Special verbs: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
A.2.8 Verbal adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

B Set phrases 339

Glossary 357

Indexes 367
English index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Japanese index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

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viii
Acknowledgements

This book‚ like its precursors‚ wasn’t wri en in one go — many people contributed
in some way or other to making sure that this book got turned from just a thought
into something real. Foremost my teachers at Leiden University‚ Mr. M. Kunimori
and Mr. N. Oya‚ have contributed to me enjoying learning the language
greatly‚ much more than I would have had I merely kept on studying the language
at home. Their comments while teaching‚ sometimes related to the language‚ and
sometimes going off on completely random tangents‚ have enriched my
experience of the language in such a way that has made it fun‚ as well as
something to play with rather than to formally study. I owe them gratitude.
Secondly‚ many people from the online community helped me in learning
how to phrase myself so that explanations were understandable‚ and corrected me
when I got things wrong — something that definitely improves anyone’s skill at
any-thing by reinforcing that some things shouldn’t be what you thought them to
be. Many of these were from the IRC channel “#nihongo” on the irchighway
network‚ and while some people have since moved on‚ others have stuck around
and it re-mains a nice source of conversation concerning Japanese and other ma
ers to this day.
My thanks go out to those people that have helped proof the book or parts
of its content in either the old or new incarnation; Sarah Wiebe‚ Ayako Sasaki‚ An-
dreas Wallin‚ Raymond Calla‚ Maarten van der Heijden‚ Giulio
Agostini‚ Emmanuel Auclair‚ Sergi Esteve and many unnamed others deserve not
just my‚ but also your thanks — they helped refine the material from a mass of
typos and convoluted phrases into the publication it is now!
Special thanks goes out to Edmund Dickinson‚ who took upon him the task
of scrutinising the book’s English. Without his help‚ this book would have been of
far lower quality.
Gratitude should also be extended to the people on the XeTeX mailing
list‚ without whose help this book would have taken far longer to realise. Their
help with (Xe)LaTeX related questions has been greatly appreciated‚ and although
sin-gling individual users out would be nearly impossible‚ the principle creater of
Xe-TeX‚ Jonathan Kew‚ and the author of Fontspec‚ Will Robertson‚ do deserve
special mention.

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 Finally‚ as a special dedication‚ I would like to thank Cynthia Ng‚ who has
been my support for years now‚ kept me motivated to finish this book‚ helped in
editing the content‚ and became my wife during the final stages of finishing this
book. Thank you for being in my life — this book is dedicated to you.

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Preface

You are reading the first revision (or if you bought this‚ also the first print version!) of
the Japanese grammar book that I started writing while I was still taking classes in
Japanese... and consequently failed at (the book‚ not the courses). I have to admit‚ I
was a bit overzealous. While I enjoyed learning and through the process of explain-ing
the things I had learnt to others via what became www.nihongoresources.com‚ I was
still a first year student with not exactly a lot of weight or experience under my belt.
The first version of my book I offered to my teacher to scrutinise‚ and scrutinise he did.
In retrospect‚ it’s a good thing he did‚ because it took forever to get from the draft
version to an edited final version. Instead‚ in 2005 I decided that the informa-tion I was
offering the world was somewhat out of date‚ and needed a rewrite. I also knew that I
had to do something with the book: I had promised many people by now I would
finish it and I didn’t like the idea of le ing those people down. As such‚ I began to write
what ended up as a permanent draft copy of a grammar book‚ freely available from
the nihongoresources.com website‚ in 2005-2006.
Three years later‚ the book has certainly proved its popularity. Well over a
hundred thousand downloads later‚ and with over fifteen thousand hits on it per week
still‚ the time has finally come to revise it‚ and give everyone what they’ve been asking
for for some time now: a proper paper version in addition to the digital copy.
It’s taken close to a year to go from deciding to revise the old grammar
book to being able to offer you a restructured‚ reworked‚ and more than half rewri
en book on the Japanese language‚ but hopefully the wait was worth it. I’ve spent
as much time on it as I could‚ in between my normal job and spending time on
vacations in Canada to be with the person who has helped me tremendously in ge
ing this book done and keeping me motivated to do so‚ and I hope the result is
something you feel was worth paying money for. Or‚ if you didn’t buy it but are
reading this as a digital copy‚ then I hope you might find it good enough to want
to have it si ing on your shelf as paper copy as well.
This book was wri en in several phases‚ using several programs. The first
full-content version was based on the original “An Introduction to Japanese Syn-
tax‚ Grammar and Language” wri en in 2005‚ which was wri en in plain text using
Textpad‚ after which it got turned into DocBook XML using XMLmind XML Edi-
tor. This was then converted to WordprocessingML using a custom script‚ and fi-
nal styling was done in Microsoft Word‚ before converting that to PDF form using

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Adobe’s Acrobat PDF building tools.
The new process is actually much more fun‚ and allows me to automate the
whole book-making process in the future‚ when errata must be processed‚ and
new content is added. The data itself now lives on the internet‚ and can be found
on h p://grammar.nihongoresources.com as a dokuwiki documentation project.
Be-cause dokuwiki stores its data as plain text files‚ I wrote a set of conversion
scripts to turn the dokuwiki code into LaTeX code‚ which then gets run through
the XeLaTeX processing engine‚ which results in a fully indexed‚ cross-
referenced‚ ToC-ed and for all intents and purposes publication-ready PDF file.
In the end‚ I had fun rewriting the book‚ and pu ing together the
technologies to turn the book content into something you can actually read‚ and I
hope you will have fun reading this‚ and find it aids you in your studies of
Japanese. Thank you for making writing this worth while‚ and good luck!

Mike “Pomax” Kamermans

xii
Chapter 1

The syntax

Syntax in the Japanese language comes in several parts. From the lowest to the
high-est‚ we see the kana and kanji‚ used to compose words‚ which are used to
compose sentences‚ which in turn function as the building blocks of the spoken
and wri en language. We will look at each of these “blocks” in order‚ and look at
how they all come together to form the Japanese language.

1.1 The kana

1.1.1 The basics

What the alphabet is to western languages‚ the ‚ “gojuuon”‚ is to Japanese. This
Japanese syllabary is a collection of 46 syllables (roughly half of which have ‘voiced’
counterparts) that act as phonetic building blocks in the Japanese language.
Arranged in the traditional way‚ and read top-down‚ right-to-left‚ these 46
syllables can be wri en in either of two scripts: hiragana and katakana:

( )

( )

( )

( )

1
2 The syntax — § 1.1 The kana

Transcribing these tables into western‚ and more specifically

English‚ sounds‚ the table looks roughly as follows:

n wa ra ya ma ha na ta sa ka a
(wi) ri mi hi ni chi shi ki i
ru yu mu fu nu tsu su ku u
(we) re me he ne te se ke e
(w)o ro yo mo ho no to so ko o

These tables seem to contain 48 syllables instead of 46‚ but the two syllables
‘wi’ and ‘we’‚ ( / and / ) have not been in use since the Japanese language was
revised following shortly after the second world war. They have been included
here only for completeness‚ and in modern Japanese do not appear in the
syllabaries table. The is still very much in use‚ but only as a grammatical particle
that is pronounced as ‚ and so the only accurate transcription is as ‘o’. However‚ in
names it may be pronounced as ‘wo’‚ and so we find the consonant in parentheses
in the table of transcriptions.
We can look at these tables in two ways. Firstly‚ as arrangements in
columns. When doing so‚ the first column (going right to left rather than left to
right) is called the —column‚ the second column the —column‚ and so forth. We
can also look at them as arrangements of rows‚ in which case the first row is called
the —row‚ the second one the —row‚ followed by the —‚ — and —rows. Thus‚ the
katakana symbol for instance can be found on the —row of the —column.
Some of these columns have ‘voiced’ variants. Voicing is a linguistic term
used to indicate consonants that are pronounced with air running past the vocal
cords. In Japanese‚ the -‚ -‚ - and —columns (ka‚ sa‚ ta and ha) can be given
a special diacritic mark‚ called ‘dakuten’ ( ) to indicate they are voiced rather than
plain‚ changing their pronunciation:

////////////////////

Which is transcribed as:

ba da za ga
bi dzi ji gi
bu dzu zu gu
be de ze ge
bo do zo go
The syntax — § 1.1 The kana 3

A note about ‘dzi’ and ‘dzu’: while these are technically the correct
transcrip-tions for and ‚ these syllables have been rendered obsolete in current
Japanese‚ with words that used to use now using ‚ and words that use now using .
This will be explained in a bit more detail in the section on pronunciation.

In addition to this regular voicing‚ the —column has a secondary voic-

ing‚ indicated with a small circle diacritic mark‚ called ‘handakuten’ ( )‚ which
rather than producing a ‘b’ sound‚ produces a ‘p’ sound:

/ pa
/ pi
/ pu
/ pe
/ po

1.1.2 Writing the kana

Both hiragana and katakana may be relatively simple scripts compared to the com-
plex Chinese characters also in use in Japanese‚ but they both have specific ways of
writing each syllable. The following tables show how to write both hiragana and
katakana the proper way. Note that these wri en versions look different in places
from print form.
4 The syntax — § 1.1 The kana
Stroke diagrams for
hiragana
The syntax — § 1.1 The kana 5
Stroke diagrams for
katakana
6 The syntax — § 1.1 The kana

1.1.3 Pronouncing Japanese

Pronunciation wise‚ each of these syllables is equally long. This is traditionally ex-
plained by referring to the pronunciation of Japanese as mora‚ a linguistic term
mean-ing “the time required to pronounce an ordinary or normal short sound or
syllable”. In Japan‚ this concept of mora is usually explained with the easier
concept of drum beats: each basic syllable is one beat long‚ with certain
combinations of kana lasting one and a half or two beats.
The vowel sounds of Japanese‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ and do not all have English equivalents;
is actually identical to the initial vowel sound in “I” or “eye” — that is‚ the ‘a’ sound
without the finalising ‘i’ sound. The is a li le easier‚ sounding like the ‘ee’ in ‘creep’.
The is particularly annoying‚ because there is no English equivalent. It is identical
to the vowel sounds of properly Sco ish ‘you’ or ‘do’‚ or the Dutch open ‘u’ such as
in ‘huren’. is pronounced like in the English ‘help’‚ and the ‚ finally‚ is pronounced
like the ‘o’ in ‘or’.
While for most kana the consonant sound is reasonably approximated by
the transcribed consonant as listed in the earlier tables‚ there are a few notable
exceptions. For instance‚ while romanised as “hi”‚ / is usually pronounced with a
consonant that doesn’t sound like an ‘h’‚ but more like the German or Sco ish “ch”
as found in German words such as “ich” (meaning “I”) and Sco ish words such as
“loch” (meaning “lake”).
Also in the -colum‚ the syllable / does not have an ‘h’ as consonant
sound‚ or even the ‘f’ consonant sound that it is typically transcribed with‚ but
rather uses only pure aspiration as initial sound. This is mostly unknown in
western lan-guages‚ and will be the hardest to get right for people starting out
with Japanese. Rather than being formed in the mouth‚ the syllable starts being
formed at the diaphragm‚ while breathing out. Paired with the lips shaped as if
casually blowing out a match or candle (rather than tightened for whistling)‚ this
rush of air is then given a vowel sound‚ and the syllable is complete.
In the —column we also see an interesting pronunciation ‘quirk’: while and
‚ strictly speaking‚ have voiced versions‚ wri en and ‚ over the years the difference
in pronunciation between and ‚ and and ‚ has all but disappeared‚ leading to an
official move towards replacing these and with and entirely. However‚ there are
(quite a number of) exceptions to this move for replacement: if the two first kana
of a word are the same‚ but the second one is voiced‚ the same kana are used (for
example‚ and ). Also‚ in compound words in
which voicing occurs‚ the original kana form is used (for instance‚ + →
and + → ). This exception only applies when the compound word can be
considered a combination of words. Both and derive their meaning from
rice plants‚ and the second kanji refers to
their constituent words‚ but in a word like ‚
(someone’s) wife. In these words‚
meaning “lightning”‚ the first kanji refers to
The syntax — § 1.1 The kana 7

even if the affixed compound would normally have a or ‚ the voicing is wri en
as or in modern Japanese‚ rather than or .
That said‚ voicing in compound nouns is a bit strange in that there are no
rules to tell when something will‚ or will not voice‚ so the best strategy — which
applies to learning words in general anyway — is to learn words as word
first‚ then learn them as combinations‚ rather than the other way around.
Finally‚ the —column can be a problem because for most western
listeners‚ different people will seem to pronounce the initial consonant in this
column differ-ently. While in many western languages the consonants “d”‚ “l”‚ and
“r” are consid-ered quite distinct‚ in Japanese this distinction is far less; any syllable
starting with a consonant ranging from a full fledged “l” to a rolling Spanish “r”
will be interpreted as a syllable from the —column‚ with the “standard”
pronunciation being somewhere between a “d” and an “r”.

Not pronouncing Japanese

This sounds like an oddly named section‚ but some bits in wri en Japanese are ac-
tually not really pronounced at all. In fact‚ not infrequently you will hear Japanese
that does not seem to reflect the wri en form‚ with the verb “desu” seemingly being
pronounced “des”‚ the adjective “hayaku” seemingly being pronounced “hayak”‚ the
command “shiro” seemingly being pronounced “sh’ro”‚ and many more of such
vocal omissions.
In fact‚ many syllables with an — or —sound tend to have these vowel
sounds left almost unpronounced. I say almost‚ because the vowel sound is typ-
ically preserved by virtue of the consonants used. For instance‚ the word
‚ transcribed as ‘soshite’ is typically pronounced in such a way that it can be
consid-ered transcribable as “sosh’te” instead. However‚ forming “sh” means also
forming a pseudo-vowel sound. In fact‚ even in this “omi ed vowel” there is room
for variation‚ so that a “sh” can sound like it was supposed to become “shi” or “shu”‚
and it is this feature that is exploited quite heavily in Japanese.
This leads to a small problem. Because it sounds like the vowel is entirely
missing‚ you might be tempted to mimic this sound‚ but end up genuinely omi ing
the vowel entirely because that’s what your ears — which are not yet accustomed
to Japanese phonetics — think is happening. However‚ this also makes your
Japanese highly unnatural‚ because to a Japanese ear the vowel is only mostly omi
ed‚ not entirely.
The problem then is one of hearing: when learning a new language it is im-
portant to “unlearn” how to hear language. Much like how we have learned to see the
world in a way that it’s actually not (you will consider a brown table with a light
shining on one end‚ brown‚ instead of brown on one end‚ and a completely differ-ent
colour where the light is hi ing it)‚ as infants we learn to disregard any and all sounds
that don’t feature in the languages we’re raised with. As such‚ remarkable as
8 The syntax — § 1.1 The kana

this may sound‚ we unlearn how to hear things accurately‚ and instead learn how
to map what we hear to what we know the language is supposed to sound like.
While highly effective when learning a language‚ or a family of languages with
similar pro-nunciations‚ it’s disastrous when learning a language that has a
different phonetic system.

The best advice with regards to this is to simply listen to a lot of Japanese.
It takes time and effort to unlearn the unconscious mapping your brain does for
you. You’re going to get it wrong‚ but as long as you know you are‚ you’ll be on
the right track.

1.1.4 Hiragana and katakana differences

If hiragana and katakana sound exactly the same‚ why then are there two different
scripts?

When the Japanese first developed a wri en system‚ it was based on the
char-acters used in China for the Chinese language‚ in which for the most part the
meaning of the characters were subservient to what they sounded like: if a word
had an “a” sound in it‚ then any Chinese character that sounded like “a” could be
used for it‚ with-out any real regard for its meaning. This “using certain characters
for their sound only” became more widespread as the number of characters per
syllable dropped from quite many to only a handful‚ and as writing became more
widespread two syllabic scripts developed. One‚ which simplified phonetic kanji
by omi ing parts of them lead to what is today called katakana. Another‚ which
simplified phonetic kanji by further and further reducing the complexity of the
cursive forms for these kanji‚ has become what is known today as hiragana. We
can see this illustrated in the next figure‚ which shows the characters the hiragana
came from‚ and the highly stylistic cursive form characters had‚ highlighting the
degree of simplification that cursive writing brought with it.
The syntax — § 1.1 The kana 9

The hiragana derivations from cursive script

Katakana got a slightly different treatment‚ in that these are actually frag-
ments of characters‚ rather than stylistic simplifications. The second derivations
fig-ure illustrates this‚ with a note that the fragments were lifted from handwri en
char-acters‚ so that the “logic” is mostly found in the cursive line of characters.

These two scripts have differed in roles throughout history‚ and in modern
Japanese hiragana is used for anything Japanese that does not use (or need)
kanji‚ and katakana is used in the same way that we use italics in western
language‚ as well as for words that have been imported into Japanese from other
languages over the course of history. The only genuine difference between the two
scripts is the way in which long vowel sounds are wri en‚ as we shall see in the
next section.
10 The syntax — § 1.2 Writing spoken japanese

The katakana derivations

1.2 Writing spoken japanese

Using the kana as basic building blocks‚ Japanese pronunciation consists of a few
more things beyond basic syllables: in addition to “simple” syllable sounds‚ it con-
tains long vowels‚ glides and double consonants.
Long vowels‚ contrary to the name‚ do not always mean “the same
vowel‚ twice as long”. Strictly speaking‚ a long vowel in Japanese is a combination
of two vowels‚ pronounced over two “drum beats”. In katakana‚ long vowels are
really just that‚ a vowel with a dash to indicate the sound has been doubled in
length‚ but in hiragana the doubling is different. Of the five basic Japanese vowel
sounds ( ‚ ‚ ‚ and ) the first three have fairly simple long vowel counterparts in
hiragana‚ simply doubling in writing‚ but the la er two are more
complicated‚ having two dif-ferent wri en forms:
The syntax — § 1.2 Writing spoken japanese 11

hiragana katakana

‚
‚

While the pronunciation for ‚ and are intuitive (same sound‚ twice as long)
‚ the pronunciations for ‚ ‚ and and more subtle. The first‚ ‚ may be pronounced as a
“same sound‚ twice as long” ‚ but may also be pronounced as ‚ which is similar to
the ‘-ay’ in the English ‘hay’. For ‚ the pronunciation is like “oa” in “oak”‚ with often
sounding the same‚ but when pronounced slowly‚ having a distinct hint of “u” at
the end.
This doubling is the same for syllables with consonant sounds‚ so that for
instance vowel doubling for the syllables from the —column look as follows:

hiragana katakana

‚
‚

In addition to long vowels‚ Japanese words may contain “glides”. Being

con-sidered contractions of —row syllables with any one of the three syllables ‚ and
‚ glides are wri en as the —row syllable‚ normal sized‚ and then the ‚ or syllable at
either half height (for horizontally wri en Japanese) or half width (for vertically
wri en Japanese). To illustrate:

kana pronunciation as glide pronunciation

+ kiya kya
+ shiyu shu
+ chiyo cho
+ miya mya
+ hiyo hyo
+ niyu nyu
+ riyo ryo
beats long: spelled out‚ it will be
pronounced ‚ and .
While a wri en combination of
two syllables‚ the glide it represents is
only a single “drum beat” long‚ just as the
regular syllables. Thus‚ the word is three
12 The syntax — § 1.2 Writing spoken japanese

Finally‚ the last feature of spoken Japanese reflected in writing is what is

known as the “double consonant”: a reasonably recent change to the way Japanese
is wri en (in the sense that this change occurred sometime during the medieval
period‚ when wri en Japanese had been around for a li le under a millennium)
which indi-cates that a particular consonant has a short pause before it is actually
pronounced. This consonant doubling is found in a number of western languages
as well‚ such as in Italian‚ where words like ‘tu i’ have a wri en double consonant
while in terms of pronunciation there is simply a pause before the consonant. In
Japanese‚ because there are no actual ‘loose’ consonants‚ the doubling is
represented by a special char-acter: a (or ) wri en either half height (in horizontal
writing) or half width (in vertical writing) to indicate the pause. To illustrate the
difference between this small / and the regular form‚ a few example words:

small pronunciation meaning

“hakka” ignition
“shikke” humidity
“makka” intensely red

normal pronunciation meaning

th
“hatsuka” 20 days/20 day
“shitsuke” upbringing
“matsuka” the ‘Pine’ family of trees

This “ / as a pause” is also applied when a glo al stop is needed in for

instance an exclamation‚ “ !”‚ which is an exclamation with a “cut off” rather than
long vowel sound.

1.2.1 Katakana specific

As katakana has been used to write out words imported from other languages into
Japanese‚ it has a few extra “rules” that do not apply to wri en hiragana‚ including
a number of ways to produce normally “illegal” syllables: syllables that do not fit in
the Japanese table of syllables‚ but are found in foreign words nonetheless.
Examples of these are for instance the initial syllable “fi” in the English word
“fire”‚ or the “swe” in “Sweden”.
The table of approximating writing is as follows‚ observing English pronun-
ciation rules (combinations with normal Japanese orthography are omi ed):
The syntax — § 1.2 Writing spoken japanese 13

a e i o u
ch
d
f

j
q
s
sh
sw
t
v (1)
w
x
y
z

Note that ‘wo’ is not (as that is pronounced )‚ and that for the ‘x’ series‚ the
leading is the consonant doubling symbol.
In addition to these‚ there are also a number of consonants which‚ in terms
of pronunciation‚ already have Japanese counterparts:

consonant column
c‚ pronounced as ‘s’ uses the —column
c‚ pronounced as ‘k’ uses the —column
l uses the —column
v (2) uses the —column. Preferred to ‘v (1)’ in the above table.

Due to the fact that most loan words have come from some specific
language‚ many of which are not English‚ Japanese loan words may have a
different wri en form than expected. For instance‚ Brussels is wri en as
‚ “buryusseru”‚ rather than ‚ “buraseruzu”‚ and English (the people) is wri en as
‚ “igirisu”‚ rather than ‚ “ingurisshu”.

1.2.2 Punctuation and writing

Of course‚ in addition to a “le er” script‚ there is interpunction — symbols that
indicate pauses‚ stops‚ quotes and other such things. In Japanese‚ the following
punctuation symbols are common:
14 The syntax — § 1.2 Writing spoken japanese

symbol
full stop
comma
single quotes and
double quotes and
parentheses and
kanji repeater
separators and
drawn sound
ellipsis … (usually wri en twice: ……)

Less used‚ but always good to have seen are the following:

symbol
idem dito
hiragana repeaters ‚
katakana repeaters ‚
kanji sentence finaliser

And then there are western punctuations which have Japanese

counterparts‚ but tend to be expressed differently instead:
The symbol ? is wri en the same way as in English‚ but typically the particle
is used instead. This particle serves both as question mark‚ as well as a marker for
parts of a sentences‚ indicating they are questioning instead of stating.
Similarly‚ the symbol ! is wri en the same way as in English‚ but typically
exclamations are simply avoided. Instead‚ emphasis particles such as or may be
used for effect‚ but these do not signify real exclamation.
Finally‚ not quite interpunction but important nonetheless are the two ways to
emphasise parts of wri en language in the same way we use bold or underlining in
western composition: do ing and lining. In horizontal writing‚ words will have dots
over each syllable or kanji‚ or a line over the entire emphasised section. In vertical
writing‚ the dots and lining is placed on the right side of text.
In addition to knowing the basics about which symbols can be
used‚ Japanese (as well as some other Asian languages such as Chinese) has the
unique problem of deciding in which direction to write. For all its
modernising‚ some things such as writing remain unchanged. As such‚ for the
most part printed Japanese (as well as handwri en material) is wri en top
down‚ right to left. In contrast‚ most Japanese material on the internet is typically
wri en in a western fashion‚ with the text running left to right‚ top to bo om.
To make ma ers more interesting‚ in recent history‚ Japanese could also be
wri en horizontally right-to-left. This practice has pre y much disappeared except
The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 15

in shipping (ship names may still be wri en in this way) and for ‘older style’ shop
signs. You will not encounter full texts wri en in this way in modern or even just
post-Meiji older Japanese.
There are a few differences between horizontal and vertical writing‚ most
no-tably in terms of where to place half size characters and interpunction:

horizontal vertical
half size characters half-height half-width‚ right aligned
full stop‚ comma lower left: [ ]‚ [ ] upper-right: [ ]‚ [ ]
opening quotes corner in the upper left ( ) corner in the upper right ( )
closing quotes corner in the lower right ( ) corner in the lower left ( )
parentheses left and right: i.e. ( and ) above and below: i.e. and
do ing above characters to the right of characters
lining above characters to the right of characters
drawn sound‚ hyphen horizontal ( ‚ ―) vertical ( ‚―)
ellipsis horizontal (…) vertical (…)

1.3 Kanji
One of wri en Japanese’s most well-known features is that it comprises three
writing systems: the two kana scripts‚ and a third script called kanji‚ translating as
“Chinese characters”‚ which are ideographs that over the course of history made
their way from China to Japan. One of the biggest problems with kanji is that there
aren’t just many‚ but each one can have a multitude of pronunciations dependent
on which words the kanji is being used for. To look at why this is‚ a brief history of
how modern Japanese got the kanji that are used today is in order.
Early Japanese evolved as a purely spoken language. Without a wri en
form‚ indeed seemingly without having discovered writing at all‚ the first
instances of writ-ing in Japan were in fact not Japanese at all‚ but Chinese: after
having come into con-tact with the Chinese and their intricate writing
system‚ writing in early Japan (circa the late sixth century) was restricted to
immigrant scribes‚ who wrote official records in classical Chinese. While initially a
rarity‚ the Taika reform of the mid-seventh cen-tury changed all that.
Reforming Japan to a more Chinese inspired state‚ based on centralisation of
government and Confucian philosophy‚ the need for a state clergy transformed the
largely illiterate Japanese society to one with literacy as an essential part of court and
intellectual life. The prestigious rank of scribe became a hereditary rank‚ and so as
generations of scribes came and went‚ the Chinese that was used slowly drifted away
from proper Chinese‚ and more towards a hybrid style of Chinese and the form of
Japanese as it was used at the time. However‚ the readings used for Chinese char-
acters were more or less fixed‚ and the readings that survive from that period are
16 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

known today as ‚ go’on‚ readings.

Then‚ in the seventh and eighth century‚ during the Chinese Tang
dynasty‚ there was another cultural exchange between Japan and China‚ leading to a
second influx of readings for Chinese characters. As China changed rulers‚ so too did
the dominant dialect for the Chinese language‚ and the readings that were brought
back to Japan from this second exchange were in some cases radically different from
the initial readings the Japanese had become familiar with. Readings for kanji from
this

period are known as ‚ kan’on‚ readings.

Finally‚ in the fourteenth century‚ during the most famous of Chinese dynas-
ties — the Ming Dynasty — there was another influx of Chinese. This influx came
from two fronts: firstly‚ the merchants doing business with the Chinese brought back
home readings that are referred to as ‚ tō’on‚ and secondly from Zen monks who
went to study Zen Buddhism in China and brought back readings that are referred
to as ‚ sō’on. Rather than a single exchange‚ this was an ongoing effort‚ and so readings
tend to span from the late thirteenth century to well into the Edo period
( ‚ edojidai)‚ also known as the Tokugawa period ( ‚ tokugawajidai)‚
named after the first Edo shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu ( )‚ which lasted until the late
nineteenth century.
The naming for these readings‚ however‚ can be slightly confusing. read-
ings are known as “wu” readings. However‚ this name does not refer to the Wu dy-
nasty (which spans the first two centuries a.d.) but simply to the region the
readings are believed to have come from ( being the name of the Wu region in
Jiangnan‚ ‚ in modern China). The readings are called “han” readings‚ but have es-
sentially nothing to do with the Han Dynasty‚ which spanned the late third
century BCE.
The readings‚ equally confusing‚ are referred to as Tang readings‚ even
though this name would be more appropriate for the readings‚ which actually
derive from Tang Chinese. Rather‚ derive their readings from Chinese as it was
used during the Sung dynasty and onward.
In addition to these changes to Chinese readings‚ the wri en language it-
self slowly moved away from Chinese proper‚ through a Chinese-Japanese hybrid
wri en language‚ to what is essentially the Japanese we know today: mixed
Chinese characters with syllabic script (itself derived from Chinese characters
being used pho-netically) with different readings for Chinese characters typically
indicating different interpretations of the characters used.
While there had been no wri en language before the introduction of
Chinese‚ there had certainly been a language‚ which survived throughout the ages by
virtue of the commoners not needing to bother with writing‚ and thus not
incorporating Chinese into their language as much as royals and officials would. This
eventually led to native Japanese pronunciation being applied to wri en
Chinese‚ giving us two
The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 17

different reading “systems”: the ‚ “on’yomi”‚ which are the Chinese derived
readings‚ and the ‚ “kun’yomi”‚ which are the native Japanese derived readings.
A major problem with kanji is that without a knowledge of the kanji in ques-tion‚ it is
not always clear when to use which reading. There are no rules that state
that certain kanji are read in a particular way when used on their own‚ or when
part of a word‚ and so the only real way to make sure you are using the right
reading for a kanji is to look it up and then remember the reading for the context
the kanji was used in.
This usually leads to the question of why kanji are still being used‚ when
other languages only use phonetic scripts. The Japanese abstracted syllabic scripts
from Chinese for phonetic writing‚ so why the continued reliance on kanji? While
it seems odd that Chinese characters are still being used in a language that also has
a phonetic script‚ the main reason it still uses Chinese characters is because of a
key aspect of the Japanese language: it is homophonic.
Words in the English language‚ for instance‚ are essentially distinct. While
there are a number of words that sound the same but mean different things‚ the
vast majority of words in the English language only mean one thing. In Japanese
we see quite the opposite: there are only 71 distinct single syllable sounds‚ but
there are close to 300 words which can be wri en using a single syllable. It is easy
to see that this means that for any single syllable word you can think of‚ there will
be (on average) at least three other words that you can write in exactly the same
way. How do you know which is meant if you don’t use kanji or additional notes?
For two syllable words‚ we see the same thing; there are a bit over 2000 com-
binations possible when using two syllables (not all combinations of two syllables are
actually used in Japanese) but there are over 4000 words with a two syllable pro-
nunciation. That means that on average‚ for every two syllables you write‚ you can be
referring to one of two words. Even with three and four syllables‚ the problem persists‚
with a greater number of words available than there are possible readings.
Because of this‚ Japanese is known as a “homophonic” language - a
language in which a large number of distinct words will share the same
pronunciation. For in-stance‚ a word pronounced “hare” can refer either to ‘fair
weather’‚ or a ‘boil/swelling’. The word “fumi” can mean either ‘a wri en le er’‚ or
‘distaste’. The word “hai” can mean either ‘yes’‚ ‘actor’‚ ‘ash’‚ ‘lung’ or
‘disposition’‚ and that doesn’t even cover all possible words that are pronounced
similarly: without the use of kanji‚ it would be incredibly hard to decipher wri en
Japanese.
Of course‚ one can argue that spoken Japanese doesn’t rely on kanji‚ so it must
be possible to do away with them in the wri en language too‚ but this ignores the fact
that just because a simplification can be made‚ it might make things harder in other
respects. For instance‚ there are no capital le ers‚ spaces‚ full stops‚ or all those other
syntactic additions in spoken Western languages either‚ and yet we still keep those in
for ease of reading. Similarly‚ the use of kanji has clear benefits to Japanese as a wri en
language: they act as word boundary indicators‚ allow readers to get the gist
 18 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

of a text by quickly glossing over them‚ and solve the problem of needing to apply
contextual disambiguation all the time like one has to in spoken Japanese.
However‚ just because they are useful‚ there have been “improvements” in
th
terms of their use in wri en Japanese. At the turn of the 20 century‚ wri en Japanese
was as complicated as wri en Chinese in terms of kanji use‚ and even more compli-
cated as a wri en language on its own‚ because kana did not reflect pronunciation. In
this classical Japanese‚ a word wri en as ‘sau’ would be pronounced as a long ‘so’‚ and
something like ‘kefu’ would instead be pronounced as a long ‘kyo’. When‚ af-ter the
second world war‚ the Japanese ministry of education reformed the wri en
language‚ they didn’t just get rid of this discrepancy between wri en and spoken
Japanese‚ they also got rid of some 7000 kanji‚ restricting the number of kanji to be
used in daily life to around 3500‚ and designating a set of less than 2000 kanji as part
of general education (initially known as the ‚ ‘touyou’‚ kanji‚ and after refinement
to the set in 1981‚ became known as the ‚ ‘jouyou’‚ kanji). This still sounds like a lot‚
but given that the average English speaker knows around 12‚000 words‚ with
academics knowing on average anywhere up to 17‚000 words‚ having to know
2000 kanji in order to understand the vast majority of your wri en language isn’t
actually that much.

1.3.1 Types of Kanji

One of the things that one notices after having looked at kanji for a while is that a
great number of kanji use a great number of simpler kanji as their building blocks.
Similar to how kana syllables can be combined to form words‚ kanji have
throughout history been combined to form more complex kanji‚ and complicated
kanji have been reduced to combinations of simple kanji for the sake of
remembering them‚ as well as organising them.
Traditionally‚ kanji are organised in four classes‚ and two
categories‚ follow-ing the convention that was introduced in the very first
comprehensive Chinese char-acter dictionary‚ at the beginning of the Western
calendar’s second century. The four classes relate to the way in which characters
are composed:

1. Pictographs ( ‚ shoukeimoji) — Hieroglyphic characters that look like what they

mean (numbers ‚ ‚ ‚ or for ‘mountain’)

2. Ideographs ( ‚ emoji) — Characters that represent things in some visual

way‚ divided into two subclasses:

(1) Simple ideographs ( ‚ shijimoji)‚ such as and (for ‘above’ and ‘below’
respectively)‚ and
 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 19

(2) Compound ideographs ( ‚ kaiimoji)‚ such as ‚ ‘rest’‚ consisting of the

compounds ‚ ‘person’‚ next to ‚ ‘tree’)

3. Form/Reading combinations ( ‚ keiseimoji) — These characters com-bine two kanji

into a single character‚ with one of the two indicating a root meaning‚ and the
other indicating (at least one of) the reading(s) for the char-acter.

The two categories are related to how characters are actually used:

1. Derivatives ( ‚ tenchuumoji) — These are characters of which the mean-ings are

derivations‚ or extensions‚ of the character’s original meaning.

2. Phonetic loans ( ‚ kashamoji) — These are characters which are used purely
phonetically‚ ignoring their original meaning‚ or characters that are con-sistently
used “wrongly”. This class includes those kanji that had to be made up “on the
spot” in order to accommodate words and concepts imported into Japanese from
foreign languages for which no pre-existing kanji form was avail-able.

To make ma ers even more interesting‚ there are also characters which fall
in either the third or fourth class‚ but for which certain meanings have become tied
to certain readings. An example of this is the character ‚ which can mean “music”
when pronounced as “gaku”‚ but mean “comfort” or “enjoyment” when pronounced
as “raku”.

1.3.2 Writing Kanji

Writing kanji follows relatively strict rules. Because kanji are mostly composed of
smaller kanji‚ there is a uniform way of writing that allows people to remember
kanji as combinations of simpler kanji‚ rather than as combinations of strokes that
only once finished‚ form a kanji. There are a limited number of strokes that are
used for drawing kanji.

straight strokes

stroke drawing order examples

left to right ‚
starting at the lower left
called a “tick mark”‚ starting upper left ‚ ‚
 20 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

stroke drawing order examples

starting at the top ‚
starting at the top
starting at the top
starting at the top‚ with a serif to the left at the end ‚
starting upper left‚ and then pulling back at the end
starting at the top‚ with an upward serif at the end ‚

angled strokes

stroke drawing order examples

top to bo om‚ then left to right‚ as one stroke ‚
left to right‚ then top to bo om‚ then left to right
left to right‚ then a hook curving down left
left to right‚ then top to bo om with a serif to the upper left ‚
left to right‚ then top to bo om
top to bo om‚ then left to right with a serif upward at the end
top left to right‚ then down right with an upward serif at the end ‚

multi-angled strokes
stroke drawing order examples
top to bo om‚ then the same as
top left to right‚ then the same as
top left to right‚ top to bo om‚ then the same as ‚
a connected stroke consisting of and

Composition
Several compositional rules apply when a kanji consists of more than one stroke:

1. Strokes that do not intersect each other‚ follow each other in a top to bo om‚ left to
right fashion.
2. Kanji used to form more complex kanji also follow this rule. For instance‚ is wri en
as first ‚ which in turn is first ‚ then ‚ and then is placed underneath.

3. When strokes intersect‚ the following rules apply:

(1) For a vertical/horizontal intersection where the vertical stroke does not protrude at
the bo om‚ such as in ‚ draw the top horizontal first‚ then the vertical (forming )
‚ then the rest.
 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 21

(2) For a vertical/horizontal intersection where the vertical stroke does pro-
trude at the bo om‚ such as in ‚ or ‚ draw all horizontals first‚ and finally the
vertical.
(3) For crossed strokes such as in or ‚ the stroke that runs upper-right to lower-
left is drawn first.
(4) Strokes that intersect complete shapes‚ such as the vertical in or the
horizontal in ‚ are wri en last.
4. Box enclosures‚ such as in ‚ are wri en left first‚ then followed up with to form
‚ then have their content drawn‚ and are then closed at the bo om with .

5. Semi enclosures‚ such as around in or around in ‚ are wri en last‚ after the semi-
enclosed component.

There are a few exceptions to these rules (of course)‚ so when learning
kanji‚ one should always have some reference on how to draw kanji.

1.3.3 Reading kanji: furigana

One problem with kanji is that there is no “built-in” way to tell which pronunciation of
a kanji is being used. For instance‚ when a text has the word in it‚ then it’s clear how to
pronounce the hiragana part‚ “ a”‚ but whether the kanji should be pronounced as ‘i’ or
as ‘okona’ is not clear. The context will help‚ but sometimes for verbs‚ and often for
nouns‚ that’s not enough to figure out how to pronounce a kanji. Because of
this‚ Japanese has a unique aspect to its wri en language: furigana.
Furigana‚ ‚ literally means “sprinkled kana”‚ and refers to phonetic guide
text wri en over or alongside kanji to indicate the specific reading a reader should
use. You have seen several examples of furigana already in this book‚ where
whenever a Japanese term was used involving kanji‚ its pronunciation was wri en
above it in small le ering. This is not something particular to this book‚ but a com-
mon occurence in Japanese wri en material‚ used most often to help the reader dis-
ambiguate or pronounce “hard” words‚ but also for stylistic or even comic effect.
As an illustration of comic effect‚ one might consider the case of long
words that are used with some frequency in a text. These words might only be
given two phonetic guide texts throughout the writing: a first time with the
‘proper’ pronunci-ation‚ and a second time with the pronunciation ‘are’ instead —
a pronoun with the contextual meaning “whatever I wrote last time”.
While comic effect is perhaps an added bonus to using furigana‚ it is certainly
widely used for stylistic effect. For instance‚ while the word does not exist in
Japanese‚ the kanji mean “neck” and “sword” respectively. A Fantasy novelist could use
this “made up” word‚ and add a phonetic text to note that it should be pronounced
22 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

as ‚ “ekusakyuushion soodo”‚ a transliteration of the En-glish words “execution

sword” into Japanese. While this doesn’t make a real word‚ it does allow a writer
to paint with words - using the kanji as “pictures” to instil a sense of meaning‚ and
adding an explicit pronunciation so that the sentence can be pronounced as well as
wri en.
Another‚ even wider used application of furigana is the kind employed in

sentences such as ‚ “I dislike that person”. In this sentence‚ the kanji is used with
the phonetic guide text “hito”‚ meaning “person”. However‚ this is not the real
pronunciation of ‚ which is normally pronounced “yatsu”‚ and doesn’t just mean
“person”‚ but is a derogatory version of the word instead. In essence‚ while the
reading reflects what the speaker is saying‚ the kanji form of the word expresses
what the speaker is actually thinking. This “being able to express both what is
being thought and what is being said at the same time” is something that is
impossible without this particular feature of wri en Japanese.

1.3.4 Reading quirks: compound words

As mentioned in the section on kana pronunciations‚ there’s an odd quirk
involving the pronunciation of compounds words. This is best illustrated with an
example. If we combine the noun ‚ “ki”‚ meaning ‘spirit’‚ or ‘a ention’‚ with the verb
‚ “tsuku”‚ to form the compound verb ‚ then its pronunciation is not “kitsuku”. In
fact‚ the second compound voices‚ leading to the pronunciation being “kidzuku”
(or according to modern spelling‚ “kizuku”). Why this voicing occurs
is‚ sadly‚ com-pletely and entirely unknown. There are no rules that say when
compound words are “supposed” to voice‚ nor are there any rules we can abstract
from all the words that do — any rule that seems to explain half of all voicings that
occur in Japanese‚ seems not to apply to the other half.
The best advice here is simply: “learn compound words as complete
words”. Even though they can be analysed as compounds‚ their meaning is
typically different from what the compounds individually mean‚ so learning them
as combinations of loose‚ smaller words‚ makes very li le sense anyway.

1.3.5 Looking up kanji

If we wanted to look up kanji like ‚ and ‚ then one very obvious feature we see is
that all three seem to share a similar structure: to the left‚ and something else to the
right. This is not a coincidence: most kanji can be described as some bit that is used
by a number of other kanji‚ plus a unique part that identifies that particular kanji.
The bit of kanji that is shared by several (or in some cases lots of) kanji is called a
“radical”‚ and can be used to look up a kanji if you have no idea what it means or
even how to pronounce it.
The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 23

The very first Chinese character dictionary — the Shuōwén Jiězì ( )

‚ published in the year 121 — used 214 such characters as indexing shapes‚ calling
them bùshǒu. (a name that the Japanese copied to the best of their ability‚ calling
them bushu‚ ). While this scheme was thought up almost two millennia
ago‚ amazingly this method of organising kanji has not been fundamentally
altered ever since: while wri en Chinese‚ and later Japanese‚ changed over the
centuries‚ the only thing that has really changed is the number of indexing
radicals. Current indices list around 400 shapes as radicals‚ compared to the
original 214‚ mostly due to many shapes being considered “variations” of the
classic radicals these days. For instance: while originally only was considered a
radical (radical number 49‚ in fact)‚ Chinese characters have changed over the
course of centuries so that now the shapes and are also used‚ and are considered
variations of the original . Kanji that use any of these three shapes may thus be
found grouped together.
Some variations on the traditional radicals are simple‚ such as changing
ever so slightly to become ‚ the only real difference being that the lower horizon-tal
stroke is slanted a li le. However‚ some variations are more drastic‚ such as
becoming ; the top stroke has disappeared. The most drastic changes we see‚ how-
ever‚ are those where a radical is no longer readily recognisable as stemming from
a particular kanji. For instance‚ if you didn’t know anything about kanji‚ you
would be hard pressed to imagine that is actually considered the radical form of .
Or that in kanji such as is actually the radical form of the kanji . Probably the most
confusing of all radicals are the radical forms of the kanji pair and ‚ which both
turn into ‚ but on different sides of kanji: is indexed by ‚ while is indexed by !

1.3.6 Styles
There are several writing “styles” for Japanese‚ each associated with different uses.
The most commonly used style by far is the kaisho‚ ‚ style‚ or “print” style. Text-
books‚ novels‚ newspapers‚ webpages‚ virtually all material intended for mass read-
ing consumption uses this style. There are a few different variants of this form‚ of
which the Minchou‚ ‚ and gothic‚ ‚ variants are the most common. The Minchou
variant is characterised by fine lines and serifs (the font that was used for the Japanese
in this book is a Minchou variant of the kaisho style‚ for instance)‚ while the gothic
variant is characterised by thick‚ clear lining without any serifs. This vari-ant is often
used for signs and pamphlets‚ as well as a visually offset style contrasted to Mincho
(performing the same role italic scripts do for most Western languages).
To show the difference‚ let us look at two images using minchou and gothic
versions of the kaisho typeface. These examples use the poem as text‚ which can be
considered a Japanese equivalent of an alphabet song‚ containing each basic syllable
only once (although some are voiced). Observing the “proper” writing style
24 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

and reading top-down‚ right to left‚this poem is wri en as follows:

Thepoem‚ with classical kana transcription

There are many translations possible‚ given the classical nature of the
poem. However‚ a translation offered by professor Ryuichi Abe in his 1999 work
“The Weav-ing of Mantra: Kûkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse”‚
published by Columbia University Press‚ is as follows:
Although its scent still lingers on —
the form of a flower has sca ered away.
For whom will the glory —
of this world remain unchanged?
Arriving today at the yonder side —
of the deep mountains of evanescent
existence‚ we shall never allow ourselves to drift away —
intoxicated‚ in the world of shallow dreams.

Wri en in Mincho and gothic styles‚ this poem looks like:

The poem‚ in the variant
of style
The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji 25

The poem‚ in the variant of style

In addition to the kaisho style‚ there are the two “cursive” styles called gy-
ousho‚ ‚ and sousho‚ ‚ which are “simplified” forms of wri en Japanese. The
simplification here refers to the fact that these two styles connect many strokes into
single strokes‚ or in extreme cases‚ even simplify entire kanji to single strokes. How-
ever‚ this does not make them simpler to read - far from it‚ the simplifications can
make it much harder to tell certain kanji apart‚ or look up in a dictionary.

Gyousho is usually associated with handwriting: while we can all write let-
ters the way they come rolling out of a printer‚ we have a special way of writing
everything if we do it by hand‚ and in Japanese this is expressed through a slightly
more flowing form of kanji and kana‚ connecting strokes but‚ quite
often‚ preserving most of the looks of a kanji. Sousho‚ on the other hand‚ is the
highly stylised sim-plifications associated with brush calligraphy — shapes are
simplified according to reasonably rigid rules‚ but these simplifications look
drastically different from the original shape‚ and certain shapes are simplified in
such a way that it is nearly im-possible to tell one from another without having
received some form of education in reading and writing brush calligraphy.
Illustrating this again using the poem:
26 The syntax — § 1.3 Kanji

The poem‚ in style

The poem‚ in style

Lastly‚ there are two “traditional” styles that you only find used in very spe-

cific applications: reisho‚ ‚ “square style” or “block style”‚ and tensho‚ ‚ “seal style”.
These two styles are not just traditional but “ancient” styles‚ in that they are styles
found used far back in Japanese history on official records and seals (respec-tively).
Reisho is associated with the style of carved kanji on woodblocks (explaining its ‘block
style’ name)‚ and is still in use today for things such as traditional signs. Ten-sho is
also still used in modern Japan‚ featuring most prominently in personal stamps
— in Japan‚ you do not sign documents with a signature‚ but you put your
personal stamp on the document. Everyone who has ever signed something has
one of these‚ and you’ll probably know them from the distinctive red-ink kanji-in-
a-circle or kanji-in-a-square signs on Chinese and Japanese paintings and brush
works. Illustrating these two styles using the again:
The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes 27

The poem‚ in style

The poem‚ in style

Special dictionaries exist that list kanji in their different forms. These come
in the form of santaijiten‚ ‚ which list kaisho‚ gyousho and sousho forms
(“santai” meaning three forms)‚ and gotaijiten‚ ‚ which list all five forms for a kanji
(“gotai” meaning five forms). There are even reference works which don’t so much
list the forms in a neatly ordered fashion‚ but show you different interpretation
that artists have of the gyousho and sousho forms of kanji‚ which makes them
more “artbook” than reference book‚ even when they are invaluable resources to
students of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy.

1.4 Words and word classes

With all this talk about le ering‚ one
would almost forget that just le ers
hardly get us anywhere if we don’t know
any words to write with them.
However‚ Japanese
28 The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes

doesn’t have quite the same words as most western languages have. You may have
heard the terms “noun” and “verb”‚ and you may even be familiar with terms like
“prepositions” and “adverb”‚ but there are quite a number of these word types‚ and
we’ll look at all of these in terms of whether or not Japanese uses them‚ and what
they look like.

1.4.1 Articles
This is a group of words that you rarely think about as real words: in English‚ “the”‚ “a”
and “an” are articles. They precede a word to tell you whether it’s an undetermined
‘something’ (by using “a” or “an”) or a specific ‘something’ (by using “the”). Japanese‚
on the other hand‚ doesn’t have articles at all. It’s not just that it uses a different way to
indicate the difference between for instance “a car” and “the car”: there are no simple
words you can use to show this difference. This might sound like a rather big
tumbling block‚ but there are many languages which do not have articles‚ and the
people that use those languages can get the meaning across just fine without them - as
we will see when we talk about context later in this chapter.

1.4.2 Verbs
Verbs are words that represent an action either taking place or being
performed‚ and can be modified to show things like negatives or past tense. In
English‚ words like “fly” and “float” are verbs for actions that are being performed‚
and we can make them negative or past tense: “not fly”‚ “not float ”‚ “flew” and
“floated” respectively. Similarly‚ words like “walk” and “eat” are verbs for actions
that can be performed‚ and we can make them negative or past tense too: “not
walk”‚ “not eat”‚ “walked” and “ate” respectively. Verbs also have a regularity: walk
and float are regular verbs in that they follow the same rules: past tense is “… +
ed”‚ but “fly” and “eat” are irregular: they do not become “flyed” and “eated”‚ but
“flew” and “ate”.
Finally‚ verbs can be transitive‚ or intransitive. The verb “walk”‚ for instance‚ is
something that you just do. You walk. When you see this kind of construction in a
sentence‚ we say that the verb is used “intransitively” - in contrast‚ “eat” is a verb you
can either use intransitively (“What are you doing? ” - “I’m eating”) or transitively: “I eat
an apple”. In this use‚ you’re applying the verb’s action to something: “I throw the
ball”‚ “I eat an apple”‚ “I fly a plane” are all examples of this. However‚ there is
something funny about transitivity: some verbs‚ like “walk”‚ you can only use intran-
sitively (we don’t say that we “walked the street”‚ for instance)‚ but many verbs can be
used either intransitively or transitively‚ like “eat”.
There are also a number of verbs that can only be used transitively‚ but these
are special verbs‚ typically called auxiliary verbs. In English‚ “have” and “want” are
examples of these. Without an additional “something”‚ these verbs do not have any
meaning on their own: saying “I have.” or “I want.” is grammatically incorrect. At the
The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes 29

very least‚ you’d need to say something like “I have it.” or “I want that.” for the
verbs to be used correctly.
Japanese verbs are characterised by a high degree of regularity as‚ except for
three verbs‚ all verbs are regular. These regular verbs fall into two categories‚ namely
the “five grade” verbs called godan‚ ‚ and the “single grade” verbs‚ called ichi-
dan‚ . These two categories inflect (take on different tense ‚ mood‚ etc) in the same
way on almost all possible inflections‚ but of course differ on some (otherwise there
wouldn’t be two categories‚ but just one).
With respect to transitivity‚ Japanese verbs can be a li le problematic. Rather
than being labelled intransitive or transitive‚ Japanese verbs are labelled as being
or ‚ literally “verb that works on its own” and “verb that works paired with
something”. Quite often these two map to intransitive and transitive‚ respec-
tively‚ but sometimes they don’t. For instance‚ traversal verbs (such as ‘walk’‚ ‘run’‚
‘fly’‚ ‘sail’‚ etc.) are intransitive in English‚ but are in Japanese: they can be used
with an object to indicate what is being walked or run over‚ what is being flown
through‚ what’s being sailed in‚ etc. As such‚ while in English one cannot “walk the
street”‚ in Japanese this is exactly what you’re doing.
on the other hand do not have a “verb object”; they operate on their
own. For instance‚ in English we can say “I understand the text”‚ and if we look at the
sentence from a grammatical point of view we can say that ‘the text’ may be con-
sidered the verb object for the verb ‘understand’. However‚ in Japan the verb for
understanding‚ ‚ is a verb‚ and so even though you’re used to thinking of
“understanding” as a transitive verb action‚ you suddenly have to get used to it
being an intransitive verb action in Japanese. Particularly at first‚ this can be some-
what confusing‚ but like all foreign languages‚ exposure to frequently used verbs
means you’ll quickly develop a sense of how to use them properly (even if you
can’t remember the terms ‘intransitive’‚ ‘transitive’‚ and !).

1.4.3 Nouns

Nouns are words that are used to name “somethings”‚ although those somethings
don’t need to be things you can actually hold in your hand and look at: “car”‚ “New
York”‚ “magnification” and “ambiguity” are all nouns‚ but while you can touch a
car‚ or point at New York‚ it’s impossible to point at something and go “that is
magnification” or “that is ambiguity”. A good rule of thumb is “if you can say it’s
‘something else’‚ it’s a noun”:
30 The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes

“This car is old.”

“New York is hot.”
“The magnification is high.” “This
ambiguity is omnipresent.”

These are all examples where the noun is said to be something else (and
that something else is known as an “adjective”). This even works with things that
you might think are verbs‚ but actually aren ’t: “walking” for instance looks like it’s
a verb‚ because “walk” is a verb‚ but there are instances when “walking” is most
definitely a noun. Of the following two sentences‚ the first uses “walking” as a
verb‚ while the second uses “walking” as a noun:

“I went to work walking.”

“I like walking.”

We can verify that in the first sentence we’re using a verb‚ and in the second a
noun‚ by replacing “walking” with a word which we know is a noun‚ like “cheese”:

“I went to work
cheese.” “I like cheese.”

The first sentence suddenly makes no sense at all anymore‚ while the second
sentence is still perfectly fine. This “words can belong to multiple classes‚ and which it
is depends on how it’s used in a sentence” is something quite important to remember
when dealing with Japanese‚ as well as learning foreign languages in general.
As a last bit of noun related information‚ in Japanese (as in English‚ in fact)
nouns do not inflect. They usually need verbs to indicate negative‚ past tense‚ and
other such things: in English we can say “This is not a book” or “This was a
book”‚ but the negative and past tense comes from inflections of the verb “be”‚ not
the noun itself.

1.4.4 Pronouns

There is a special class of words called “pronouns” in English‚ which act as if

they’re nouns‚ but are used to replace nouns in sentences. The best known
pronoun in the English language is the word “it”‚ but words like “this”‚ “that” as
well as “you” or “we” are all examples of pronouns. Rather than constantly referring
directly to what we’re talking about‚ it is far more natural to use pronouns instead:
The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes 31

“I bought a really good book. I had already read it‚ having borrowed it
from the library last month‚ but I saw it in the book store on discount‚ so I
decided to buy it.”

In this sentence‚ the pronoun “it” is used quite a number of times‚ replacing
“the book” at every instance:

“I bought a really good book. I had already read the book‚ having
borrowed the book from the library last month‚ but I saw the book in the
book store on discount‚ so I decided to buy the book.”

This sounds unnatural to English ears‚ even though grammatically

speaking there is nothing wrong. In Japanese‚ pronouns are part of a class of
words colloquially referred to as “kosoado”‚ ‚ for the fact that they all start with
either “ko-”‚ “so-”‚ “a-” or “do-” depending on their level of proximity (for
instance‚ ‘this’ vs. ‘that’) and whether they are stative or interrogative (‘that’ vs.
‘what’).

1.4.5 Nominalisers
Japanese has an extra class pertaining to nouns‚ known as the nominalisers: words
that‚ when used with other words or phrases‚ turn these words or phrases into
some-thing that can act as if the whole construction is a noun. In English‚ an
example of this is the collection of words “the way in which”:

“The way in which the government is handling the issue of criminal law is
questionable.”

In this sentence‚ “the way in which” is used to turn “the government is han-
dling the issue of criminal law” into a single noun construction. As such we can re-
place “the way in which the government is handling the issue of criminal law” with
a simple pronoun if we wish to talk about it in later sentences:

“The way in which the government is handling the issue of criminal law is
questionable. It does not seem to be motivated by sound principles‚ but
by back-office politics.”

Japanese has quite a number of these nominalisers‚ each with its own mean-
ing and nuance‚ and we shall look at these nominalisers in the chapter on language
pa erns‚ too.
32 The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes

1.4.6 Adjectives
As we saw in the section on nouns‚ any word that can be used to be “more specific”
about a noun is called an adjective. Words like “big”‚ “cold”‚ “square” can all be
used as adjectives to be much more specific about‚ for instance‚ the noun “box”:
“This is a box.”
“This is a square box.”
“This is a big‚ square box.”
“This is a big‚ cold‚ square box.”

In Japanese‚ there are two types of adjectives‚ namely “verbal” adjectives and
“nominal” adjectives‚ the difference being that the first type can — unlike in English
— be inflected without relying on a copula verb. In English‚ we have to say “The car
was fast”‚ but in Japanese this “was fast” does not use a copula verb such as ‘was’‚ but
the adjective itself can convey this meaning. In essence‚ in Japanese we get something
akin to “The car is fast-in-past-tense”. The copula stays the way it is‚ but the adjective
itself changes‚ something which trips up many beginning students of Japanese.
The “noun” adjectives behave in the same way English adjectives
do‚ needing a copula to change. “It was a square box” is the same in Japanese as it
is in English‚ with “is” becoming “was”‚ and the adjective staying the way it is.
While we can use adjectives to be more specific about a noun‚ they cannot
be used to be more specific about a verb. As an example‚ in the next two sentences
the word “fast” is used as an adjective in the first‚ but is used as a different kind of
word in the second sentence:

“This is a fast car.” “I

walked quite fast.”

In the first sentence‚ the word “fast” is used to be more specific about the
noun “car”‚ but in the second sentence ‚ the word “fast” is used to be more specific
about the verb action “walk”. While they look like the same word‚ their use falls in
different word classes. When used to be specific about a noun‚ a word is called an
adjective. When used to be specific about a verb‚ it’s called an adverb.

1.4.7 Adverbs
Using words to be specific about verbs and verb actions is called using them ad-
verbially. In fact‚ in that sentence the word “adverbially” is an adverb‚ le ing us be
specific about the way in which “using” is used. While in English it can sometimes
be confusing as to whether a word is being used as an adjective or as an adverb‚ in
The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes 33

Japanese this overlap does not exist: both verbal and nominal adjectives are modi-
fied (in different ways) so that they can be used as adverbs instead. Because of this‚
there is no way to mistake whether a word is used as adjective or adverb when
you look at a sentence.
In addition to adjectives-turned-adverb‚ Japanese also has words that are
only adverbs. The most important of these are the quantifiers‚ which include
things like “a lot”‚ “not so much” and “often”.

1.4.8 Particles
Japanese has an extra word class that isn’t found in most western languages: the
particle class. Words in this class fulfil a wide variety of roles: denoting grammar
explicitly‚ adding emphasis‚ disambiguating‚ marking how parts of a sentence bear
relation to each other‚ supplying reason‚ contradiction‚ logical arguments‚ you
name it — there is probably a particle that can be used for it.
Most particles are suffixes‚ so that when you use a particle to indicate for
instance a contrast between two things‚ it gets added after the first thing‚ rather
than adding it in front like in English.

English: While (X is the case)‚ (also Y).

Japanese: (X is the case) while‚ (also Y).

Within this word class‚ there is an important subclass known as the

counters. Like Chinese‚ but very much unlike most western languages‚ counting in
Japanese requires not just a knowledge of numbers‚ but also of which particle to
use in order to describe the category of things you are counting. In the same way
that you can ask for two mugs of beer or two glasses of beer in English‚ you need
to use the counter for “mugs” or “glasses” in Japanese. However‚ while you can ask
for “two teas” in an English establishment‚ this kind of request is impossible in
Japanese. You have to order “two (units of) tea”‚ where the counter that you chose
for your units makes the difference between whether you’re asking for two cups or
tea‚ two bags of tea‚ or are accidentally asking for two sheets of tea.

1.4.9 Prefixes
Some particles‚ as well as some common concept markers‚ are prefixes rather than suf-
fixes — they are placed in front of words belonging to certain word classes. A handful
of special prefixes are used for things like marking words as honorific‚ performing “in-
herent” negation (an English example of which is “the house was windowless” rather
than “the house had no windows”)‚ indicating repetitions (“rereading a book”) and
acting as category marker for categories such as “new”‚ “big” or “most”‚ as well as
34 The syntax — § 1.4 Words and word classes

some more exotic categories such as extents or limits. These will be discussed in
detail in the chapter on particles‚ in the section on prefixes.

1.4.10 Onomatopoeia and mimesis

Two final word classes which are important to know when dealing with Japanese
are the onomatopoeia‚ and the mimesis. Quite a mouthful‚ onomatopoeia (from the
Greek onomato-‚ “name”‚ and poi- “to make”) are words that are used to reflect the
sounds that things make. For instance‚ “The heavy rock splooshed into the lake” is
an example of an onomatopoeic verb. It doesn’t tell us what the rock actually did
— namely‚ fall into the water — but implies it by virtue of the sound we know a
rock falling in water makes: “sploosh”.
In addition to such “sound” words‚ there are also “state” words‚ which do
not indicate a particular sound‚ but indicate a particular property. Rare in
English‚ an example of this would be the word “gloopy” when describing
something. Calling something “gloopy” doesn’t tell you something objective about
it‚ but you can sur-mise it’s probably of a viscous liquid gel-like consistency‚ as
well as unpleasant to the touch.
While in English (and in most other western languages) using these words
is considered a sign of a poor grasp of the language (after all‚ why use a word like
“gloopy” when you can call something a “liquid‚ but viscous‚ unpleasant gel”)‚ and
mainly associated with “children’s language”‚ in Japanese using onomatopoeia is
es-sential to natural sounding language: with thousands of these words available
to choose from‚ each with its own connotations and implications‚ picking the right
ono-matopoeia or mimesis at the right time is something that demonstrates a high
level of competency in the language.

Onomatopoeia‚ called (‘giongo’‚ in which the ‘gi’ part means ‘to mimic’‚
the ‘on’ part means ‘sound’‚ and the ‘go’ part means ‘word’) and mimesis‚ called
(‘gitaigo ’‚ in which ‘tai’ means condition or state)‚ are some of the hardest words to
learn‚ as they usually carry very specific nuances in meaning. For instance‚ in
relation to a leaking tap‚ a Japanese person might say “the water was dripping
out”‚ picking one specific word from among a great number of possible
onomatopoeia to indicate whether the dripping was intermi ent or
continuous‚ whether the drips were light or heavy‚ whether their impact in the
sink was almost silent or accompanied by back-splash noises‚ each of these
qualities being represented by a different onomatopoeic word.
Because of this‚ onomatopoeia and mimesis are an unofficial yardstick
when it comes to learning Japanese: if you can use the right onomatopoeic
expression at the right time‚ you have mastered a crucial element to speaking
natural sounding Japanese.
The syntax — § 1.5 Sentence structure 35

1.4.11 Compound words

This is technically not a word class‚ but a language feature: in some languages several
words can be combined into single words with more meaning that just the individual
parts. This practice‚ called compounding‚ is something that some languages have a
knack for‚ and some languages simply do not bother with. English‚ for instance‚ is a
language in which compound words are rare — although not unheard of. A common
English compound word is the word “teapot”‚ for instance. A combination of the
nouns “tea” and “pot”‚ this would have to be a pot for tea. However‚ it ’s not really a
pot‚ it’s more a decanter. Similarly‚ the “tea” in question is never dry tea leaf‚ even
though that’s also called “tea” in English; it has to be boiled water infused with tea leaf.
So‚ the single compound noun “teapot” has more meaning than if you looked at the
meaning of just the two nouns it was built from.
This “joining up two (or more) words to form new‚ single words” is one of
the major dividing lines we can use when trying to classify languages: English is a
language sparse in compound words‚ as are French‚ Spanish and Italian‚ but
German‚ Danish‚ Dutch‚ Finnish‚ Polish‚ Hungarian‚ Arabian‚ and also
Japanese‚ are languages in which compound words are frequently used.
In Japanese‚ nouns are not the only compound words available —
compound adjectives as well as compound verbs are also quite common.

1.5 Sentence structure

In addition to knowing which word classes are used in a language‚ we can also
look at languages in terms of how sentences are structured. The most simplistic
categorisa-tion of languages in this respect is by looking at the “Subject‚ Object and
Verb” ordering. This categorisation looks at how languages order these three words
classes‚ leading to the conclusions that English‚ for instance‚ is an SVO
language‚ while Japanese is an SOV language: in English‚ most sentences are of the
form “we do something”‚ where the subject (“we”) precedes the verb (“do”) which in
turn precedes the object (“something”) for that verb. Japanese‚ in contrast‚ follows a
different ordering: most sentences are of the form “we‚ something do” (with the
comma added purely for ease of reading) where the subject precedes the object for
the verb‚ after which the actual verb is used. There are also VSO languages‚ such as
formal Arabic or Welsh‚ where the sentence structure is predominantly
“do‚ we‚ something” and VOS languages‚ such as Malagasi (used in Madagascar)
and Fijian (used in Fiji) where the structure is predominantly “do something‚ we”.
However‚ while this terminology allows us to broadly categorise
languages‚ based on what the ‘typically used’ pa ern looks like‚ it doesn’t tell us
anything about how correct or incorrect sentences are if they do not adhere to these
S/V/O “rules”. For instance‚ while “we ate some cake” is a normal English sentence‚ a
slightly less conventional but still grammatically perfectly valid English sentence
could be “cake;
36 The syntax — § 1.5 Sentence structure

we ate some”. This sentence does not fall in the SVO category that is associated
with English‚ but that doesn’t mean it ’s an incorrect sentence — it just means the
SVO label doesn’t tell the whole story. This becomes particularly apparent when
we look at what “minimal sentences” may look like in different languages.
In English‚ a minimal sentence (that is‚ one that isn’t considered an expression
like “hi!” or “hmm”) consists of a subject and a verb: “I ate” or “she runs” are examples
of minimal sentences. Trying to shorten a sentence further — without making the
sentence context sensitive — yields broken English‚ which is arguably simply not
English. This notion of context is important: if we are asked “How many cookies are
left?” and we answer with “four”‚ then this “four” is technically a sentence comprised of
a single word‚ and sounds natural. However‚ if we were to use the sentence “four.” on
its own‚ it is impossible to tell what we mean by it. This means that while English is an
SVO language‚ it’s really an SV(O) language: you need an S‚ you need a V‚ and if you
use an O‚ it comes last‚ but you’re not obliged to have one.
When we look at Japanese we see the S/V/O category crumbling even fur-
ther. Rather than just being an SOV language‚ it’s actually an (S)(O)V language:
You need a verb‚ but you don’t need a subject or object at all to form a correct
minimal sentence in Japanese. While in English saying “ate” is considered not
enough in-formation to make sense of‚ Japanese is a language in which competent
listeners or readers fill in these blanks themselves‚ choosing which subject and
object make the most sense‚ given what they know about the speaker. This is what
makes Japanese hard: most of the time‚ in every day Japanese‚ subjects and objects
will be omi ed left and right because‚ as a competent listener‚ you should know
what they should have been — Japanese relies heavily on people’s ability to guess
what someone else is talking about‚ something which can only come through
regular exposure to‚ and use of‚ the language.

1.5.1 Word order

While it’s all well and good to know that minimal Japanese is an (S)(O)V language‚
it’s also important to know that in Japanese‚ grammar is put directly into the sen-
tence through the use of particles. While in English grammar only becomes appar-
ent through the positioning of words‚ in Japanese words are “tagged”‚ as it
were‚ with their grammatical role. To illustrate this‚ an example sentence:

kinou wa inu ga watashi no gohan o tabemashita.

This sentence is composed of several “blocks”: ‚ ‘kinou wa’‚ indicates the

noun ‘kinou’ (“yesterday”) as context. In ‚ ‘inu ga’‚ the noun ‘inu’ (“dog”) is marked
as verb actor‚ in ‚ ‘watashi no’‚ the noun ‘watashi’ (“I”/“me”) is made
The syntax — § 1.5 Sentence structure 37

genitive (forming “my”) and linked to ‚ ‘gohan o’‚ the noun ‘gohan’ (“dinner”)
marked as direct verb object‚ with the final word ‘tabemashita’ being the past tense
of the verb “eat”:

“Yesterday‚ (a/my/our) dog ate my dinner.”

In English‚ there is very li le position variation possible in this sentence: “A

dog ate my dinner‚ yesterday” is still okay‚ but rearranging the sentence to read
“Yes-terday‚ my dinner ate a dog” completely changes the meaning of the sentence
from something unfortunate to something unse ling. In Japanese‚ the explicit
presence of grammar markers in a sentence means that rearranging the “blocks”
doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence at all:

kinou wa watashi no gohan o inu ga tabemashita.

“Yesterday: my dinner‚ (a/my/our) dog ate.”

watashi no gohan o‚ kinou wa‚ inu ga tabemashita.

“My dinner — yesterday — (a/my/our) dog ate.”

kinou wa inu ga tabemashita‚ watashi no gohan

o. “Yesterday (a/my/our) dog ate; my dinner.”

tabemashita‚ inu ga‚ watashi no gohan o‚ kinou

wa. “Ate‚ a dog (did)‚ my dinner‚ yesterday.”

All of these are perfectly valid sentences in Japanese‚ because all the words
with meaning are explicitly tagged with the role they play in the sentence. While
some of these sentences will sound more usual than others‚ they all mean the same
thing. However‚ once we start moving the particles around‚ pairing them with
words from different blocks‚ the same problem arises as we saw for English:

( )( )
kinou wa inu ga watashi no gohan o tabemashita
“Yesterday‚ (a/my/our) dog ate my dinner.”
38 The syntax — § 1.5 Sentence structure

( )( )
kinou wa gohan ga watashi no inu o tabemashita
“Yesterday‚ (the) dinner ate my dog.”

In summary‚ it is not so much word order that inherently gives meaning to

a sentence in Japanese‚ but the ‘semantic blocks’ of words‚ paired with specific par-
ticles. Their combination tells you what the block means‚ and what role it plays in
a sentence. As long as the pairings are preserved‚ you can order these blocks in
any way you like and maintain the same sentence meaning. Which blocks go
where‚ fi-nally‚ depends entirely on what you believe is the most important bit of
the sentence‚ as is highlighted in the next section.

1.5.2 Emphasis
Another feature of languages is where emphasis lies in a sentence. In English‚ we
tend to put the most pressing bit of information early in the sentence‚ and then say
whatever is further relevant to this information later in the sentence. The previous
sentence is a good example of this: the main point is that “important information
comes early”‚ which is found earlier in the sentence than the additional
information. In Japanese‚ things are the other way around: the more important the
information is‚ the later it will be placed in a sentence.
A rather simple example is the following pair of sentences:

“I fell off my bike while riding home today.”

kyou wa jitensha de kaerichuu de korondeshimaimashita.

While the English sentence is up front with the emphasis‚ namely that we fell
off our bike‚ the Japanese sentence doesn’t actually tell you what happened until the
very last word‚ ‘korondeshimaimashita’ — “(I) (regre ably/unfortunately) fell down”.
Being unfamiliar with this difference in emphasis (point‚ then details in En-
glish vs. details‚ then point in Japanese) can lead to confusion when dealing with
words in which this ordering is important‚ such as indicating simultaneous actions: in
English‚ “while”. If someone asks “what are you doing?” and we answer with “eat-ing
some dinner while watching TV”‚ then the main activity is eating dinner. The
“watching TV” is additional information‚ but not strictly speaking required for the an-
swer to be complete. In Japanese‚ with the same core information and details used‚ the
placement is opposite: the Japanese answer “terebi o minagara‚ gohan o tabe-masu”
lists “watching TV” first (‘terebi o mi-’)‚ then adds the marker for simultaneous action
(‘nagara’) and then concludes with “eating dinner” (‘gohan o tabemasu’). Both
The syntax — § 1.6 Pitch and accents 39

in English and Japanese‚ the concise answer would simply have been “eating
dinner”‚ or “gohan o tabemasu”.
Another‚ more common example is the use of “rather”: “I would rather have
X than Y” is a well known sentence pa ern in English‚ listing the thing with most
preference first. This becomes even more obvious in the shortened pa ern‚ “I would
rather have X”. In Japanese‚ the ‘rather’ construction uses the particle ‘yori’
and‚ like before‚ the order is quite opposite:
Y yori X no hou ga ii to omoimasu

Trying to project the way ‘rather’ works in English onto what ‘yori’ means
can easily lead to confusion: the English word ‘rather’ assumes that the most
important bit is on the left‚ so if we think ‘yori’ does the same — because we know
it can be translated as ‘rather’ — we might mistakenly believe that this sentence
says “I would rather have Y than X”‚ instead of what it really means‚ “I would
rather have X than Y”. While potentially confusing at first‚ this reversal of
placement for emphasis becomes more intuitive the more one practises Japanese.
However‚ having important information at the end of a sentence leads to a
unique problem when interpreting or translating Japanese: how does one deal
with trailing sentences? In English‚ when the la er part of a sentence is left off‚ the
most important information has already been presented‚ so when the sentence is
cut off we might be missing the details‚ but only the details. In Japanese‚ and other
languages where more important information comes later in the sentence‚ leaving
off the la er part of a sentence leaves a reader or listener with the details ‚ but no
knowledge of what these details actually apply to!
While‚ of course‚ this doesn’t lead to problems for people who grew up
using a language in which emphasis comes later in a sentence‚ this ‘feature’ can be
a great pain for people who grew up with “important bits first”. To them‚ it feels
very much like the language is based on the concept of “filling in the
blanks”‚ without any indication of what can be used to fill them in. Sadly‚ this too
can only be remedied through continued exposure to‚ in this case‚ Japanese‚ so that
one becomes intuitively familiar with which words might be implied if they’re left
off.

1.6 Pitch and accents

Linguistically speaking‚ Japanese - like various other Asian languages such as Thai or
Chinese - uses syllable pitch to place accents in words. Quite often you will find this
explained as Japanese being a language with two pitch levels‚ high and low‚ which
makes it relatively easy to learn compared to a more complicated language (in terms
of pitch) such as Chinese‚ which has four pitch levels for Mandarin‚ and at least six for
Cantonese. However‚ this creates the false impression that there are only two tones at
which you should pronounce Japanese‚ which is simply not true. Instead‚
 40 The syntax — § 1.7 Gender roles

accent through pitch in Japanese is best described in terms of tone difference:

1. If a word has its accent on the first syllable‚ then the pitch of the word starts at a
high tone and then drops in pitch at the second syllable. After this‚ the pitch may
remain either constant‚ or (slowly) go down as the rest of the word is pronounced.
Due to this relatively large difference between the first and second syllable‚ the
first syllable is considered accented by the Japanese ear.
2. If a word has its accent on a syllable other than the first or the last‚ the pitch may
remain constant or rise gradually until the syllable after the one that is
accented‚ where the pitch goes down suddenly to create the pitch difference that is
considered an accent in Japanese.
3. If a word has its accent on the last syllable‚ the pitch may remain constant or rise
gradually until the last syllable‚ which is pronounced at a notably higher
pitch‚ marking it as accented to the Japanese ear.
4. If a word has no accent‚ the pitch may remain constant or rise gradually. This
covers the majority of Japanese words and while the pitch may change‚ the lack of
sudden discontinuous change makes this sound unaccented to the Japanese ear.
The presence and order of pitch change can make the difference between
rain ( ) and candy ( )‚ both pronounced “ame” but with their accents on the first and
sec-ond syllable respectively‚ or more drastically between an umbrella ( ) and
syphilis ( )‚ both pronounced “kasa” but again with their accents on the first and
second syllable respectively.
For sentences‚ too‚ pitch plays an important role. A sentence ending with a
high and then a low syllable‚ compared to the same sentence ending with the last two
syllables in neutral pitch‚ will be experienced as a question rather than as a
statement‚ for instance. Anger‚ lecturing‚ boredom‚ and a wide variety of emotions can
be told from the pitch pa ern of a sentence‚ not unlike in most Western languages.
However‚ while in western languages pitch only adds emotion‚ in Japanese‚ a
misplaced pitch may also change the meaning of the words being used.

1.7 Gender roles

Due to the different formality levels in Japanese‚ a particular style of speech is often
associated with a particular gender — the more polite and reserved speech being
associated with female speech‚ and the more brash and forward plain speech being
associated with male speech. While this is an understandable association‚ the
prob-lem with associating speech pa erns with genders is that people often
mistakenly apply backward logic: if the female speech pa ern is reserved‚ then
reserved speech is female speech.
The syntax — § 1.8 Context language 41

This isn’t how it works‚ though. Typically‚ speech pa erns fall into categories
such as polite reserved speech‚ plain informal speech or honorific speech‚ which are
used by a particular gender more than the other by virtue of statistics.
However‚ this does not mean that what is considered “female speech” is never
used by men‚ or what is considered “male speech” isn’t used by women‚ as there is
no such thing as exclusively male or female speech. A more accurate distinction is
to consider speech pa erns as direct versus indirect or assertive versus reserved.
Women tend to be more reserved and use less direct speech‚ and men tend to be
more assertive and use more direct speech. However‚ when the situation warrants
it‚ there is nothing to prevent men from using reserved indirect speech‚ or women
from using assertive direct speech. It’s all about what the social se ing warrants.
This said‚ there are a few words (not speech pa erns) that are genuinely
effem-inate or masculine‚ such as the effeminate dubitative particle ‚ or the masculine
personal pronoun . It is important to notice that the labels used here are “effem-
inate” and “masculine”‚ and not “female” and “male”. Very effeminate men (such as
transvestites or homosexuals) may very well use very effeminate words‚ and hard-
core business ball-busting career women may very well use very masculine words
to demonstrate their dominance. Again‚ it’s all about the social se ing.

1.8 Context language

As mentioned in the section on sentence structure‚ Japanese is a context sensitive
lan-guage‚ relying heavily on the reader or listener to be able to keep track of
information during a conversation‚ and omi ing any information once it has
become contextual. Before we look at an example of this‚ we will look at how a
“context” differs from a “subject”‚ as this can cause some confusion: in our day-to-
day experience of language‚ the words ‘context’ and ‘subject’ refer to the same
thing. If a public speaker at some convention is talking about the physics of Star
Trek‚ then we can say that “the subject of his talk is the physics of Star Trek”‚ or
that his talk should be interpreted within the context of “the physics of Star
Trek”‚ making the two refer to essentially the same idea — a topic.
Grammatically‚ the terms are much further apart. Rather than both “subject”
and “context” being able to refer to some topic‚ the two mean wildly different things. A
“context” is the overall topic of some text or conversation; it doesn’t necessarily have to
be mentioned‚ but it is clear what the text or conversation is all about. A “subject”‚ on
the other hand‚ refers to specific words in individual sentences within a text or
conversation. The best way to indicate the difference when we use the words “context”
and “subject” from a grammatical perspective is as follows:

“A sentence says something about a subject‚ within a certain context.”

 42 The syntax — § 1.8 Context language

For instance‚ given that this section talks about “context”‚ the sentence “It can
be a problematic ‘feature’ of Japanese for people who only know English” is readily
interpreted as meaning “Context can be a problematic ‘feature’ of Japanese for people
who only know English”. You know what “it” refers to because of the context you’re
reading it in. Had this sentence been in a section on the sparsity of language‚ then you
would have understood “it” to refer to “the sparsity of Japanese”.
In Japanese‚ this concept of “sentences say things about subjects within a
cer-tain context” is taken further than in English. The following conversation may
illus-trate this:

A:
B:
A:
B: A: ……

Transcribed‚ this reads:

1: atashi no koppu o mikakemasen deshita ka?

2: aa‚ mitemasen.
A: okashii wa. tsui sakki made mo etandesukedo.
B: ima no teeburu ni oitekiteshima a no dewanai deshou ka.
A: a… soukamoshiremasen‚ ne.

This conversation can be translated to natural sounding English in the fol-

lowing manner:

1: “You haven’t seen my cup‚ have you?”

2: “No‚ I haven’t seen it.”
1: “That’s odd. I just had it a moment ago.”
2: “Perhaps you left it on the table in the living room?”
1: “Ah! That might be.”

In this translation there are a number of contextual simplifications: “you”

has been used to refer to a specific person‚ “it” has been used to contextually refer
to the cup in question‚ and “that” has been used by speaker A to refer to what
speaker B said. In Japanese‚ rather than using contextual words like this‚ they are
simply omi ed entirely. If we do a literal translation to English‚ we see a rather
different‚ context-heavy kind of conversation:
 The syntax — § 1.8 Context language 43

1: “Haven’t seen my cup?”

2: “Indeed‚ haven’t seen.”
1: “Odd… had just a moment ago.”
2: “Could be left on living room table?”
1: “Ah! Might be so.”

It’s not just “it” which has been omi ed‚ even personal pronouns are typically
left out. This makes for a seemingly very sparse language‚ which can be hard to in-
terpret‚ especially when one is just starting out with the language. For this
reason‚ some textbooks and courses will present Japanese sentences with all the
contextual information in them — while this does not violate Japanese grammar‚ it
does lead to highly artificial sentences‚ existing only in textbooks rather than reflecting
the lan-guage as it is actually used. Because of this‚ all the examples in this book will
try to use “natural” Japanese phrases‚ with contextual words required for the sentence
to make sense in translation added in parentheses. For instance:

A: okashii wa. tsui sakki made mo etandakedo.

A: (That’s) odd. (I) just had (it) (a) moment ago.

And with that‚ we are finally able to move on from introductory text to the
language itself: let’s sink our teeth in some grammar!
44 The syntax — § 1.8 Context language
Chapter 2

Verb grammar

As mentioned in the introductory chapter on syntax‚ there are two classes of verbal
words in Japanese: verbs‚ and verbal adjectives. Both of these can be considered to
consist of two parts: a verbal stem‚ called the “gokan” ( )‚ which indicates what the
core meaning of a verb or verbal adjective is‚ and some additional hiragana called
“okurigana” ( )‚ which is used to indicate inflection.
Unlike English‚ where verb stems are already usable on their own — the
verb stem of “walk” is “walk”‚ for instance — verb stems in Japanese require an
inflection indicator in the form of okurigana‚ so before we move on to the actual
rules of gram-mar concerning Japanese verbs and verbal adjectives‚ we must look
at how verbs and verbal adjectives are composed in Japanese. We will first be
deconstructing the verbs‚ after which we’ll deconstruct the verbal adjectives.
Note that in this chapter‚ as well as all following chapters‚ Japanese will no
longer be romanised. So‚ if you haven’t learned the hiragana script yet: now would
be a good time to start!

2.1 Inflecting
In English‚ we are used to thinking of verb inflections in terms of ‘the verb’ plus
some text that indicates the inflection. We consider “walked” to consist of “walk”
with “-ed” tacked on the end‚ and “passing” as being “pass” with “-ing” added to it.
However‚ many verb forms in English actually use helper verbs‚ so things like
“will help”‚ “let’s dance”‚ “be able to dive” are considered verb chains‚ with the
helper verb(s) indicating the tense‚ mood and aspect.
In Japanese‚ all verb inflections are in fact chains of helper verbs and verbal
adjectives‚ but rather than being a long list of separated verbs like in English‚ they
are added to the base verb one by one until all the tenses‚ moods and aspects have
been dealt with. For instance‚ the verb construction means “(I)

45
46 Verb grammar — § 2.1 Inflecting

had been made to wait”. While hard to tell without spaces or a knowledge of
verbal grammar at this point‚ this is actually a series of six verbs chained together
in a very specific way:
First‚ we see ( ) ‚ the imperfect base form for ‚ “wait”. This base form is used
when forming the negative‚ passive‚ causative or ‘pseudo-future’ form of a verb.
Then we see ‚ the continuative base for the helper verb for causatives‚ . This base
form is a general purpose ‘intermediate form’ for a great number of inflections.
Then ‚ the continuative base for the helper verb for conjunction‚ . Then ‚ the
continuative base for the verb ‚ “to be” for animate objects. Combined with it forms
the “- ” form‚ which marks a verb as present progressive. Then ‚ the continuative
base for the helper verb for politeness‚ . Then finally ‚ the terminal base for the
helper verb for past tense‚ .
We can see two things in this decomposition. First‚ the ‘core’ verb is all the
way at the beginning‚ and the helper verbs follow each other in inflection order:
first the causative of “wait” is formed ‚ then that is made a present progressive‚ this
is then made polite‚ and then finally the whole construction is turned from present
to past tense. Second‚ all the verbs are in some “base” form; this is the crucial
difference between Japanese verbal grammar and most other languages.
There are five “base forms” which are used in combination with specific in-
flections‚ and knowing how to identify these base forms makes verbal grammar
sig-nificantly easier‚ because it lets us view complex verb conjugations in terms of a
series of simple “base form” + “helper” rules. For the past tense progressive
causative for instance‚ we see a huge inflection that’s really composed of four fairly
simple rules‚ applied one after another:

inflection rule example

causative imperfect base + → +
progressive continuative base + →+
polite continuative form + →+
past tense continuative form + →+

All complex verb constructions can be described in this way‚ being a series
of fixed-order simple rules being applied. What’s more‚ because the two different
verb classes in Japanese mostly differ in what their base forms look like‚ inflecting
verbs in Japanese is mostly a ma er of picking the right base form‚ and then
applying the same rules for both verb classes‚ making most inflections the same for
the two. Verbal adjectives also rely on this concept of “base form” + “helper”‚ and as
will become apparent when looking at the rules of grammar for verbal
words‚ some inflections are formed by adding verbal adjectives to verbs‚ while
others are formed by adding verbs to verbal adjectives.
Verb grammar — § 2.1 Inflecting 47

Without ge ing ahead of the material‚ let us first examine which base forms
are used by verbs and verbal adjectives‚ and what they look like for each of the
verbal word classes.

2.1.1 Inflection bases

Traditionally‚ there are six “base forms” for Japanese verbal words‚ of which five are
still used in modern Japanese. This traditional scheme is called ‚ literary style‚
and is associated with classical Japanese‚ while the modern scheme is called
‚ colloquial style‚ and is associated with normal modern Japanese. Because it is
always a good idea to look at where a language has come from‚ in order to
understand why it does what it does in its current form‚ the relation between
classical and modern Japanese will be mentioned wherever possible.
First‚ let’s look at which base forms are used in classical and modern Japanese:

Base for…

Imperfect constructions‚ such as negative form and

‘pseudo-future’‚ as well as passive‚ potential‚ honorific
and causative forms.

Continuative and conjunctive constructions‚ covering the

majority of constructions involving helper verbs‚ as well
as joining up sentences and forming nouns.

no longer used Finalising form. In modern Japanese‚ this role has been
assumed by theinstead.

A ributive constructions (using verbs like adjectives)‚ and

in modern Japanese‚ finalised form.
() Perfect constructions. In modern Japanese this form is only
used for hypothetical constructions‚ which is why it’s
colloquially known as the‚ “assuming” form.
Imperative constructions‚ such as commands and
prohibitive commands.

The way these bases are formed for the two classes of verbs and the verbal
adjectives is the major difference between these verbal classes. Verbs in Japanese are
mostly regular (there are only a handful of verbs with irregularities)‚ and fall into
grade’ verbs‚ and “ichidan”‚ ‚ or ‘single
one of two classes: “godan”‚ ‚ or ‘five
48 Verb grammar — § 2.1 Inflecting

grade’ verbs. Both verb classes end‚ in their “dictionary” form‚ on one of the —row
syllables (although not ‚ and consequently ‚ and not or )‚ so that any verb you may
encounter can be found in a dictionary to end on ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ or (the “dictionary” form
mentioned here is a common descriptor used in literature
on Japanese‚ and is synonymous with the form of verbs or verbal adjectives.
The verbs (also referred to as “class I”‚ “type I” or “u verb” in literature) can end
on any of the aforementioned syllables‚ but verbs (also referred to as
“class II”‚ “type II” or “ru verbs” in literature) only end on . Verbal adjectives — the
class of adjectives in Japanese that inflect just like regular verbs do — only come in
one class and always end on the syllable ‚ which is why they are also referred to in
literature as “i-adjectives” (a second class of adjectives‚ the adjectival nouns‚ are
com-monly referred to as “na-adjectives”). However‚ while it is useful to know on
which syllables verbs and verbal adjectives can end‚ bear in mind that just because
verbs end on —row syllables and verbal adjectives end on ‚ not everything ending
on an —row syllable is a verb‚ and not everything ending on is a verbal adjective
— “all cats have four legs‚ but not everything with four legs is a cat”.
Let us look at how the bases for both verbs and the verbal adjectives are
formed. Looking at them as a combination of verbal stem and some final
syllable(s)‚ the following table describes each of the bases for these word classes:

Base verbs verbs verbal adjectives

stem ( ) remove —row syllable remove remove

stem + —row syllable stem stem +
stem + —row syllable stem stem +
stem + —row syllable stem + stem +
stem + —row syllable stem + stem +
stem + —row syllable stem (+ / *) (stem + *)

In this table‚ the for the verbs and verbal adjectives are starred‚ to indicate
there’s something special about them. First ‚ the verb is a bit of a problem: the
word can refer to either the grammatical base form‚ or to the actual verb inflection
as it is used in sentences. In classical Japanese‚ both inter-pretations of the were
“stem + ”; the grammatical base form was the same as the final inflected form.
However‚ in modern Japanese the final inflected form is
either “stem + ”‚ if you’re in an area that adheres to ‚ ‘standard Japanese’ (the kind
spoken in Tokyo)‚ or fairly uniformly “stem + ”‚ if you’re not. This raises the
problem that either the is listed as two separate forms — something I’m not too
fond of — or listing it as just the stem‚ and then telling you the final inflected
forms are either + or + depending on where you are. In this
Verb grammar — § 2.1 Inflecting 49

book‚ I’ve taken the la er approach.

In addition to this‚ the verbal adjective is a point of contention. In clas-sical
Japanese‚ verbal adjectives came in two types: adjectives and adjectives. Both of
these had a regular form‚ as well as a form involving a contraction with the verb
‚ meaning “to be”‚ forming adjectives. Because of this‚ the and versions were ‘pure’
adjectives‚ in that they had no imperfective or commanding form; for adjectives those
would make no sense. However‚ because of ‚ the vari-ants did have these
forms‚ instead missing a finalising and perfect form. This gave rise to the following
rather elaborative set of bases in :

Base form form form form

- stem + - stem +
stem + stem + stem+ stem +
stem + - stem+ -
stem + stem + stem+ stem +
stem + - stem + -
- stem + - stem +

This is a lot of inflectional potential‚ but as classical Japanese transitioned

to modern Japanese‚ all these forms have essentially become merged‚ leading to a
single inflectional scheme that mixes forms from the ‘pure’ versions of adjectives
with the -contracted versions of those adjectives‚ leading to the question of which
forms are to be considered belonging to the adjective as it exists now‚ and which
belong to the the verb ‚ which happens to work together with verbal adjectives a
lot. In this book‚ we’ll consider the final inflected for verbal adjectives to be a
contraction of the verbal adjective’s and the for the verb ‚ which is . This gives us
“verbal adjective stem + ” + “ ” → “verbal adjective stem + ”‚ where contracts to
‚ giving us a final rule “stem + ”. So‚ in this book‚ verbal adjectives are considered
not to have a genuine of their own‚ instead relying on the helper verb for one.
However‚ other books list it as being simply “stem + ”‚ and so for completeness it
has been included in the earlier table of bases.
Having covered the “what they look like”‚ let’s look at what this means for a
number of verbs from both classes‚ and for verbal adjectives:

verbs