Basic Particles in Japanese

おかえり！ Welcome Back!

Welcome back to my blog on Japanese language usage! I'm glad to have you here reading my posts. I got a tremendous amount of feedback from friends and family about the detail of my first entry. Almost all of it was positive, with the only negative being "it was really long." I agree that it was, but I just kept thinking of more that I felt like should be said, and all of it was on the topic of writing. It's okay, though! Once you've memorized all of the hiragana and katakana, you're well on your way. For me, learning to write was and has been (kanji are plentiful and complex) the biggest hurdle for my Japanese learning experience.

がんばってください！Please do your best!

Note: If you're on this second lesson, I'm going to assume you're working on memorizing hiragana and katakana, so I will be pretty liberal with using it without spelling it out phonetically starting next lesson. Feel free to use a chart to make sure you can read the words. We're still early on, so I will be translating all of my phrases and words used. It's up to you to learn how to say them!

Basic Particles in Japanese

This lesson is about particles that get used in Japanese. "But Olivia, I want to learn how to say something!" You will! Actually, particles are probably the best way to get around to that! You can know all of the verbs and nouns and adjectives that you want, but unless you can connect them with particles, your sentence won't make any sense.

は

"Oh, I know that one! It's ha!"

Sorry, but not when it's a particle.

One of the oddities of written Japanese is how the particle は is written with the hiragana for "ha," but is pronounced as "wa" (the same as the character わ would be). At first, when everything you see is written in hiragana and your vocabulary is limited, it can be a bit confusing as to how you should pronounce it. Don't worry, though. It gets easy to recognize very quickly.

は is used as a topic marker in Japanese. What this means is that は is put after the topic of a sentence (as in, when you are first introducing a topic. It is different than a subject marker, which is another particle). It can be often translated as "is," but it is slightly different, as English doesn't differentiate between the topic and subject very much.

は can also be used as a contrast marker. That is, when you state something, then continue with something that contradicts it or displays contrast (the example I will use is "Mark ate cake, but I did not"), whatever particle would be used in the contrasting phrase ("but I did not") is replaced (or followed by, in the case of particles that are not が or を) with は.

Examples

わたしはオリビアともうします。Watashi wa Oribia to moushimasu. I am called Olivia/My name is Olivia.

In this example I will define the words used and then break down the sentence. わたし is the basic word for "I" or "me." There are different versions depending on formality and gender, but わたし is considered gender neutral. は is our topic marker. This makes "me" the topic of the sentence. オリビア is my name written in katakana. と is another particle that will be discussed later, but in this context it is connecting my name and もうします, which is a formal way to say "be called."

So, the sentence boils down to "I am called Olivia," which would then be localized in English as "My name is Olivia." Keep in mind, however, that は marks the topic of a sentence. The topic is わたし, making "I am called Olivia" technically the more correct translation, since "My name is Olivia" makes "my name" the topic. To write that in Japanese, you would say わたしのなまえはオリビアです (watashi no namae wa Oribia desu). Note that in this case は comes after わたしのなまえ (my name), making it the topic.

More Examples

これはほんです。Kore wa hon desu. This is a book.

えんぴつはどこですか。 Enpitsu wa doko desu ka. Where is a pencil?

The most simple example of using は is something like "X は Y です。" "X is Y." Fill in X and Y with your preferred words and have at it! 

Example 2: Contrast Marker

マークはケーキをたべました。でも、わたしはたべませんでした。Maaku wa keeki o tabemashita. Demo, watashi wa tabemasendeshita. Mark ate cake. But, I did not.
The first は is the topic marker. The second は is the contrast marker.

が

が is the subject marker of Japanese. As I mentioned before, English does not distinguish very well between topic and subject, which makes は and が very difficult to master. が is used in a very similar way to は, so I would rather highlight some differences between them rather than try to explain their complexities in a language where they have no relation.

This isn't a 100% correct "rule," and is more of an extrapolation of common themes, but something to keep in mind if you are worried about which you use is that, a lot of the time, が emphasizes what comes before it in the sentence and は what comes after.

For example, "これはペンです" and "これがペンです" both can be translated as "this is a pen." However, you would use one over the other depending on the context. If you were asked "What is this?" you would answer with the first, but you would answer with the second if you were asked "What is a pen?"

For a more in depth explanation of the difference between は and が, please visit NihonShock's article on these particles' usage. It may be able to elaborate on my explanations.

を

Like I mentioned in my first lesson, while を is placed as "wo" on hiragana charts, it is only used as a particle, and is pronounced "o" when used as such (thus, always).

を is the direct object marker in Japanese. This means that を marks when a noun is an object influenced by a verb. This makes the sentence structure "X を Y," with X being the object and Y being the verb. It can be translated as "to Y X."

An example is translating "to buy a book." Remember, in the "XをY" format, Y is the verb and X is the noun (object), making book X and buy Y. "Book" is ほん (hon) and "to buy" is かう (kau). So, the sentence becomes ほんをかう.

を is easier to understand than が and は by far, for native English speakers. If you need a "translation" for it, the word "to" works. That's the usage of "to" as in "to buy a book," not "go to the store."

Examples

プレゼントをもらいました。Purezento o moraimashita. (I) received a present. [NOTE: The "I" in the translation is implied. The Japanese like to cut down anything obvious or redundant, so unless it's not obvious that "I" is the subject, you often will leave it out.]

ドアをしめました。Doa o shimemashita. (I) closed the door.

の

の is another easy particle. In almost every case, when you're using の as a basic particle, it is to mark a possessive. The base sentence structure using it as a possessive is "XのY," or "X's Y." の goes after the "owner" and before the modified object.

Examples

わたしのくるまです。Watashi no kuruma desu. (This is) my car.

の can also be used to say "the X one." The way that it does this is by, in Japanese, making the adjective into a noun when の is added to the end.

Examples

これはきれいのです。Kore wa kirei no desu. This is the pretty one.

あたらしいのはあそこです。Atarashii no wa asoko desu. The new one is over there.

に

に is Japanese's indirect object marker. The indirect object is that which is indirectly affected by an action, as opposed to the direct object marker, which is what is directly influenced by an action. に is also used as a directional marker; it can be used to show where something or someone was headed.

Examples

Indirect object

わたしにおくってください。Watashi ni okutte kudasai. Please send it to me. ("It" is the direct object getting influenced. "Me" is the indirect object modified by に)

Directional marker

スーパーにいきました。Suupaa ni ikimashita. They/I went to the store (supermarket).

に is often translated as "to," "at," "in," or "by."

へ

When used as a particle, へ is not pronounced he, but e, like え.

へ is another particle that is used to mark the direction of an action, but while に gives a location as a destination, へ is literally directional. It can be translated as "to," but I find "toward" to be more appropriate. Using my directional marker example from earlier but changing to へ instead of に,  スーパーへいきました changes from "They went to the store" to "They went towards/in the direction of the store."

Examples

こうえんへあるきました。Kouen e arukimashita. I walked toward the park.

と

と is a particle that can be directly translated into English. Yippeeeee! Rejoice!

と means "and," in the context we'll use here. There are other functions for this particle, but they are all more advanced, and right now we are focusing on basic sentences.

"X と Y" is "X and Y." Simple as that.

Examples

えんぴつとノートをかいました。Enpitsu to nooto o kaimashita. (I) bought pencils and a notebook.

マークとブランドンがいきました。Maaku to Burandon ga ikimasihta. Mark and Brandon went.

で

で is the last major particle I will be covering this entry.

で can be translated two different ways: as "by means of" or "at (location marker)."

For both usages, the sentence structure is the same. "X で Y," where X is either the thing whose means allowed you to do Y, or the location. Y is the action in the case of "by means of," and the action that took place at X in the case of "at."

Examples

By means of

そうがんきょうでみました。Sougankyou de mimashita. I saw (it) with/using binoculars.

At/Location marker

えきであいました。Eki de aimashita. (We) met at the station.

Next Time on Japanese Lessons

Next time is when I will cover verb types (don't worry, there are only three, and one type literally has two verbs in it). I know that last time I said I'd do it on this post, but I decided that it would end up as an information overload. I'm going to take this one topic at a time and break it into whatever chunks I need to. Particles are very important for making sentences, so be sure to learn them. Verbs are pretty darn important too, and knowing what type they are determines how you conjugate them! So, they get their own lesson. Once verb types are done, and maybe the most basic of conjugation forms (plain form, and the past/present -ます forms), you will easily be able to make simple sentences with your trusty dictionary in hand.

I'm grateful to all of you who are reading this! It means a lot to me, as I hope for this to become a convenient and usable resource for people trying to learn Japanese or brush up on a few things. Please comment if you have anything to say, or subscribe to my blog to get future updates!

がんばってね！

Introduction and Basic Writing

ブログにようこそ！

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello, and welcome to my blog on introductory Japanese language! I am Olivia, an aspiring translator and current Japanese student, and I've decided to make this blog in order to share my Japanese language knowledge. I plan on making it a resource that can both be used by beginners who want to learn Japanese basics and people looking for a particular grammar or conjugation. As such, the blog entries will each be their own "lesson," starting with the basics and working their way toward more complicated grammar points.

"Great! Let's get on with it! Teach me how to introduce myself."

Not so fast. Before I get into anything that requires you to learn words and grammar, I'm going to teach you how to write. Why? Because if you have a textbook, chances are there are lessons with examples written in Japanese. Like those, I will not be using English letters frequently when I'm trying to express something in Japanese. No matter how well you can speak Japanese, if you can't read even hiragana and katakana, you're missing out on half of the language.

The Two Basic Writing Systems

Japanese uses three sets of characters in written text. These are hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are both syllable-based sets of systems that function much like the English alphabet. They also both represent the same sounds and are both made up of 46 characters (there used to be more, but they are now antiquated and have fallen out of use).

Hiragana

Katakana

Note: The "si" syllable (し/シ) is pronounced "shi." The "ti" syllable (ち/チ) is pronounced "chi." The "tu" syllable (つ/ツ) is pronounced "tsu." The "wo" syllable is mostly unused in katakana, and is only used in hiragana as a particle, which is pronounced "o," the same as "お." These are the only anomalies in how you would think these syllables would be pronounced; every word in Japanese is built with these syllables.

Memorizing hiragana and katakana is extremely important. Some characters are very similar, such as ね, わ, and れ, or さ and き, or め and ぬ, so be careful! Likewise, some characters are similar between their hiragana and katakana counterparts, such as ka (か/カ).

The charts above are (obviously) of hand-drawn characters. Be sure to look up how computer-generated characters look as well! It's good to be able to read both typed words and handwritten ones, much like with English.

Voiced Characters, Extended Vowels, and Double Consonants

The Japanese alphabet as written on my above charts is limited. There are no "d," "p," "g," "b," or "z" sounds written, although they all are used in Japanese. The charts also don't show how to write extended vowels or double consonants, both of which are important in distinguishing between words. Vowel "glides" are also not shown.

Voiced Characters

To change syllables into their "voiced" counterpart, you add accent marks, which work the same for both hiragana and katakana. For making every voiced sound except for the "p" sound, an accent called dakuten (゙  ), or colloquially ten-ten (dot-dot), which looks similar to quotation marks in English, are added over the upper-right area of the syllable. The changes are as such:

t->d

k->g

h->b

s->z

So, when the character た is changed to だ, it changes from "ta" to "da." The same principle of consonant changes applies to all other characters changed by dakuten, with the exception of ち and し. When they are accented, both of those characters are pronounced "ji." For the basic "ji" sound, you will usually use じ, unless the word originally had ち and was just voiced as a result of words being combined (such as はなぢ hanaji, which means nosebleed, being a combination of はな for nose and ち for blood).

To make the sound for "p," you need to add a different accent mark to the "h" syllables. This accent mark is called handakuten (゚  ), or colloquially maru (circle), and is a small circle added in the same place as the dakuten would go. Handakuten is only used for the h->p consonant change.

Extended Vowels

How an extended vowel in Japanese works is very similar to how an extended vowel in English works, but not quite. What I mean by this is, when you have extended vowels in English, the root word often has the vowel pronounced differently than the extended vowel sound (like with "chose" versus "choose," where "choose" has the extended vowel sound). In Japanese, syllables are always pronounced the same, and no syllable gets extra emphasis over another. When you say "choose," you have a feel for how long you hold the sound. If you cut the sound short, it feels different.

Usually, to extend a vowel when using hiragana, you simply add the kana for the vowel you want to extend on the end, like with おばあさん (obaasan, which means grandmother or old woman; if you cut out the extended vowel, it becomes obasan, which means aunt or middle-aged woman) or おおきい (ookii, or big. Bonus points if you noticed it has two extended vowels!). However, at the ends of words with an extended e or o sound, you don't just add those on. To get a long e sound, you need to add い to the end, and to get a long o sound, you add う. Examples are きれい (kirei, which means pretty) and こうこう (koukou, or high school). Phonetically, using Japanese pronunciation, they are pronounced ki-ree (two syllables, since the い is just an extension of the e sound) and kookoo (two long syllables).

An easy example of how extended vowels affect your speech and writing in Japanese is with the phrase for "good morning," which is either おはよう or おはよ (ohayou vs ohayo). Both of these are informal shortenings of the full phrase, but for this example they will do. The "o" sound in Japanese is pronounced as it is in the word "so" in English, for reference. To an untrained ear, the two words will sound the same. But, the first holds the "o" sound at the end slightly longer. The second cuts the sound off, making it more curt and less formal. Extended vowels are often hard to pick up on for beginners in Japanese, but they are important in forming many words that could have different meanings otherwise.

Extending a vowel sound is simple, but it is something that I see people do wrong very often. Remember, with extending o and e sounds, the extending vowels are not a separate syllable. It is ki-ree, not ki-re-i. O-ha-yoo, not o-ha-yo-u (unless you're purposefully dragging it out for emphasis).

In katakana, it's easier. To extend a vowel, you just write ー. This line is called chouon. To write the name Mark in Japanese, you'd want a long a sound, so it would be written マーク (maaku).

Double Consonants

Don't worry, double consonants are a lot easier than extended vowels or voiced characters. To double a consonant, you just write a small symbol for tsu (in whichever writing for the word you're using, hiragana or katakana, so つ or ツ, but small) before the syllable whose consonant you want to double. The word for coffee shop in Japanese is kissaten, so you need to double up the sa sound. It ends up being written as きっさてん. An example in katakana is the word rakkii, which is the Japanese spin on the English word "lucky." It is written as ラッキー.

Easy, right?

Vowel Glides

A vowel glide is just another way of adding more variety to things you can write or pronounce in Japanese. For example, the word for "future" is shourai, but there is no sho in either hiragana or katakana. Vowel glides remedy this. To make a vowel glide, you simply add a small version of the y character (や/ヤ/ya, ゆ/ユ/yu, よ/ヨ/yo) whose ending you want to the end of the root syllable. So, shourai is written しょうらい, making shi into sho.

You can create vowel glides with し/シ, ひ/ヒ, り/リ, み/ミ, に/ニ, き/キ, and ち/チ and their voiced counterparts when using native Japanese words (so, using hiragana) and loan words (katakana), but only when using katakana can you use vowel glides to make a ti sound or to manipulate the fu/hu symbol (フ) to have other vowel endings. This is done by adding a small version of the desired vowel onto テ (ティ) or フ (フォ, for example, to mimic a fo sound). The reason that フ can be manipulated is because it falls somewhere between hu and fu in pronunciation, depending on the word. When you manipulate it with other vowel sounds, it more solidly becomes an f sound, making it useful for writing Japanese versions of foreign words.

When do I Use Hiragana and Katakana?

Hiragana is the set of syllables that you will see most often. Most of the characters have lots of curves and loops, unlike katakana's characteristic stiff lines.  It is used for all native Japanese words (when they are not written in kanji, Chinese characters), and it sees use as particles and extensions on the roots of words written in kanji. For example, たべる (taberu) is the verb for "to eat." When you use the appropriate kanji, it becomes 食べる. To change it to past tense, it's 食べた. So, with verbs, the root of the word that usually does not change is written in kanji, and the parts that change when you change verb tenses is written in hiragana.

"Why do we have to learn kanij? Why not just write everything in hiragana?"

Good question. It's not the most simple thing to answer, but here's a quick and easy answer: when you're writing in Japanese, there aren't usually going to be spaces between characters. Have you ever read a sentence without spaces, and your mind stumbles when it sees sets of letters that could be joined in more than one way? It's similar to that. For example, the phrase くるまでまってる can be read two different ways. One means "waiting in the car," the other means "waiting until it comes." By writing with kanji (車で待ってる or 来るまで待ってる, respectively), the meaning is obvious.

Now, on to katakana. 

Katakana is the secondary set of syllable-based writing in Japanese. Like I said before, its characters are made up of more stiff, straight lines than hiragana. Katakana is used exclusively for foreign loan words (including non-Japanese names), sound effects and other onomatopoeia, and emphasis. So, I would write my name, Olivia, as オリビア (oribia). Words brought from other languages, like "ice cream," would also be written in katakana (アイスクリーム aisukuriimu). For emphasis, Japanese words can also be written in katakana to work as a sort of bold/italics.

Stroke Order

Sadly, I can't draw out a proper chart for the stroke order of all the hiragana and katakana in any reasonable amount of time. Luckily, Wikipedia and other resources have handy charts that shows the directions and order for each stroke! Yay! Here are the stroke order charts for hiragana and katakana respectively.

Stroke order is very important. Not only does it affect the way that your writing looks, but it also will make remembering how to write all characters, including kanji in the future, more intuitive. After a certain point, if you've practiced stroke order properly, you will be able to know how to write a complicated kanji without looking up the strokes.

Next time on Japanese Lessons

We've reached the end of my first lesson! What you should try to take from this is just an idea of how writing things in Japanese works, and how to write out not-so-basic sounds that still get used. If you're trying to learn Japanese, chances are you know a word or two. Try to write those out. If you have a word you want to learn, look it up and practice writing it. Being able to write is very important, and you won't progress very far without it. Practice makes perfect. Make flashcards for hiragana and katakana to quiz yourself on each of them, and practice writing. Good writing skills make for a good foundation for future lessons.

Next time I plan on introducing basic sentence structure by talking about the particles that get used in Japanese, as well as verb types. If I get any comments or questions before the next entry comes out, I'll be sure to address them as well!

がんばってね！