Short Grammar Lesson １– word order.

＊＊＊Kimmel’s First Law:  The verb comes last; the verb comes last; the verb comes last.＊＊＊

Japanese is a SOV language (subject-object-verb language), but English is a SVO language (subject verb object language).  No wonder English-speaking students have found Japanese to be むずかしい。

So when you write a translation of an English sentence in Japanese, you have to move the verb to the end of the sentence.

“I saw a cat. ”

First Japanese version:  私　見ました　ねこ

Correct Japanese sentence order:　私　ねこ　見ました。

Adding relational particles:　私　は　ねこ　を　みました。

は　Is a flag that tells us “what comes before me is the subject/topic”

を　Is a flag that tells us "what comes before me is the direct object (victim) of the verb.”

Can you do the same with the following sentences?

The teacher hears the dog.         The student reads a book.           The cat eats a sandwich.

Verb conjugations (as we know them so far)

                                                Affirmative                                         Negative

Present/future                   （た）食べます                                 食べません

　　　　　　　　　　　Eats, will eat                                      Doesn’t eat, will not eat

Past                                          食べました                                     食べませんでした

                                                  Ate, did eat                                        Did not eat

 

Can you do the same transformations with the following verbs?

（み）見ます                              （き）聞きます                           かえります

（はな）話します                     （い）行きます                           （よ）読みます

べんきょう　します                  （き）来ます                               （み）見ます