Guide so baka knows what he’s doing xD

I’ll try to explain here how sentences work so you know what is happening and only
worry about learning vocabulary from duo!
Sentence structure
So, the Japanese sentence structure is different from English. In English we have subject
(who does the action), verb (action), and object (what is affected by the action), while in
Japanese we have subject (which if it is omitted, we can assume that I am the speaker), subject
and, verb, verb will always go in the end. Let’s exemplify the structure:
わたし ちゃ の
JP: 私 はお茶を飲みます。
EN: I drink tea.
I think that is pretty much the basic stuff here, I will teach you more components as I
explain the other particles.
Particles
が

So, the first particle is the が particle. This one is used to tell us the subject of the

sentence.
あめ ふ
JP: 雨が降ります。
EN: It is raining.
I think this is not too hard, but it also has other uses that I might explain to you
eventually, such as expressing things you can do or, whishes, but for now just focus on this. xD
は

First, は is ha, but when speaking the particle is pronounced as wa. This is one tells you

the topic of the sentence (what are we talking about). Most of the times, the topic of the sentence
is the same as the subject.
わたし け き す
JP: 私 はケーキが好きです。
EN: I like cake.
 Here, we can see that は is next to I because we are talking about me and my likes,

meaning I am the topic. Then, が is the complement of cake because as we know we are saying

that I like cake, thus cake is the “subject” because it is doing the action if being liked. Idk if that
makes sense, let me know. xD
を

を is used with transitive verbs, this means verbs that use an object or answer to the

question “what”.
ら め ん た
JP: ラーメンを食べます。
EN: I eat ramen.
As I explained, it is possible to omit the subject of the sentence can be omitted if it’s me.
But the important part here is to notice that the verb eat can have the question “what am I
eating?”, which in this case is ramen. There are other verbs that cannot answer to that question
(called intransitive verbs) for example. That is something that I will explain later xD
に

This is used to mark who or what gets affected by the action of the subject. We can call
that indirect object.
かれ かのじょ はな
JP: 彼が彼女に花をあげました。
EN: He gave her flowers.
へ や はい
JP: 部屋に入りました。
EN: I entered the room.
Okay, so, on the first example we have two people, the subject (who is giving the
flowers) would be he, while the person affected by the action is her. In this case, に can have the

meaning of “to”. The second example expresses that the room gets affected when you enter xd it
is weird because you try to say you are going out of the room you use, but when it implies you
はこ なか
getting inside, it’ll always be に. に is also used to say specific locations for example: 箱の中に
ねこ
猫がいます (there’s a cat inside the box). For this, you can say that に equals in, but it also

applies for on, behind, in front, etc.

の

This one is easy too xD This is the possessive of the object. Which in English would be
mine, yours, their, and our.
わたし かれし
JP: 私 の彼氏はかわいいです。
EN: My boyfriend is cute :P
Here, what we are talking about will always be the topic of the sentence. Also, since we
need to specify who the thing belongs to (I AM NOT CALLING YOU A THING; IT IS JUST
GENERAL), we can’t omit the subject this time. I don’t think there’s much to explain tho.
で

This expresses either place of the action or method of the actions. The way you can
distinguish them Will be the noun that is before the particle, if it’s a place, then obviously it will
mean place of action, if it’s something else, then it will be means of action. It also has other
meanings but, they are different forms that you don’t need to study yet.
としょかん べんきょう
JP: 図書館で 勉 強 します。
EN: I study at the library.
て か
JP:手で書きます。
EN: I write by hand.
と

It means either and, or with, it certainly will depend on how you want to structure the
sentence.
いぬ あそ
JP: 犬と遊びました。
EN: I played with the dog.
た こ す け き た
JP: タコスとケーキを食べました。
EN: I ate tacos and cake.
 As you, see, you can say that “the dog and I played” does make sense, but it doesn’t
sound right, same as with “I ate tacos with cake”, that sounds gross.
へ

This one is used with movement verbs, which means they involve you moving from one
い かえ き
point to another. Such verbs include: 行きます (go), 帰ります (come back home), 来ます

(come), among others.

だいがく い
JP: 大学へ行きます。
EN: I go to the university.
Something interesting is that, seen as you are moving to one place, the place gets
“affected” so you can use に xD however, I recommend using different particles to make

distinctions.