Understanding Japanese Sentence Structure

Recently I finished an excellent book on Japanese grammar called “Basic Connections, Making Your Japanese Flow“, which covered a lot of grammar basics that I was only dimly aware of, and often got wrong.

One of the book’s strengths is that it accurately points out mistakes often made by students of Japanese language, one of which I wanted go cover here. On page 140, the author states that:

As mentioned in the first chapter, one of the most important things when reading or writing Japanese is to determine whether each sentence is the “A is B” type (A は B です) or the “A does B” type (A は B をします).

The author then points out a couple common examples of incorrect grammar:

私が休みにしたいのは、海に行きます。
Watashi ga yasumi ni shitai no wa, umi ni ikimasu.

私の仕事は手紙を配達します。
Watashi no shigoto wa tegami wo haitatsu shimasu.

In both cases, the sentence starts out as “A is B” but ends as “A does B” which sounds awkward or just confusing to native speakers. Speaking from experience I often make this mistake because you can do it in English, but not in Japanese.

I think language students with simple sentences usually won’t make mistakes because the sentences are too short, but as sentences get more complicated there us more room for such discrepancy.

Anyway the author then explains that to fix the sentences above, they should finish as “A is B” sentences, just as they started. Add ことです to accomplish this:

私が休みにしたいのは、海に行くことです。
Watashi ga yasumi ni shitai no wa, umi ni iku koto desu.

私の仕事は手紙を配達することです。
Watashi no shigoto wa tegami wo haitatsu suru koto desu.

Hope this help, good luck!

P.S. Written via iPhone on the bus, so please pardon the typos. It’s hard to write blog entries on such a small interface, but that’s all I have time for lately. :-/