Part Two: particles in Japanese

Posted: May 16, 2011 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Japanese, JLPT, Language | Leave a comment »

Recently, as a self-review of Japanese language, I’ve been reading Tae Kim’s excellent Guide to Japanese (now on iPhones as a free app), and I was struck by a comment in one section about sentence order. He argues near the end that the notion of word-order in a sentence as taught in English (and even Japanese-language courses) doesn’t fit Japanese language. If English is S-V-O, Japanese is just V (verb). The verb is the only required part of a sentence.¹

In Tae Kim’s words:

That’s the whole point of even having particles so that they can identify what grammatical function a word serves no matter where it is in the sentence.

I was really struck by this statement. It makes perfect sense, and he’s quite right: applying English structure analyses doesn’t work as well in Japanese. Instead, particles are really important in Japanese. There aren’t that many of them, but you can spend a lot of years studying the various ways they are used, and their nuances, but if you don’t study the particles, then your Japanese skills will continue to suffer.

For example, one morning recently we were having breakfast and I wanted to eat my favorite veggie sausage patties (my daughter likes them too, especially the maple-flavored ones). I was telling my wife to heat two patties in the microwave for one minute. I said (particles highlighted for clarity):

二枚は一分。
ni mai wa ippun

She thought I meant “heat two patties, one minute each (total of 2 minutes)”. After a few minutes of trying to explain, then resorting to English, she corrected me. What I should have said was:

二枚で一分。
ni mai de ippun

In hindsight, that makes more sense. The particle で means something like “by means of”, and serves provides context for verbs (thanks again Tae Kim ). In other words, “heat for one minute” with the context being two patties. It makes more sense with you think about it, though you might have to think about it for a while.

Anyhow, this is a good example of why it’s good to get very, very familiar with particles in Japanese and their usage. You can still function (maybe) without strong familiarity, but your veggie sausages might get overcooked! :-0

P.S. I am not a vegetarian per se but over the years I enjoy eating vegetarian food more and more often. I figure that someday I will make the switch permanently, but only when it’s not a burden for my family.

¹ Technically you could say the same about English. “Go” is a valid sentence in English and self-explanatory, though I think it’s the only sentence in English that doesn’t require a subject and still makes sense. :-/

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