Japanese Verbs: Present Tense

Hello again. I was in the middle of writing up the next topic when I realized, I haven't talked about verb conjugation yet. So I think this is as good a time as any to introduce polite verb conjugation. Unlike verbs in English, the basics are very easy to learn and almost all verbs follow one of the two conjugation rules.

Asking questions in Japanese

The Japanese language has a different way of asking questions than in English and it is surprisingly simple. In some sentences, all it takes is adding one character to the end and you're using perfect Japanese grammar.


Lets try something simple like "Is this water?"

Word of the Day #18

The next Japanese word we will be learning today is "Water". While expanding your vocabulary, it's a good idea to learn some essential words. When asking for a drink of water, you should add the honorific お to the beginning of the word. You will see this in other words too.

Kanji: 水
Kana: みず
Romaji: mizu

Example
Kanji: お水お願いします。
Kana: おみずおねがいします。
Translation: Water please.

Grammar Trick and Word of the Day #15

Today I wanted to share a small grammar trick with all of you that should make it easier to learn some new words.  Today's word is "Where". It is used the same way as it is in English.

Word of the Day #12

Found a little bit of time for a post today. I've also posted a poll on the Google+ page for your opinion on an idea I'm playing around with. Thank you so much for your patience everyone!

The word for today is the particle の (no). This word is used to show possession the same way we use " 's " at the end of a word and is occasionally translated as "of". の is a suffix and is attached to the end of the word that is the possessor. For example, if I possess a dog, it becomes "my dog." In Japanese it would become 私の犬.

Kana: の
Romaji: no

Example
Kanji: これは私の本です。
Kana: これはわたしのほんです。
Translation: This is my book.

Word of the Day #10 and Sentences

I wanted to touch base on the topic of sentences today. I'm sure some of you have noticed by looking at the example sentences or you might already know that Japanese sentences are not structured the same as English sentences. English uses a Subject Verb Object (SVO) sentence structure. However, Japanese uses a Subject Object Verb (SOV) sentence structure. Additionally, words will usually be paired with a suffix which marks what position it is taking in the sentence.

For example, in English we would say "I am Japanese." "I" is the subject, "am" is the verb, and "Japanese" is the object. This same sentence would be written as "I Japanese am" if we followed SOV sentence structure. In Japanese we would write this as 私は日本人です。

As you saw in the example sentence, the character は was after 私 (I). This character is usually pronounced as "ha" but in this case, it is pronounced "wa". は is used to mark the subject of the sentence. It is also important to remember that Japanese does not use particles like "the" or "a".

Kanji: 日本人
Kana: にほんじん
Romaji: nihonjin

Example
Kanji: 私は日本人です。
Kana: わたしはにほんじんです。
Translastion: I am Japanese.