Category Archives: Grammar

Japanese Adjectives is the next big grammar lesson in the Beginning Lessons, and will be follow by several lessons focusing on using adjectives. Upcoming Lessons: Suki and Kirai: Likes and Dislikes Colors in Japanese Food Items in Japanese Conjunctions and … Continue reading →

Demonstratives: the Ko-so-a-do Series covers an interesting collection of Japanese pronouns, adverbs, and modifiers. English has demonstratives too, like “this”, “that”, “here”, and “there”, but as usual Japanese is far more systematic. At this, the first main section of the … Continue reading →

Another longer lesson, “No”, The Modifying Particle explains this particle’s multiple uses as a modifier, first to create possessives (my, your) followed by the more general case. Other uses of “no”, such as its use as a nominalizer (turning the … Continue reading →

Question Words is a follow up to Questions and Negation, which focuses on yes-no questions. The next couple of lessons will be about the possessive particle “no” and the ko-so-a-do series (this, that, here, there, etc.), followed by adjectives and … Continue reading →

The Sentence Ending Particles “Ne” and “Yo” explains the other two sentence ending particles (along with “ka”) used in formal speech: when to use each, or both together. It also covers the “sou desu” category of expressions that are common … Continue reading →

Questions and Negation is the primary follow-up to Using “Wa” and “Desu”, tripling what you can do with just one sentence structure. Related upcoming lessons: Two more sentence ending particles Question words (who/what/where/etc)

Pronouns and Plurals is the first follow-up to Using “Wa” and “Desu”. More short beginning lessons of this sort coming up. Here’s the preliminary outline for the near furture: Grammar-oriented: Asking Questions Sentence Ending Particles The Possessive Particle “No” Ko-so-a-do: … Continue reading →

As the first Beginning Lesson covering grammar, Using “Wa” and “Desu” introduces your first practical Japanese sentence structure: “[A] wa [B] desu”. Subsequent lessons will focus on grammar expanding the use of this basic pattern as well as some particular … Continue reading →

I’ve added an introduction to this very important particle, The Topic Marker “Wa”. Along with Desu and Masu, this is the bare minimum core grammar needed to start using formal spoken Japanese. The next few things in the works will … Continue reading →