Japanese Grammar | Lesson 01 | Intro & Word Order | Beginner

Welcome to the first video in a (hopefully) long series of grammar lessons!

In this video, we will discuss the premise of this series as well as the first fundamental principle we need to understand: word order! Before we begin learning any other grammar principles, it's important to understand the natural order that words appear in a sentence. Once we get that down, we'll be able to jump into some more impactful techniques!

Grammar Glossary (in approximate order of appearance):
kana: hiragana and katakana, the two syllabaries used in written Japanese

kanji: the logographic character system used in written Japanese that hiragana builds into

subject: the topic of the sentence; the "acting" noun in a sentence

verb: the action being performed in a sentence

object: the nouns being affected by the verb or that give the verb context

direct object: the noun being affected by the verb

indirect object: the noun that gives the verb context

Japanese Glossary (in approximate order of appearance):
hitsujikai: shepherd

watashi: I, me, my, etc.

konbini: convenience store

iku: to go

ikimashita: went ("to go" polite/past tense)

hon: book

kureru: to give (non-first-person)

nageru: to throw

ogenki desu ka?: How are you?

o-: honorific particle

genki: health, healthy state

da/desu: is

hai: yes

Other helpful links:
(TBD)

I'm so sorry! This is my first video so I don't have the ability to link resources directly yet. Instead, I'll list some useful resources you can search for on your own until I have the ability to add them:

- Wikipedia: I don't know if teachers still talk poorly of Wikipedia, but it's a very accurate source of information far more often than written sources! The articles on kanji, word order, syntax, subjects, verbs, and objects are all useful here.

- Kana charts: You can just search this in your image browser of choice, and I'm sure you'll find something to your liking. I think there are videos on YouTube as well that break these down better than I probably can. It shouldn't be too hard to look them up!

- Free dictionary apps: I recommend "imiwa?" on iOS and "Japanese" on Android (it's just a red background with "日本語" in white calligraphy). Both of these apps have a plethora of words and phrases you can look up, so start building that vocabulary! I'm not sure about imiwa?, but the Android app has a flashcard system built-in as well. Pretty neat!

If there are any other questions on sources or other guides, let me know and I'll help you track them down!

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:38 - Topic: Word Order
01:25 - "Prerequisites"
04:41 - What is Word Order?
05:43 - Example 1
06:14 - Articles, Particles, and Prepositions
07:01 - Example 2
07:48 - Direct vs. Indirect Objects
09:03 - Object-less Sentences
10:09 - Example 3
10:29 - "Implicit" Subjects
11:18 - Example 4
12:16 - Conclusion

[scottvarley]

Quality video cuz!
I was recognizing a word here and there from when my brother was learning Japanese in high school over 10 years ago lol.

[Toweletta]

Very informative stuff! This helped to refresh my memory on sentence structure from my Japanese classes in high school, and it was very easy to follow along with. Great stuff Sensei!

Edit: Example #3 has Tomonori as the subject, the ball as the object, and threw as the verb!

[Killtacboy]

Highly informative! I only took two years of Japanese but a bunch of it came flooding back.

S = Tomonori-kun O = boru V = Nageta, if I'm not mistaken.