Japanese Grammar

日本語 の 文法 NIHONGO NO BUNPOU

The Japanese grammar is - very easy :) Any Western grammar is 100 times more complicated! The "difficult" is the "different", and Japanese is VERY different from Western languages... German Nouns: Three grammatic genders (der/die/das) Articles (der/die/das, ein ...) 4 cases and declination (der/des/dem/den) Singular and Plural that makes 8 forms per noun! Swedish Nouns: Two grammatic genders (den/det) Articles (den, en ...) 4 cases and declination (den/dess/den/den) Singular and Plural English Nouns: No = one grammatic gender(the) Articles (the, a ...) 4 cases but no declination → (the, of the, to the, the) Singular and Plural - - - - - Japanese Japanese Nouns: genders - non-existent:) articles - non-existent:) cases - non-existent:) → Particles as Suffixes singular/plural - non-existent:) (few exceptions) that makes 1 form per noun =) German Sentence: Subject - Predicate - Object Main sentence, ← subsentence Swedish Sentence: Subject - Predicate - Object Main sentence, ← subsentence English Sentence: Subject - Predicate - Object Main sentence, ← subsentence - Japanese Sentence: (Subject) - Object - Predicate subsentence →, main sentence German verbs: 6 tenses active/passive Conjugation (habe/hast/hat/haben/habt/haben) Indicative & Conjunctive (hat/habe) that makes 6*2*6*2 = 144 (!!!) forms per verb! Swedish verbs: 6 tenses active/passive No conjugation (har) Indicative & Conjunctive (har/hade) that makes 6*2*1*2 = 24 (!) forms per verb! English verbs: 6 tenses active/passive Limited conjugation (have/has) Indicative & Conjunctive (have/had) that makes 6*2*2*2 = 48 (!) forms per verb! - - - - Japanese verbs: 2 tenses (Present = Future, 1 Perfect) active/passive conjugation - non-existent:) → Polite phrases Indicative & Conjunctive - non-existent:) that makes 2*2 = 4 forms per Verb! Particles - non-existent:) Politeness - non-existent:) 30 letters Particles - non-existent:) Politeness - non-existent:) 29 letters Particles - non-existent:) Politeness - non-existent:) 26 letters - - - Particles (NO/NI/DE ...) Politeness (-MASU, DESU) 26 Romaji ロ-マジ - Letters + 2 * 50 Kana 仮名 - The Syllables Characters 20.000+++ Kanji 漢字 - The Word Characters In fact, Japanese get crazy with European grammar!!! General Problems of Translation from Japanese Everything that exists only in one language but no other is not translatable, from the strict point of view. You can try to find words similar ... A good translator must be very familiar with both languages, and no matter how good You can speak a foreign language, a good translator only translates into his mother language, and for the reverse direction, only for some drafts... The Western languages are so near to each other that they are regarded as a family. Japanese is very far away from them. Many expressions do not have any counterpart in our languages. The most striking problem in translations is Japanese politeness. It can change the entire sentence, but even in average situations, it changes the verb in a way that is untranslateable to us. It could be compared to a kind of refined aristocratic language that was used in the 17th century at imperial courts, but is still far away... When I am in Japan, I do not translate. I think and dream Japanese, too.