Basic Japanese Particles, Part 1

Japanese, as a language, isn’t really all that hard to learn, especially if you know the Golden Rules, but compared to English, it’s quite different. This means that you have to unlearn English ways of expressing things, and start from the ground-up. A good place to start is to learn the common particles used in Japanese.

I’ve touched on particles before, but in the following two posts, we’ll cover the most common particles in more detail. This post assumes you know how to read hiragana script. If not, now would be a good time to review. I will try to keep kanji to a minimum for now.

Particles in Japanese are small, 1 to 2 syllable markers. There is no direct, one-to-one translation to English, but they’re important for marking parts of speech. This means that you can’t make sense of a sentence in Japanese without knowing particles. Further, you cannot communicate clearly to native speakers without using the correct particles.

For today we’ll focus on “ga” が, “no” の, “wo” を and “desu” です.

When to Use What Particle

Japanese is known for being a “pithy” language, and this is true. Japanese only uses the parts of speech that need to be explicitly mentioned, while the rest is implied by context. English does this too, but not as much. Thus, English speakers of Japanese often sound wordy, and this gets tiring to a native Japanese speaker.

For example if introducing yourself, a common mistake English speakers make is something like this:

わたしのなまえはまつだです。

“Hello, my name is Matsuda”

This isn’t grammatically wrong, just needlessly wordy. Oftentimes, Japanese speakers might simply say:

まつだです。

“[I am] Matsuda.”

Therefore, we’ll try to focus on the most essential, basic particles first. This will be enough to complete basic sentences in most cases.

The noun-linking particle: の

The の “no” particle has several uses, but at its heart, it’s meant to link two nouns together. This can have different nuances depending on context. A common example to just mark possession of something:

まつだのほん

Matsuda’s book

You can pretty much link any two nouns this way:

にほんのじょせい

Japanese women

This also lets you do something called apposition, which means using one noun introduce another:

せんせいのたけださん

Mr (or Miss) Takeda, the teacher

Or time, using なんじ (“what time”?)

なんじのでんしゃ？

What time is the train?

and answer:

さんじのでんしゃ

The 3 O’Clock Train

It has other uses as well, but this covers plenty. The の is super useful, but takes a bit of time to get used to the different nuances.

The subject particle: が

The particle が is one of the most basic and most useful to learn first. Its job is to answer the questions “who”, “what”, “which” or “where”: who does something, which thing is which, where is something?

For example, if the word だれ means “who”, you can ask:

だれがせんせい？

Who’s the teacher?

Which you can answer:

たけだがせんせい。

Takeda is the teacher.

Notice that が is used both to ask “who”, but also answer “who”.

Another example using なに (“what”?)

なにがたべたい？

What do you want to eat?

and the answer:

すしがたべたい

I want to eat sushi

Particle を

The を “wo” particle is interesting because it represents a hiragana letter that no longer is used, and really has only one usage left: marking the direct object of a sentence.

すしをたべる。

I eat sushi

Note that this only works for transitive verbs, verbs that take direct objects. Which verbs are transitive vs intransitive is not always the same as English. You just have to know, and often they come in pairs in Japanese.

The polite particle: です

The particle です is somewhat hard to explain, but in essence, it just makes sentences more polite. You can use it in one of two ways.

One way is to simply append to last noun or adjective, and make it polite:

さむいです。

“It’s cold”

Another way to use it is to replace the last particle + verb, while keeping it polite.

なにがたべたい？

すしがたべたい。
=
すしです。

Conclusion

Particles in Japanese are used in a variety of ways, and nuances, that are hard to translate 1:1 into English, but once you get used to the patterns, it’s not difficult to grasp. The key is to unlearn habits in your home language, and just get used to the basic patterns on their own merits until it becomes second nature.

In part two, we’ll explore more particles and see where we go from there.