In this lesson you will learn to communicate with basic sentences and learn how they are built in Japanese. You are presumed to be fluent in Hiragana and Katakana, otherwise please review them thoroughly.
Sentence structure
A sentence in Japanese has the subject first, then the object(s) and finally the verb. The subject can be omitted and it will be implied from context, and the verb can be omitted as well and it'll mean "to be". For this English sentence:
I am Francisco.
In Japanese it'd be translated as:
わたしはフランシスコです。
This is the decomposition of that sentence:
- わたし(私）: the pronoun I
- は: particle that indicates the preceding is the subject
- フランシスコ: "Francisco" in katakana
- です: formal particle in the end; no need for "to be", it is implied.
Pronouns in Japanese are a difficult topic, so we will just be using 私（わたし） for "I", and for "you" and "he/she" we will omit them or use the name or last name of the person instead.
The general structure for "I am ＿＿" is:
わたしは＿＿です。
When we want to say the opposite, "I am not ＿＿", then we use:
わたしは＿＿じゃありません。
Exercise: say 3 different things that you are and 3 things that you are not in Japanese. Use a Google translate to search for the adjectives and/or nouns.
Introductions
Aaa
Asking questions
To ask a question first you should add "か" to the end of the sentence. This is the equivalent of "?" in Japanese. You can build simple sentences with this, for instance asking if I am Francisco:
わたしはフランシスコですか。
However, soon we want to start to ask more elaborate, open-ended questions. Let's ask "what is your name?":
なまえはなんですか。
- なまえ(名前）: "the name"
- は: indicates the previous is the subject
- なん（何）: "what"
- ですか: polite question termination
In this sentence, "you" should be implied by the context.