SECRETS TO FORMULATING ANY BASIC SENTENCES IN JAPANESE

With many Japanese textbooks and language courses circulating around, you may start to wonder what’s actually worth your time, money, and effort. You browse through Amazon for the perfect Japanese textbook but all you see are similar-titled, results-guaranteed, 100-page textbooks. And then you begin to wonder... is this all going to be worth it?

But let me tell you this: there is an easier way to learn Japanese. And once you unlock this secret, Japanese learning will become more fun, easy, and effective, I guarantee! So let's begin with the basics: once you understand the words and concepts below, you will be able to form simple sentences in Japanese in no time.

First, definitely know your 5Ws:

1. Who? だれ？ (da-reh)

2. What? 何（なに）？ (na-ni)

3. Where どこ？ (doh-ko)

4. When いつ？ (ii-tsu)

5. Why なぜ？ (na-ze)

Now, know your THIS and THAT:

1. This これ (ko-reh)

2. That あれ (a-reh)

Finally, make sure to memorize the following: です (de-su) = “to be” or “is” → formal copula verb *always added at the end of the sentence*

…And its interrogative form: ですか？ (de-su-ka?)

That’s it! Easy, isn’t it? Now you are ready to start formulating sentences in Japanese.

For example: だれ＋ですか？→だれですか？ (da-reh-de-su-ka?) = who are you? / who is this? これ＋です→これです (ko-reh-de-su) = this one / this is it なぜ＋ですか？→なぜですか？ (na-ze-de-su-ka?)

= why? (formal)

*Advanced* なに＋ですか？→なんですか？ (nan-de-su-ka): notice that the word なに (na-ni) is conjugated to なん (nan) when combined with the ending copula です (de-su) or ですか (de-su-ka). = what? / what is this?

…if you want to step up the game a little further here are some key conjunctions you can memorize:

は (wa) *this is hiragana "ha", but is pronounced “wa” when used as a conjunction

= is

の

(no)

= indicates possessive

と

(toh)

= and/ with

Now, let’s start formulating further advanced sentences!

だれ＋の＋ですか？→だれのですか？

(da-reh-no-de-su-ka?)

= whose is this?

これ＋は＋だれ＋の＋ですか？→これはだれのですか？

(ko-reh-wa-da-reh-no-de-su-ka?)

= whose is this? (referring to a specific object/thing)

だれ＋と＋ですか？→だれとですか？

(da-reh-toh-de-su-ka?)

= with whom?

…And the list goes on. As you can see, just knowing these simple words can make you a better Japanese speaker instantaneously. The good thing about Japanese is that, once you understand the basic grammatical structure, you can basically piece out all the words and formulate sentences according to this structure (unlike French and Spanish where structures change according to feminine/masculine words…)

Hope this helped a bit. Please leave a comment if you have further questions!