Vocabulary

• Words like ‘koura’ (cola), borrowed from other languages, are called ‘gai-rai-go’ (外来語, lit. outside-coming-language). With few exceptions, gai-rai-go words are written in katakana and don’t have kanjis. An example of an exception is ‘ei’ (Britain) whose kanji is 英.
• It is correct if we use the kanjis in red, but usually the word is written in kana.

Sample sentences

When are you eating? I’ll eat later.

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Comments

The following comments explain some of the grammar in more detail.

Particles

no – の

In English, we can say that something belongs to someone in two ways: “the car of Mr. Mori” and “Mr. Mori’s car”; Japanese uses only the second form, with the particle ‘no’ (の) playing the role of the apostrophe: “mori san no kuruma”. However, ‘no’ means more like ‘belonging’ than just possession. For example, it might indicate where someone works at (the company that you ‘belong’ to), or a place of origin (where something was produced):

mo – も

‘mo’ (も) means ‘also’, in both positive and negative contexts.

We can translate it as ‘as well’ or ‘too’ in a positive context:

and translate it as ‘neither’ in a negative context:

de – で

‘de’ (で) is ‘at’ when we refer to time:

or ‘at’ a location where an action takes place.

wo – を

‘wo’ (を) marks the direct object of a verb, i.e., the object on which the verb acts. In spite that it is written as ‘wo’, it is often pronounced ‘o’.

When we answer a question, we can replace the ‘question word’ marked with ‘wo’ with our answer. However, when the answer is ‘nanika’, we omit the ‘wo’:

In the example above, ‘nani wo’ is replaced by ‘sushi wo’, because ‘sushi’ is a specific object, but it is replaced by ‘nani-ka’ (‘something’), without the ‘wo’, because ‘nani-ka’ is not a specific object, i.e., there is no ‘object’ for ‘wo’ to mark.

Not every object of a verb is a direct object. For example, ‘sushi’ is the direct object of ‘I eat sushi’, but ‘chopsticks’ is not a direct object in ‘I eat with chopsticks’ (we are not eating the chopsticks), nor ‘resutoran’ is a the direct object of ‘I eat at the restaurant’ (we are not eating the restaurant), so in these cases the verb does not mark the objects with ‘wo’; if we mark them with ‘wo’ we get some strange meanings:

‘wo’ (を) is rarely used to write anything other than the direct object marker. From time to time it appears in an actual word, though. For example, Kawori Miyazono, the character of ‘My lie in April’, spells her name – Kaori (‘scent’), as かをり, instead of using the normal spelling かおり; still, both お and を are pronounced ‘o’, both spellings sound ‘kaori’:

A common expression where を shows up is きをつけて (‘ki-wo-tsukete’, ‘take care of yourself’). Here き is ‘sprit’ and を is working as a direct object marker of the verb ‘tsukeru’ (‘to attach’), so ‘ki-wo-tsukete’ is a gentle order to ‘attach care to your spirit’, i.e., to ‘take care of yourself’.