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             THE QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO JAPANESE
                         by Tad Perry





PREFACE

Many students of Japanese just want to communicate. Sure, they want to
say things correctly as often as possible, but they also want to get
into the language quickly and start mixing it up early. This QUICK AND
DIRTY GUIDE TO JAPANESE was meant to help you do just that. It makes
no pretense of being complete, but tries to pack the most *useful
information* necessary to achieve the *goal of using Japanese* in the
*shortest possible space*. This article therefore only covers *two*
things: Particles (those wa, ga, wo, de, ni and he thingies) and verb
conjugations.

This is my reasoning on this: you can build a vocabulary of nouns,
just by looking in a dictionary or asking a native speaker. They
almost never inflect (in any true meaning of the word) and are easy.
Plus we won't be worrying about those strange noun-like things that
can act like adjectives. So *you* can take care of the nouns yourself
as you see fit.

On the other hand, the verbs and adjectives inflect so I'll try to
present the most compact rules conceivable for allowing you to
manipulate every verb you ever encounter and hopefully you can take it
from their. The less mental overhead for remembering how to do it, the
less painful it will be. After knowing the conjugation rules pat, you
can get new vocabulary out of a dictionary or ask a native speaker.

Now that you have a bunch of nouns and a bunch of verbs and adjectives
(that you can inflect), you need to know how to piece them together.
That's where learning about the particles come in.  Remember, this is
a *Quick and Dirty* guide so don't expect these generalizations to
*always* work, just expect them to work in as many cases as possible
based on what I know.

Now, in compiling this, I noticed that the descriptions are pretty
comprehensive. So why aren't these things presented this way in class?
Well, an educational institution obviously has a financial stake in
dragging out your language learning as long as possible (and confusing
you along the way), now doesn't it? The also feel obligated to teach
you every little detail so you feel like you're getting your money's
worth. In the case of this guide, return comments such as: "You made
generalization X, but for got to mention exceptions Y and Z." won't
be appreciated very much. This is a *quick and dirty* guide, remember?
So be forewarned that their are exceptions all over the place, but
that I have tried to be as accurate as space allows. And space is the
primary concern here. Please don't forget that.

PARTICLES

Word Order

Before talking about particles let's get into word order. In general,
standard word order for Japanese when using an action verb is:

   [SUBJECT]+TIME+PLACE/IMPLEMENT+INDIRECT OBJECT+OBJECT+ACTION VERB

   "Ashita, gakkou de sensei ni purezento wo agemasu."
   ("[I'm] going to give a present to [my] teacher tomorrow.")

For an existence verb it is:

   [SUBJECT]+TIME+LOCATION+EXISTENCE VERB

   "Takahashi wa, ima honsha ni iru."
    ("Takahasi is in the main office right now.")

For a motion verb it is:

   [SUBJECT]+TIME+ORIGIN+ROUTE+DESTINATION+MOTION VERB

   "Ashita, paatii ni iku."
   ("I'm going to a party tomorrow.")

SUBJECTs are put in brackets to stress that they are very often
deleted. In general, if a new subject is introduced where another had
been previously understood, signal the change by placing "wa" after
the subject. If a subject is understood, but for some reason not
deleted (that's rare) use "ga" or nothing. Often you can move a
subject out after the verb when things start piling up before the
verb.  Like: "Ashita boku ga kooen de utau." (I'm singing at the park
tomorrow.) often becomes: "Ashita kooen de utau, boku." For more on
SUBJECTs, see the longer description in the next section, "Subjects
and Deletion". Knowing how to delete is a key to sounding natural.

TIME is usually followed by "ni". In general, use "ni" for specific
points in time or specific spans of time. So "jyuu gatsu [ni]"
(October), "san gatsu mikka [ni]" (March 3rd) take "ni". A word like
"ashita" (tomorrow) that can only be understood by context (it changes
depending on when you say it). These types of words are called
"deictic" time words and don't take "ni".  "Ashita iku" ("I'm going
tomorrow."), but: "sanji ni iku" ("I'm going at 3.")  Even if you have
trouble making the distinction between these two types of time words,
don't worry: Japanese people can understand what you mean even if you
get it backwards.

PLACE/IMPLEMENT is followed by "de". By PLACE, I mean the location
that a volitional *action* occurred. If you're eating at home, that's
"ouchi de shokuji suru". If you're eating with chopsticks, that's
"ohasi de taberu". The place you do something or the thing you use to
do something takes "de". If you're going somewhere by car, you say
"kuruma de iku". It's not that hard to understand really. (See
INDIRECT OBJECT for why DESTINATIONs are different.) Verbs of motion
that tell DESTINATION, or ones of existence that tell the LOCATION of
something take "ni". (DESTINATIONs can also take "he".) Try to
distinguish PLACE from LOCATION by thinking of it this way: PLACE is
WHERE SOMETHING IS DONE, LOCATION is WHERE SOMETHING OR SOMEONE IS.
Use "kara" ("from") after an ORIGIN and "wo" after a ROUTE. "Gakkoo
kara, kooen wo totte, ouchi ni kaeru."  (Lit. "I'm going home from
school through the park.") There's usually an intermediate verb in
this type of usage.

OBJECT is followed by "wo" or nothing. "Hon wo yonde iru" (I'm reading
a book.) This is a really simple one in most cases.  I really don't
know many Japanese learners who can't understand this.

INDIRECT OBJECT is followed by "ni". By INDIRECT OBJECT, I mean a sort
of secondary object that some verbs take. "Kono hon wo anata ni
ageru." ("I'm going to give this to you.") You have "this book" and
you have "to you". The "this book" part is the OBJECT. The "to you"
part is the INDIRECT OBJECT. "Wo" and "ni" are used to distinguish
these two.

VERB doesn't take any particles, but it needs to be inflected. There's
a big section at the end on how you do that, and useful colloquial
English equivalents of what those inflections mean.

To boil this section down, remember it this way:

SUBJECT+wa/ga/nothing (delete subject if possible, show changes with
"wa") TIME+ni/nothing       (use nothing if it's a deictic time word)
PLACE/IMPLEMENT+de    (is the place where you *do* or where you *are*?)
LOCATION+ni           (is the place where you *are* or where you *do*?)
ORIGIN+kara ROUTE+wo              (is this a place on the way to where
you're going?) DESTINATION+ni/he     (use "ni" over "he" but be aware
that both are okay.) INDIRECT OBJECT+ni    (use this if you're out of
choices :-) DIRECT OBJECT+wo

After understanding the descriptions given earlier, these nine lines
are the key to knowing what particle to use 90% of the time. Even if