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This article does a great job at presenting a gist of the Japanese sentence structure. Nevertheless, it makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story

by whym 10y ago

This article does a great job at presenting a gist of the Japanese sentence structure. Nevertheless, it makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story. If you take into account topics such as modality and conjugation, some of the information you add to a verb is placed after the verb and cannot be freely reordered. Japanese verbs are "greater" than English verbs in the sense that you conjugate/suffixate a verb to express negation, conjunctions, conditional forms etc, making it longer and longer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation In contrast, English has a relatively simple set of inflections of verbs. Many of those Japanese verb forms and suffixated long verbs are translated into multi-word phrases. Compare: Anata wa kyou nemuru. (You sleep today.) -- verb is in normal form ("nemuru") Anata wa kinou nemurenakatta. (You were not able to sleep yesterday.) -- verb is in continuative form ("nemuru"→"nemu") + possibility suffix ("reru"→"re") + negation suffix ("nai"→"naka") + past suffix ("ta"→"tta")

iamnotlarry 10y ago
For Japanese, you learn a handful of rules to conjugate a verb. Then those rules always apply with no exceptions. In English, there are not set rules. Every case is special. What is the past tense form of 'shake'? 'see'? 'walk'? 'sleep'? 'eat'? 'speak'? 'sit'? 'seek'? 'work'? There are no rules. You basically have to memorize every word and all the possible ways it can morph. English possessive: 's or s' or ' or s, depending. Japanese possessive: no English plural: different for every word. Japanese plural: same as singular, or throw on a -tachi English past tense: different for every word. Japanese past tense: -mashita for verbs, deshita for adverbs/adjectives In English, nothing is simple. In Japanese, a multi-word phrase may have more syllables, but at least it will always be the same rule.
- chc 10y ago
  I think this is overstating the regularity of Japanese a bit. For example, what is the past tense of "kuru"? What is the present tense of "datta"?
  - iamnotlarry 10y ago
    Yes. It is overstating Japanese regularity a very little bit. And understating the irregularity of English an enormous amount.
    - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 10y ago
      My Japanese's pretty rusty, so corrections welcome. IMO you're not "overstating Japanese [verb][0] regularity a very little bit", but severely overstating it. The ichi-dan / go-dan verbs are indeed quite regular, and though there are irregular verbs like the grandparent post's example, IIRC there aren't actually that many (three?). However, that's not the only "axis" one could conjugate Japanese verbs. The complicated stuff are the transitive / intransitive forms, and the compound verbs. While some rules apply, they are more like the "I before E, except after C" English spelling rule. It would be akin to saying that there are only three verb tenses in English: past, present, and future; simple, right? While it's technically not wrong, it's glossing over the progressive, perfect, and subjunctive forms (maybe there are more, don't remember), and their combinations. [0] Hopefully from context it's clear we're only talking about grammar pertaining to Japanese verbs, and not Japanese in general. Japanese grammar has plenty of quirks, like how some colors are adjectives (red: akai, blue: aoi) but others are nouns (green: midori, purple: murasaki), or how loan words are usually written in katakana, but tobacco is not, etc.
- Grue3 10y ago
  You're forgetting that there are only 3 (three) verb conjugations in English, of which two are almost always the same. Only a finite number of verbs have irregular conjugations, so you just learn them along with vocabulary. In Japanese, the number of possible conjugations of all irregular verbs (copula, "suru", "kuru") is probably larger than the number of English irregular verbs that are commonly used. In fact, let's count the number of conjugations of "kuru" in my ICHIRAN [1] database: ICHIRAN/DICT> (length (get-kana-forms 1547720)) 186 Are English possessives considered difficult by anyone? Not sure what that demonstrates. Plurals! Oh, that's my favorite topic that I'm working on right now. -tachi is mostly used with people, so can't be used in most context. For inanimate objects you just say the number of them. And that's where the counters come in... At which point any sane person gives up learning Japanese for good. Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]". [1] https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran
  - laurieg 10y ago
    We have counters in English too! Tons of words are uncountable, like water, bread, and so on. A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...) We even have lots of words that are both countable and uncountable. "I ate some tomato" and "I ate some tomatoes" has quite different meaning. Overall I think all languages have their foibles, and trying to hold one widely used natural language up as "More regular" or "more difficult" is a pretty fruitless endeavour. Thought it is fun to talk about ;)
    - mhink 10y ago
      > A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...) This doesn't seem that unusual to me, all things considered. "Bread", as a word, is more of a substance-noun than a discrete object-noun. Moreover, "slice" and "loaf" don't strike me as words which give meaning to the phrases "slice of bread" or "loaf of bread"- in fact, it's the other way around. For instance, "slice" is the primary noun, and "bread" is just meant to distinguish it from other "slices" (e.g. "slice of pizza"). So, when I say "Pass me two slices of pizza", I'm really saying "Pass me two 'slice-of-pizza's", rather than "Pass me 'two-slices' of pizza".
- Grue3 10y ago
  Oh, I just remembered another fun feature of Japanese verb conjugation. Can you conjugate the (regular) verb "へる" (heru)? There happen to be two verbs that are pronounced "heru" but with completely different conjugations! Do you remember which one is which? In fact any verb that ends with -eru or -aru can be potentially conjugated like an ichidan verb or a godan verb. For each such verb you have to remember its conjugation class, lest you conjugate it completely wrong. So these aren't so regular after all. Also a related topic is intransitive/transitive verb pairs. These are also heavily irregular, and you must use the correct one in a sentence or it will be ungrammatical.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  The thing with English is people in general can understand most things even if you screw up tenses or tones. You put a few words together and people will mostly get you. In Japanese you have to remember extra things to add so you identify different parts of a sentence. Same with gender in romance languages. They just add more complexity. In a way Korean and Chinese are a little easier in terms of rules.
lovemenot 10y ago
Why do you use nemuru as the root? Mostly I would hear and say neru. So I could not sleep would become nerarenakatta.
- kazinator 10y ago
  寝る(neru) and 眠る(nemuru) are different verbs. Different kanji in writing, own conjugations. Neru tends to indicate more intentional sleep (arranging to go to sleep: deciding to retire to bed, to lie down etc), whereas nemuru is spontaneous sleep (falling asleep --- and not necessarily lying down). "Nerarenakatta" has the possible interpretation of something like, "I couldn't sleep (because of no opportunity to get away from activity and lie down)" whereas "nemurenakatta" is "I couldn't fall asleep" (insomnia). I think if you stayed up all night studying and so because of that you couldn't sleep, that's when you might best use "nerarenakatta". I couldn't sleep (because I needed to do something else with the time, not due to failure to fall asleep).
klodolph 10y ago
The name for what you're talking about is "morphological typology". Languages occupy a spectrum from analytic (words stay the same) to synthetic (words change). English is usually categorized as analytic, since we only have a few ways to change words: plural -s, past tense -ed, etc., and English has been getting more analytic over time. Other European languages are more synthetic (fusional), like French, German, Spanish, etc. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian are very synthetic (agglutinative). Chinese (all varieties) is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's much more analytic than English.
- pgt 10y ago
  Interesting. Considering language as a lever and a tool for thought, how do you think the position of a language on the analytic/synthetic spectrum affects its suitability for computer interpretation? Are there any major Japanese programming languages? It would seem to me that given our relatively primitive compilers, that 'analytic' languages offer simpler mediums for unambiguous programming, whereas 'synthetic' languages may bear greater nuance of expression when we can 'think' programs into existence in the future.
  - klodolph 10y ago
    I advise extreme caution when going down this path... it's rife with established lines of pseudoscientific thought. For example, a couple centuries ago you could talk about how English just isn't complex enough to express great ideas the way Latin and Greek are. Ambiguity is an orthogonal concept to morphological typology, however. There is no extra "nuance of expression" just because you conjugate words more, that's just nonsense.
  - tgragnato 10y ago
    There's one pretty famous and you may already know it. > Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming. > He has often said that he is “trying to make Ruby natural, not simple,” in a way that mirrors life. > Building on this, he adds: Ruby is simple in appearance, but is very complex inside, just like our human body. These will not be considered strictly scientific articles, but appear reasonable.. [http://carlosplusplus.github.io/blog/2013/08/01/ruby-and-the-japanese-language/ http://carlosplusplus.github.io/blog/2013/08/01/ruby-and-the...] - [https://robots.thoughtbot.com/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-way https://robots.thoughtbot.com/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-...]
fenomas 10y ago
> makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story Surely that's the whole point of the "8020" in the URL? Personally I thought it was excellent, compact, understandable introduction. Sure it leaves things out, but if it didn't it would be a textbook!
risyasin 10y ago
You should definitely see Turkish. it's belong to same family with Japanese. But verbs are even bigger. There are more variants as suffixes to the verbs. Sometimes a whole English sentence can be translated into one Turkish word. Have a look. "okutamadıklarımızdansınız" just one word. It means you are one of those who we can not make them read.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  If you meant "family" in linguistic sense, then, no. Japanese is of Japonic languages family, and Turkish is of Turkic. The proposed Altaic family (which was a parent to both, in its expanded "Macro-Altaic" version) was discredited, and Japonic is generally classified as an isolate language family.
- bonzini 10y ago
  "can not make" or "cannot make"?
gdilla 10y ago
The conjugation of japanese verbs are non negotiable - it has to be there for you to make any sense, and I don't think OP was claiming that you can move(?) how a verb is conjucated - just that the subject and object order doesn't matter (which is correct). The tense of the verb or conjucation of the verb has nothing to do with that.

by whym 10y ago

iamnotlarry 10y ago

For Japanese, you learn a handful of rules to conjugate a verb. Then those rules always apply with no exceptions. In English, there are not set rules. Every case is special. What is the past tense form of 'shake'? 'see'? 'walk'? 'sleep'? 'eat'? 'speak'? 'sit'? 'seek'? 'work'? There are no rules. You basically have to memorize every word and all the possible ways it can morph. English possessive: 's or s' or ' or s, depending. Japanese possessive: no English plural: different for every word. Japanese plural: same as singular, or throw on a -tachi English past tense: different for every word. Japanese past tense: -mashita for verbs, deshita for adverbs/adjectives In English, nothing is simple. In Japanese, a multi-word phrase may have more syllables, but at least it will always be the same rule.

chc 10y ago
I think this is overstating the regularity of Japanese a bit. For example, what is the past tense of "kuru"? What is the present tense of "datta"?
- iamnotlarry 10y ago
  Yes. It is overstating Japanese regularity a very little bit. And understating the irregularity of English an enormous amount.
  - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 10y ago
    My Japanese's pretty rusty, so corrections welcome. IMO you're not "overstating Japanese [verb][0] regularity a very little bit", but severely overstating it. The ichi-dan / go-dan verbs are indeed quite regular, and though there are irregular verbs like the grandparent post's example, IIRC there aren't actually that many (three?). However, that's not the only "axis" one could conjugate Japanese verbs. The complicated stuff are the transitive / intransitive forms, and the compound verbs. While some rules apply, they are more like the "I before E, except after C" English spelling rule. It would be akin to saying that there are only three verb tenses in English: past, present, and future; simple, right? While it's technically not wrong, it's glossing over the progressive, perfect, and subjunctive forms (maybe there are more, don't remember), and their combinations. [0] Hopefully from context it's clear we're only talking about grammar pertaining to Japanese verbs, and not Japanese in general. Japanese grammar has plenty of quirks, like how some colors are adjectives (red: akai, blue: aoi) but others are nouns (green: midori, purple: murasaki), or how loan words are usually written in katakana, but tobacco is not, etc.
Grue3 10y ago
You're forgetting that there are only 3 (three) verb conjugations in English, of which two are almost always the same. Only a finite number of verbs have irregular conjugations, so you just learn them along with vocabulary. In Japanese, the number of possible conjugations of all irregular verbs (copula, "suru", "kuru") is probably larger than the number of English irregular verbs that are commonly used. In fact, let's count the number of conjugations of "kuru" in my ICHIRAN [1] database: ICHIRAN/DICT> (length (get-kana-forms 1547720)) 186 Are English possessives considered difficult by anyone? Not sure what that demonstrates. Plurals! Oh, that's my favorite topic that I'm working on right now. -tachi is mostly used with people, so can't be used in most context. For inanimate objects you just say the number of them. And that's where the counters come in... At which point any sane person gives up learning Japanese for good. Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]". [1] https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran
- laurieg 10y ago
  We have counters in English too! Tons of words are uncountable, like water, bread, and so on. A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...) We even have lots of words that are both countable and uncountable. "I ate some tomato" and "I ate some tomatoes" has quite different meaning. Overall I think all languages have their foibles, and trying to hold one widely used natural language up as "More regular" or "more difficult" is a pretty fruitless endeavour. Thought it is fun to talk about ;)
  - mhink 10y ago
    > A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...) This doesn't seem that unusual to me, all things considered. "Bread", as a word, is more of a substance-noun than a discrete object-noun. Moreover, "slice" and "loaf" don't strike me as words which give meaning to the phrases "slice of bread" or "loaf of bread"- in fact, it's the other way around. For instance, "slice" is the primary noun, and "bread" is just meant to distinguish it from other "slices" (e.g. "slice of pizza"). So, when I say "Pass me two slices of pizza", I'm really saying "Pass me two 'slice-of-pizza's", rather than "Pass me 'two-slices' of pizza".
Grue3 10y ago
Oh, I just remembered another fun feature of Japanese verb conjugation. Can you conjugate the (regular) verb "へる" (heru)? There happen to be two verbs that are pronounced "heru" but with completely different conjugations! Do you remember which one is which? In fact any verb that ends with -eru or -aru can be potentially conjugated like an ichidan verb or a godan verb. For each such verb you have to remember its conjugation class, lest you conjugate it completely wrong. So these aren't so regular after all. Also a related topic is intransitive/transitive verb pairs. These are also heavily irregular, and you must use the correct one in a sentence or it will be ungrammatical.
samfisher83 10y ago
The thing with English is people in general can understand most things even if you screw up tenses or tones. You put a few words together and people will mostly get you. In Japanese you have to remember extra things to add so you identify different parts of a sentence. Same with gender in romance languages. They just add more complexity. In a way Korean and Chinese are a little easier in terms of rules.

lovemenot 10y ago

Why do you use nemuru as the root? Mostly I would hear and say neru. So I could not sleep would become nerarenakatta.

kazinator 10y ago
寝る(neru) and 眠る(nemuru) are different verbs. Different kanji in writing, own conjugations. Neru tends to indicate more intentional sleep (arranging to go to sleep: deciding to retire to bed, to lie down etc), whereas nemuru is spontaneous sleep (falling asleep --- and not necessarily lying down). "Nerarenakatta" has the possible interpretation of something like, "I couldn't sleep (because of no opportunity to get away from activity and lie down)" whereas "nemurenakatta" is "I couldn't fall asleep" (insomnia). I think if you stayed up all night studying and so because of that you couldn't sleep, that's when you might best use "nerarenakatta". I couldn't sleep (because I needed to do something else with the time, not due to failure to fall asleep).

klodolph 10y ago

The name for what you're talking about is "morphological typology". Languages occupy a spectrum from analytic (words stay the same) to synthetic (words change). English is usually categorized as analytic, since we only have a few ways to change words: plural -s, past tense -ed, etc., and English has been getting more analytic over time. Other European languages are more synthetic (fusional), like French, German, Spanish, etc. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian are very synthetic (agglutinative). Chinese (all varieties) is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's much more analytic than English.

pgt 10y ago
Interesting. Considering language as a lever and a tool for thought, how do you think the position of a language on the analytic/synthetic spectrum affects its suitability for computer interpretation? Are there any major Japanese programming languages? It would seem to me that given our relatively primitive compilers, that 'analytic' languages offer simpler mediums for unambiguous programming, whereas 'synthetic' languages may bear greater nuance of expression when we can 'think' programs into existence in the future.
- klodolph 10y ago
  I advise extreme caution when going down this path... it's rife with established lines of pseudoscientific thought. For example, a couple centuries ago you could talk about how English just isn't complex enough to express great ideas the way Latin and Greek are. Ambiguity is an orthogonal concept to morphological typology, however. There is no extra "nuance of expression" just because you conjugate words more, that's just nonsense.
- tgragnato 10y ago
  There's one pretty famous and you may already know it. > Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming. > He has often said that he is “trying to make Ruby natural, not simple,” in a way that mirrors life. > Building on this, he adds: Ruby is simple in appearance, but is very complex inside, just like our human body. These will not be considered strictly scientific articles, but appear reasonable.. [http://carlosplusplus.github.io/blog/2013/08/01/ruby-and-the-japanese-language/ http://carlosplusplus.github.io/blog/2013/08/01/ruby-and-the...] - [https://robots.thoughtbot.com/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-way https://robots.thoughtbot.com/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-...]

fenomas 10y ago

> makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story Surely that's the whole point of the "8020" in the URL? Personally I thought it was excellent, compact, understandable introduction. Sure it leaves things out, but if it didn't it would be a textbook!

risyasin 10y ago

You should definitely see Turkish. it's belong to same family with Japanese. But verbs are even bigger. There are more variants as suffixes to the verbs. Sometimes a whole English sentence can be translated into one Turkish word. Have a look. "okutamadıklarımızdansınız" just one word. It means you are one of those who we can not make them read.

drdaeman 10y ago
If you meant "family" in linguistic sense, then, no. Japanese is of Japonic languages family, and Turkish is of Turkic. The proposed Altaic family (which was a parent to both, in its expanded "Macro-Altaic" version) was discredited, and Japonic is generally classified as an isolate language family.
bonzini 10y ago
"can not make" or "cannot make"?

gdilla 10y ago

The conjugation of japanese verbs are non negotiable - it has to be there for you to make any sense, and I don't think OP was claiming that you can move(?) how a verb is conjucated - just that the subject and object order doesn't matter (which is correct). The tense of the verb or conjucation of the verb has nothing to do with that.