12 ms·

Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese

126 points by lassmaglio 4y ago

innocenat 4y ago
I don't know what's happening but the font on that website rendered so bad on my standard DPI monitor with Chrome/Win11 (100%) that it's very distracting.
- tomalaci 4y ago
  Same issue for me using Chrome/Win10. There seem to be some sharp artefacts above letters: https://imgur.com/a/lt8Kdah https://imgur.com/a/lt8Kdah
wodenokoto 4y ago
> They are also called postpositions because, unlike prepositions, they follow the noun or the element they are modifying I did learn of particles as pre and post positions but I never really thought of them as modifying. I’ve always thought of them more as connecting and showing relationships between words and sentences.
Cyberdog 4y ago
It's interesting that this sort of thing is not something native speakers actually learn in a classroom or textbook sense; they just learn it by natural language acquisition. But foreign language speakers have no choice. Quick, native English speakers: How do you define the word "the?" Or "a?" How do you explain when to use "the" and when to use "a?" This is not something we can really put into words easily since we never intentionally learned it themselves; just acquired it. Same with native Japanese speakers and all the little words here. It's really the more natural way to learn in the end. In all my studies I feel like I never really retained the differences between へ and に for very long, and the same with は and が, but I managed to get to a point where I could use the right one far more often than not based on what just felt right. So don't sweat it too much if you can't remember all these particles; just keep practicing and it should fall into place eventually.
- madmoose 4y ago
  > just keep practicing and it should fall into place eventually. You just have to train your skull-housed neural network with lots of examples.
- kretaceous 4y ago
  > just keep practicing I'm taking a course from my university and am active on Duolingo. How do you suggest I practice? How did you?
  - becquerel 4y ago
    Talk with natives. I used HelloTalk back in the day and it was pretty good for Japanese.
  - bluepizza 4y ago
    Duolingo is bad. You should have a mix of resources that fit you best: Wanikani (absolutely essential), Bunpo, LingoDeer, Bunpro, and audio drills lessons, like Pimsleur. Add a occasional speaking lesson with a teacher on iTalki.
    - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
      I checked out Wanikani's free blog posts to learn kana, but they seemed pretty useless as an L2 English speaker. They might be useful for L1 English speakers, though.
      - bluepizza 4y ago
        The interesting thing about it is learning the kanji, which is essential for reading. It might be an extra step to learn a few new words in English, but it is not a complex task.
        Tijdreiziger 4y ago
        It is not complex per se, but it is unnecessarily confusing. For instance, Japanese い (i) is similar in pronunciation to the letter 'i' in various Germanic languages (e.g. Dutch, German, Swedish). The romaji reflects this similarity. Enter Wanikani's (Tofugu's) explanation: > い is pronounced like the ee in "eel." To remember this kana, just think of a couple of eels hanging out. Like I mentioned, this is probably useful for L1 English speakers, but it is not worth having to go from Dutch 'i' to English 'eel' in order to finally go to Japanese い (i).
wokwokwok 4y ago
I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach. I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan. You know what worked? Lots of examples of people using particles. What did not work? Text books explaining what the particles do. A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them from shed loads of examples. It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing. For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless. Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts. This has long been an argument, but language models reallly nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  And all language models of any use also have way more data than a human could read in a lifetime. Look, you learned a basic understanding of particles and had some _meaning_ associated with them, before going out and practicing and finally learning the language. No one is saying you’ll learn a language by just reading grammar rules. What text books on grammar says is that it’s a good support to give you an understanding that helps you process and create sentence so you can get to listening and speaking and learn to use the language.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  I find that examples and technical explanations complement each other. Examples are important, but the grammar explanations help give an idea of what to focus on in the examples. In fact I see it as a gradient. Vocabulary that stands on its own (like "apple") is best learned through examples. Stuff that is extremely structural (like how verbs conjugate in Japanese) is much easier to learn through explanations, instead of going through examples trying to find the pattern yourself. And there is of course middle ground, like grammar particles, which are vocabulary that also obey lots of rules.
- yorwba 4y ago
  Inferring rules from shed loads of examples instead of coding them explicitly is only superior for big language models because machines are faster at processing examples than humans are at implementing a comprehensive set of rules for the machines to follow. So it's a trade-off between slow and expensive human labor vs. fast and comparatively cheap machine labor. When it's a human learning a language, that speed difference doesn't apply. When the choice is between a slow human processing a lot of examples vs. a slow human processing a small number of examples plus a description of the rule governing them, it's no longer so obvious that the first approach is better.
butz 4y ago
Interesting website, but looks like it is still work in progress. Filtering on Kanji page is broken and Grammar page is just empty. Keep up the good work!
jtvjan 4y ago
I'm not sure if the kana-only view is very useful, since the kanji view already has full yomigana. Maybe have a button to toggle furigana instead?
- dymk 4y ago
  I keep this in a userstyles sheet: ruby rt { visibility: hidden; } ruby:hover rt { visibility: visible; } For most sites that have kanji w/ furigana, this makes it visible only on mouse-hover.
toron123 4y ago
If anyone is curious why particle は is read as wa instead of ha I recommend reading this: https://briefjapanese.fun/history-of-%e3%81%af/ https://briefjapanese.fun/history-of-%e3%81%af/
suction 4y ago
davide_v 4y ago
I'm currently in a 6 months streak on Duolingo japanese and this article is actually very useful to understand the difference between ha, ga and he, that I think are the most tricky. In fact the ga explanation is the longest hehe :p Keep it going, the website is super well made and fast (what's the tech behind?).
Isamu 4y ago
There’s a language joke in Uncle from Another World, where to pass himself off as an elf girl he adds a “-wa” to his sentences in a completely unconvincing way because that’s “how girls talk”. So in this case is -wa a particle? What kind?
- ClimaxGravely 4y ago
  In this case wa modifies a particle to make it sound more feminine. It's not a particle by itself. For example "yo" might become "wayo". I'm not sure I know about "wa" being used in that way by itself (maybe in some cases you can completely replace the particle with "wa" when it's obvious) but I'm not a native speaker (this is information I'm relaying from by partner/teacher)
- JMStewy 4y ago
  That's a 終助詞 (shuujoshi) or "sentence-ending particle". Note that despite both being pronounced as "wa", the sentence-ending one is written as わ ("wa"), while the topic-marker particle is written as は ("ha"). In standard Japanese, わ is feminine and mildly emphatic (used for asserting an opinion or stating a fact).
Tainnor 4y ago
I find this article rather confused. The difference between は and が is not adequately explained, there are questionable analyses (verbs of motion analysed as transitive just because they can take を), weird terminology ("genitive case"... in a language that doesn't have cases, also it's not like the article is at least consistent in calling を an "accusative case" marker), and at times weird English to the point of being confusing (誰が described as "confidential", I think what they mean is "non-polite")... but regardless, that's nowhere near a "complete introduction" to particles. I have a textbook (The Structure of the Japanese Language by Susumu Kuno) that devotes three entire chapters only to は vs. が. Of course, you can give a tl;dr of it, ignoring edge cases, but you do have to at least talk a bit more carefully about what a topic is, and what a subject is.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >verbs of motion analysed as transitive just because they can take を I think it's fine to call 移動動詞 transitive because they take a direct object. The reason why a lot of people call them intransitive is because they are 自動詞. It's appealing to want to be able to interchange transitive / intransitive and 他動詞 / 自動詞. >that's nowhere near a "complete introduction" I agree. There wasn't anything complete other than defining what a particle is. The article didn't even define a single particle that is classified as a 終助詞 (か, よ, な, ね, ...) despite even using them in the example sentences. Edit: >"genitive case"... in a language that doesn't have cases, also it's not like the article is at least consistent in calling を an "accusative case" marker 格助詞 is in JMDict as "case-marking particle (e.g. "ga", "no", "wo", "ni")." I can't be bothered to look up what cases actually are and verify this since I find applying western linguistics to Japanese to not be very useful.
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    > I think it's fine to call 移動動詞 transitive because they take a direct object. I would agree if it were a direct object. I think mainstream analysis is that を is considered to not always mark the object, but sometimes the place you walk through, and as such frequently stands in opposition to に. I would argue that these are essentially adjunct phrases, not core arguments, although that's always a difficult argument to make in Japanese, since all NPs are theoretically optional, even arguments. > I can't be bothered to look up what cases actually are and verify this since I find applying western linguistics to Japanese to not be very useful. As usual, everyone will have their different definitions, but I consider case to be morphological (see also: https://wals.info/chapter/49 https://wals.info/chapter/49). I think using vocabulary such as "genitive" muddies the waters. The genitive has a number of functions in, say, Latin or Ancient Greek, not all of which are related to possession. I think it's less confusing to call の a possessive marker - although technically, it's not always possession (e.g. 校長のスズキ先生), so maybe you could even find a better term, like "relational".
wahnfrieden 4y ago
I made a popular reader app for learning Japanese with unique word by word and kanji by kanji learning progress tracking functionality as you read: https://reader.manabi.io https://reader.manabi.io
musicale 4y ago
> Particles are a particular and specific concept in Japanese language, and do not exist in many other languages, in particular Western languages English's particles are few.
- naniwaduni 4y ago
  "Particle" and "copula" are two words that might as well be Japanese-learning-specific jargon, for how disproportionately common they appear in that context, and their meanings in that context subtly differs from their meanings in general linguistics.

126 points by lassmaglio 4y ago

I don't know what's happening but the font on that website rendered so bad on my standard DPI monitor with Chrome/Win11 (100%) that it's very distracting.

tomalaci 4y ago
Same issue for me using Chrome/Win10. There seem to be some sharp artefacts above letters: https://imgur.com/a/lt8Kdah https://imgur.com/a/lt8Kdah

wodenokoto 4y ago

> They are also called postpositions because, unlike prepositions, they follow the noun or the element they are modifying I did learn of particles as pre and post positions but I never really thought of them as modifying. I’ve always thought of them more as connecting and showing relationships between words and sentences.

Cyberdog 4y ago

It's interesting that this sort of thing is not something native speakers actually learn in a classroom or textbook sense; they just learn it by natural language acquisition. But foreign language speakers have no choice. Quick, native English speakers: How do you define the word "the?" Or "a?" How do you explain when to use "the" and when to use "a?" This is not something we can really put into words easily since we never intentionally learned it themselves; just acquired it. Same with native Japanese speakers and all the little words here. It's really the more natural way to learn in the end. In all my studies I feel like I never really retained the differences between へ and に for very long, and the same with は and が, but I managed to get to a point where I could use the right one far more often than not based on what just felt right. So don't sweat it too much if you can't remember all these particles; just keep practicing and it should fall into place eventually.

madmoose 4y ago
> just keep practicing and it should fall into place eventually. You just have to train your skull-housed neural network with lots of examples.
kretaceous 4y ago
> just keep practicing I'm taking a course from my university and am active on Duolingo. How do you suggest I practice? How did you?
- becquerel 4y ago
  Talk with natives. I used HelloTalk back in the day and it was pretty good for Japanese.
- bluepizza 4y ago
  Duolingo is bad. You should have a mix of resources that fit you best: Wanikani (absolutely essential), Bunpo, LingoDeer, Bunpro, and audio drills lessons, like Pimsleur. Add a occasional speaking lesson with a teacher on iTalki.
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    I checked out Wanikani's free blog posts to learn kana, but they seemed pretty useless as an L2 English speaker. They might be useful for L1 English speakers, though.
    - bluepizza 4y ago
      The interesting thing about it is learning the kanji, which is essential for reading. It might be an extra step to learn a few new words in English, but it is not a complex task.
      - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
        It is not complex per se, but it is unnecessarily confusing. For instance, Japanese い (i) is similar in pronunciation to the letter 'i' in various Germanic languages (e.g. Dutch, German, Swedish). The romaji reflects this similarity. Enter Wanikani's (Tofugu's) explanation: > い is pronounced like the ee in "eel." To remember this kana, just think of a couple of eels hanging out. Like I mentioned, this is probably useful for L1 English speakers, but it is not worth having to go from Dutch 'i' to English 'eel' in order to finally go to Japanese い (i).

wokwokwok 4y ago

I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach. I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan. You know what worked? Lots of examples of people using particles. What did not work? Text books explaining what the particles do. A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them from shed loads of examples. It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing. For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless. Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts. This has long been an argument, but language models reallly nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.

wodenokoto 4y ago
And all language models of any use also have way more data than a human could read in a lifetime. Look, you learned a basic understanding of particles and had some _meaning_ associated with them, before going out and practicing and finally learning the language. No one is saying you’ll learn a language by just reading grammar rules. What text books on grammar says is that it’s a good support to give you an understanding that helps you process and create sentence so you can get to listening and speaking and learn to use the language.
woojoo666 4y ago
I find that examples and technical explanations complement each other. Examples are important, but the grammar explanations help give an idea of what to focus on in the examples. In fact I see it as a gradient. Vocabulary that stands on its own (like "apple") is best learned through examples. Stuff that is extremely structural (like how verbs conjugate in Japanese) is much easier to learn through explanations, instead of going through examples trying to find the pattern yourself. And there is of course middle ground, like grammar particles, which are vocabulary that also obey lots of rules.
yorwba 4y ago
Inferring rules from shed loads of examples instead of coding them explicitly is only superior for big language models because machines are faster at processing examples than humans are at implementing a comprehensive set of rules for the machines to follow. So it's a trade-off between slow and expensive human labor vs. fast and comparatively cheap machine labor. When it's a human learning a language, that speed difference doesn't apply. When the choice is between a slow human processing a lot of examples vs. a slow human processing a small number of examples plus a description of the rule governing them, it's no longer so obvious that the first approach is better.

butz 4y ago

Interesting website, but looks like it is still work in progress. Filtering on Kanji page is broken and Grammar page is just empty. Keep up the good work!

jtvjan 4y ago

I'm not sure if the kana-only view is very useful, since the kanji view already has full yomigana. Maybe have a button to toggle furigana instead?

dymk 4y ago
I keep this in a userstyles sheet: ruby rt { visibility: hidden; } ruby:hover rt { visibility: visible; } For most sites that have kanji w/ furigana, this makes it visible only on mouse-hover.

toron123 4y ago

If anyone is curious why particle は is read as wa instead of ha I recommend reading this: https://briefjapanese.fun/history-of-%e3%81%af/ https://briefjapanese.fun/history-of-%e3%81%af/

suction 4y ago

davide_v 4y ago

I'm currently in a 6 months streak on Duolingo japanese and this article is actually very useful to understand the difference between ha, ga and he, that I think are the most tricky. In fact the ga explanation is the longest hehe :p Keep it going, the website is super well made and fast (what's the tech behind?).

Isamu 4y ago

There’s a language joke in Uncle from Another World, where to pass himself off as an elf girl he adds a “-wa” to his sentences in a completely unconvincing way because that’s “how girls talk”. So in this case is -wa a particle? What kind?

ClimaxGravely 4y ago
In this case wa modifies a particle to make it sound more feminine. It's not a particle by itself. For example "yo" might become "wayo". I'm not sure I know about "wa" being used in that way by itself (maybe in some cases you can completely replace the particle with "wa" when it's obvious) but I'm not a native speaker (this is information I'm relaying from by partner/teacher)
JMStewy 4y ago
That's a 終助詞 (shuujoshi) or "sentence-ending particle". Note that despite both being pronounced as "wa", the sentence-ending one is written as わ ("wa"), while the topic-marker particle is written as は ("ha"). In standard Japanese, わ is feminine and mildly emphatic (used for asserting an opinion or stating a fact).

Tainnor 4y ago

I find this article rather confused. The difference between は and が is not adequately explained, there are questionable analyses (verbs of motion analysed as transitive just because they can take を), weird terminology ("genitive case"... in a language that doesn't have cases, also it's not like the article is at least consistent in calling を an "accusative case" marker), and at times weird English to the point of being confusing (誰が described as "confidential", I think what they mean is "non-polite")... but regardless, that's nowhere near a "complete introduction" to particles. I have a textbook (The Structure of the Japanese Language by Susumu Kuno) that devotes three entire chapters only to は vs. が. Of course, you can give a tl;dr of it, ignoring edge cases, but you do have to at least talk a bit more carefully about what a topic is, and what a subject is.

charcircuit 4y ago
>verbs of motion analysed as transitive just because they can take を I think it's fine to call 移動動詞 transitive because they take a direct object. The reason why a lot of people call them intransitive is because they are 自動詞. It's appealing to want to be able to interchange transitive / intransitive and 他動詞 / 自動詞. >that's nowhere near a "complete introduction" I agree. There wasn't anything complete other than defining what a particle is. The article didn't even define a single particle that is classified as a 終助詞 (か, よ, な, ね, ...) despite even using them in the example sentences. Edit: >"genitive case"... in a language that doesn't have cases, also it's not like the article is at least consistent in calling を an "accusative case" marker 格助詞 is in JMDict as "case-marking particle (e.g. "ga", "no", "wo", "ni")." I can't be bothered to look up what cases actually are and verify this since I find applying western linguistics to Japanese to not be very useful.
- Tainnor 4y ago
  > I think it's fine to call 移動動詞 transitive because they take a direct object. I would agree if it were a direct object. I think mainstream analysis is that を is considered to not always mark the object, but sometimes the place you walk through, and as such frequently stands in opposition to に. I would argue that these are essentially adjunct phrases, not core arguments, although that's always a difficult argument to make in Japanese, since all NPs are theoretically optional, even arguments. > I can't be bothered to look up what cases actually are and verify this since I find applying western linguistics to Japanese to not be very useful. As usual, everyone will have their different definitions, but I consider case to be morphological (see also: https://wals.info/chapter/49 https://wals.info/chapter/49). I think using vocabulary such as "genitive" muddies the waters. The genitive has a number of functions in, say, Latin or Ancient Greek, not all of which are related to possession. I think it's less confusing to call の a possessive marker - although technically, it's not always possession (e.g. 校長のスズキ先生), so maybe you could even find a better term, like "relational".

wahnfrieden 4y ago

I made a popular reader app for learning Japanese with unique word by word and kanji by kanji learning progress tracking functionality as you read: https://reader.manabi.io https://reader.manabi.io

musicale 4y ago

> Particles are a particular and specific concept in Japanese language, and do not exist in many other languages, in particular Western languages English's particles are few.

naniwaduni 4y ago
"Particle" and "copula" are two words that might as well be Japanese-learning-specific jargon, for how disproportionately common they appear in that context, and their meanings in that context subtly differs from their meanings in general linguistics.