A Guide to Japanese Grammar: A Japanese Approach to Learning Japanese Grammar

by Tae Kim

All i-adjectives always end in the Hiragana character: 「い」.

There are actually very few na-adjectives that end with 「い」 that is usually not written in Kanji. Two of the most common include: 「きれい」 and 「嫌い」. Almost all other na-adjectives that end in 「い」 are usually written in Kanji and so you can easily tell that it's not an i-adjective.

That's because the whole point of the 「い」 in i-adjectives is to allow conjugation without changing the Kanji.

Unlike na-adjectives, you do not need to add 「な」 to directly modify a noun with an i-adjective.

the location of an object is defined as the target of the verb for existence （ある and いる）. Time is also a common target.

the target particle makes the date a specific target emphasizing that the friend will go to Japan at that time. Without the particle, there is no special emphasis.

when it is being used as a particle, it is always pronounced /e/ （え）.

「に」 goes to a target as the final, intended destination (both physical or abstract). The 「へ」 particle, on the other hand, is used to express the fact that one is setting out towards the direction of the target.

Note that we cannot use the 「へ」 particle with verbs that have no physical direction.

the 「へ」 particle can also be used to talk about setting out towards certain future goals or expectations.

The 「で」 particle will allow us to specify the context in which the action is performed.

Here's the confusing part.

You can attach the topic particle （「は」 and 「も」） to the three particles that indicate location （「に」、「へ」、「で」） when the location is the topic.

The sentence is actually an abbreviated version of 「図書館には行った？」

A topic can be a direct object without using the 「を」 particle. In fact, putting the 「を」 particle in will make it wrong.

The difference between the two is that one verb is an action done by an active agent while the other is something that occurs without a direct agent.

The important thing to remember is that intransitive verbs cannot have a direct object because there is no direct acting agent.

The only time you can use the 「を」 particle for intransitive verbs is when a location is the direct object of a motion verb

The negative, past, and negative past conjugations of verbs can be used just like adjectives to directly modify nouns.

we cannot do this with the plain non-past state-of-being using 「だ」.

the real order of the fundamental Japanese sentence is: [Verb]. Anything else that comes before the verb doesn't have to come in any particular order and nothing more than the verb is required to make a complete sentence.

Complete sentences (relative clauses) can be used to modify nouns to make sentences with nested relative clauses except in the case of 「だ」.

It can combine two or more nouns together to mean "and".

Another similar use of the 「と」 particle is to show an action that was

done together with someone or something else.

you might think of this as an "and/or, etc." type of listing.

「とか」 also has the same meaning as 「や」 but is a slightly more colloquial expression.

The 「の」 particle in this usage essentially replaces the noun and takes over the role as a noun itself. We can essentially treat adjectives and verbs just like nouns by adding the 「の」 particle to it. The particle then becomes a generic noun, which we can treat just like a regular noun.

We can use the noun 「物」, which is a generic object or 「こと」 for a generic event.

the 「の」 particle is very useful in that you don't have to specify a particular noun.

it just allows us to modify verb and adjective clauses like noun clauses.

Even when substituting 「の」 for a

noun, you still need the 「な」 to modify the noun when a na-adjective is being used.

It is important to realize that the sentence must be about the clause and not the noun that was replaced.