Please someone tell me a good way to understand Japanese sentence structure and how to know what particles to say after each verb and etc. Please give me a breakdown that will make learning Japanese so much easier.
Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. Ohayo! Let's begin with the sentence structure. In a Japanese sentence or clause, the verb is placed at the end, and its grammatical order is: subject + object + verb, so that instead of saying: "I bought a new hat." the Japanese will say: "I a new hat bought."
Nominative and Accusative: In most European languages no distinction exists between words used in the nominative (subject) and in the accusative (object). In Japanese the distinction between these two cases exists, and the nominative is indicated by the postposition "wa" or "ga" while the accusative is indicated by the postposition "wo." In a very few cases "wa" or "ga" may indicate the accusative.
Supposing that English words were Japanese, let's consider the following sentence in which the Japanese particles indicating the nominative and accusative are placed in the position that they should have in the Japanese translation.
English construction: Horses eat grass.
Japanese construction: Horses "wa" grass "wo" eat.
Interrogation: The interrogative form is indicated by "ka" at the end of a sentence or clause, which in this case corresponds to our question mark.
Kore wa nan desu ka. = What is this?
(This what is ?)
As for the particles after each verb and etc. = please give me some specific examples so I know exactly what you mean.
P.S. If you are a beginner and have a Real Player for your computer, here is a site you will love because you can also hear the pronunciation:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/english/index.html
P.P.S. Here is a more complete explanation of particles:
http://www.timwerx.net/language/particles.htm