Need some to explain word placement?

6 comments

1. Yes, you’re wrong, it’s the other way around.

   Did you just recently start learning Japanese? Because you need to understand that Japanese sentence structure is fundamentally different from English sentence structure. You can’t just substitute word by word.

   Do get a good textbook and work through the in-depth explanations in there, you’ll benefit a lot more.

2. >Or even, “(my) cats name (is)….” 猫の名前 but to Google translate it means, “name of a cat” so I’m wrong?

   But this is correct… “Cat’s name” is the same as “Name of the cat”, even if one sounds kind of awkward. Or am I missing something here?

3. You need to study fundamentals more, all your examples are wrong.

   Neighborhoods in America = アメリカにある近隣 or アメリカの近隣　(btw both “neighborhood” and “America” are nouns, not adjectives”

   Book about cats 猫についての本

   Cat’s name 猫の名前

4. I think you mainly need to expand your “adjective + noun” rule to, like, “description + noun.” In English we have some types of description that go after the noun, where in Japanese it’s pretty much always before.

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   >Or even, “(my) cats name (is)….” 猫の名前 but to Google translate it means, “name of a cat” so I’m wrong?

   “A cat’s name” and “the name of a cat” mean the same thing. In English the word order changes depending on if you did the ‘s thing or the “of” thing.

   In Japanese it’s all just の. What kind of name? 猫の名前 the cat’s name.

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   >近隣にアメリカ

   In English we have prepositions, little words that go before (pre-) a location (-position). “In” America. “At” the store. “On” the table. This means that when you use a location to describe a thing, the description ends up after the noun again. Cities in America. People at the store. Milk on the table.

   In Japanese they have postpositions instead. The location comes before the rest with a connecting word/particle after it, like any other description. So 近所にアメリカ does sound a bit like “America in the neighborhood.”

   (Side note, it also feels odd to use に by itself to connect to a noun. に usually connects to actions happening in/towards a place, like アメリカに行く “go to America.” You could say something like アメリカの近所 “America’s neighborhoods” to connect America to a noun)

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   > 猫ついて本

   Here the order is fine, you’re just missing some parts so it sounds kind of like caveman talk. It should be 猫についての本.

   The に after 猫 attaches it to ついて, which is originally a verb that means something like “set out for” or “assume (a role).” Don’t worry too much about how that makes sense as a beginner, just remember that it’s noun**に**ついて for “about noun”

   Then you need a の to make 猫について (about cats) describe the book. What kind of book? 猫についての本.

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   It’s pretty common for English-speaking beginners to not get particles, I think. But they’re what’s doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to telling you what each word does in a sentence, so definitely go find some good grammar explanations that can introduce you to each one. Google Translate isn’t reliable for learning grammar.

5. This might help https://8020japanese.com/japanese-word-order/

   You can’t literally translate word for word because that’s not correct.

   If it helps initially you can mentally translate something like “猫ついて本” as an “about cats book”. The same way you might say “red book” the “about cats” becomes an adjective.

6. Just to emphasize what other people said, Google Translate is not a grammar checker. You cannot type a (possibly totally wrong) sentence into GT and use the output to judge whether you wrote a correct sentence, because it will always give you something.