Hi, I’ve been learning Japanese on Duolingo for about five months now and I had no problems untill I
started with expression of position of things/people. Order of words in Japanese is different from English or my mother tounge
and I got used to it, but in this situation I don’t understand something. For example:
母と父の間に私がいます (I am between my mother and father.)
前と後ろには妹たちです (My younger sisters are in front of and behind me.)
テーブルの横に椅子があります (There is a chair next to the table.)
If we were to write the translation of words by order they were written we would have:
1. my mother and father between I am. (adverb is second)
2. in front of and behind me My younger sisters are. (adverbs are first)
3. table next to a chair There is. (adverb is second)
Why is the order of words (subjects,objects,adverbs) not consistent? What does it depend on? Am I missing someting? Thanks in advance!
5 comments
Not an answer, but a correction to one of your example sentence: the second one should be 前と後ろには妹たち**がいます** to match with your translation. The original sentence indeed does not work as a Japanese sentence.
間 and 横 are not adverbs in Japanese, they are nouns. Think of 父と母の間 and テーブルの横 as places, like you’d list a location or city name in the same spot in the sentence.
The biggest thing that helped me when learning Japanese is to stop using my first language as a crutch and to stop comparing them or directly translating them. Word order won’t match, parts of speech won’t match, meanings won’t match. Learn Japanese as it is.
Somewhere along the line you have picked up a slightly confused understanding of how Japanese works.
For example, while Japanese does have adverbs (fukushi) there are no adverbs here.
To unpack a bit, 母と父の間 is a combination of words that acts as a noun. You might see it called a “noun phrase” (though some people might call it a noun clause). It refers to the location between your mother and father. They are neither “subject” nor “object” of the final verb. It does the same grammatical job as 前と後ろに and テーブルの横に.
Then you have a particle に which has many uses in Japanese, but here is used to turn a noun referring to a location into an adverbial phrase or clause telling you where something exists.
So in all three sentences you have the same pattern: location, subject of the verb, verb.
However, there is one difference. In the second sentence the location is made the topic of the sentence by use of は.
This changes the nuance of the sentence. The first is drawing attention to you more than the second is drawing attention to the sisters. As a rule of thumb, は tends to throw attention to what follows and が to what precedes. This is very rough, and は has many uses.
For example, the second sentence could be used after one that said what was on your left and right. Here the は would be used to contrast with your previous sentence.
I suggest reading up on the topic particle to understand that.
Japanese word order is quite flexible. The verb (plus some particles) comes at the end of a sentence or clause and particles come at the end of the phrase or clause they are part of. Modifiers (nouns + no, i-adjectives, verbs, na-adjectives + na) come before the thing they modify – which is the hardest part for many English speakers.
But you can reorder object and subject or topic or whatever in a sentence before the verb. Topics usually start.
In this case, they are all an adverbial clause put in the first position.
Edit: Btw, Japanese is flexible on word orders, so don’t expect consistency in the first place.
in this case “ni” is a locative rather than an adverb. and “no” connects noun phrases, so ”teburu no yoko ni” is one locative noun phrase, “at the side of the table”
your second phrase there omits “me”, which is something very common to do in Japanese. “in front and behind” – in front and behind what? well if we didn’t have to say it, it must be obvious. you could rephrase as 私の前と後ろに~ instead.
but also the word order is flexible to an extent, verb at the end is the only real consistent rule.