Advanced info on the basic particles?

8 comments

1. This is much easier explained in context of real sentences so throw some examples of places you struggle and you will get better answers

2. Some particles pair with words so you need to practice (or consider memorizing) those together. The MNN English supplement shows some of those pairs in the vocabulary section.

   You should consider a book called “All About Particles” by Naoko Chino. It is short, an easy read, and one of my favourite books on Japanese. I also read it when working through MNN 2.

   https://www.abebooks.com/9784770027818/Particles-Handbook-Japanese-Function-Words-4770027818/plp

3. Ok, at the high risk of having someone who understands parts of speech yell at me because I’ve internalized these “wrong” so that I can use them correctly… here goes.

   に : I remember this as the words “to” and “at”.

   を : is an object marker. This marks nouns that a transitive verb is happening to.

   が : is a subject marker…… but I think of it as an object marker not directly being acted upon by another person/thing, or it is currently in a state. It’s used with intransitive verbs, and the word 好き. EG: a door or window being open, a light being on, or being off, something falling off a shelf. etc. Occasionally it’s used in place of は for emphases, or used as a conjunction between sentences, where it’s read as “but”. But for now just focus on this one.

   Particles are something one messes up for long after they get the basics down. 🙂 It just takes a while to get used to.

4. We don’t have particles in English, instead we have this thing called prepositions.  

   **On** Wednesdays, **in** the mornings, **during** summertime, **at** nine o’clock, I’m busy **with** studying, interested **in** learning, keen **on** grammar, knowledgable **about** kanji, but not very good **at** anything.

    

   This prepostion thing is all very confusing, says the English learner. “Why can’t I say **at** Wednesdays **on** 9 o’clock and why am I **on** the bus but **in** the car? Please tell me everything about when to use on, in and at.”

    

   The reply to the frustrated English learner must be that telling “everything” would result in a multi volume book series that wouldn’t be useful to him. Instead he should rely on some basic vague “meanings” combined with learning new patterns as he expands his vocabulary. (Being *keen* comes with **on**, *interested* comes with **in**, you use **on** with days of the week and so on.) And he should accept that he will make a lot of mistakes, but eventually he’ll get the hang of it mostly effortlessly through the power of immersing in the language.

    

   Japanese particles work a lot like this too. You don’t study a particle. You study new vocabulary and new grammatical patterns and all the time you’ll find new situations were the same old particles show up. I don’t think you should worry too much about you mixing up particles.We will gradually get better as we immerse more into the language.

    

5. The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar has in-depth explanations of these that you might find useful. (If you search enough you might be able to find a copy you don’t have to pay for)

6. I highly recommend going through Cure Dolly’s playlist from the beginning, but if you really want you can skip to her particle videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvH9vH60Ig&list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj

7. [All About Japanese Particles](https://www.amazon.com/All-About-Particles-Handbook-Japanese/dp/1568364199) goes more in-depth than you could ever need

8. I asked this very question and just got people yelling at me saying I should go back to the basics or read more saying it’s not important you will just learn it when I said I could speak some Japanese but don’t understand the grammar.
   I am so unlucky when asking general non specific questions

   Thanks to this random post I actually got some of my questions answered nicely summarized would give reward if I had one