Word Order

 Firstly, I would like to emphasize that Japanese people don't care about the word order other than making the Core action last, because the pieces of ‘other information’ can generally be expressed in any order without affecting the fundamental meaning of the sentence, as long as they are accompanied by the appropriate particles, so you don't have to worry too much about the word order written in the textbook.

 

As a starting point, most basic sentences can be formed using the following pattern:  

In English, you are used to describing the core part of an action first, and then adding detail later.

 

 

Japanese, on the other hand, is essentially the opposite of this. In neutral sentences, most of the detail is described before the core action, which usually comes at the very end.

 

 

In English, after starting by saying who did the action, we then include all of the detail about that action starting from the action itself and moving outwards.

 

In Japanese, on the contrary, it would look like this:

As we saw, applying the outside-in approach gives us the following in Japanese:

 

English /I ate lunch in the park on Tuesday.

Japanese/ I → on Tuesday → in the park → lunch ate.

 

わたし は かようび に こうえん で ひるごはん を たべました。

 

This demonstrates a simple word order pattern that can be applied to all sentences like this – TTPOV:

 

 

2.Actions that involve movement from one place to another

 

In cases where we are talking about an action that involves movement from one place to another, such as ‘going’, ‘coming’ or ‘returning’, the information we would most commonly include is:

 

The destination

The means of transportation

The timing

 

Here’s an example sentence involving movement:

 

·        Kenta went to the beach by bus yesterday.

 

The vocabulary we need for this sentence includes:

Yesterday	kinō
Went	ikimashita
Beach	umi
Bus	basu

     

If we put this into our outside-in diagram, it looks likes this:

 

 I went to the beach by bus yesterday.

I → yesterday → by bus → to the beach went.

 

A simple way to remember the word order for sentences like these would be to alter TTPOV to TTMDV:

 

 

3.Actions that involve the movement of a separate object

 

Some actions, such as “sending”, “giving”, “taking” or “putting”, involve movement, but the thing that moves is not the same as the person causing it to move.

 

As shown here, both the photo (object) and the friend (destination) are part of the core action.

 

I will send the photo to my friend by email in the afternoon.

 

 

Before that, though, we need a neutral word order for when there is no context. We could probably argue that the photo is a more central part of the action, since it is the thing that actually moves, so our Japanese version of the above diagram would look something like this:

 

I will send the photo to my friend by email in the afternoon.

I → in the afternoon → by email → to my friend the photo will send.

 

 

 

Regardless, as a starting point for actions like these, we can combine TTPOV and TTMDV to become TTMDOV:

 

 

 

Finally, I will introduce a general sentence that includes frequency and duration.

1. Subject (Topic) 2. Time or Frequency 3. Place or Duration 5. Object 6. Verb

わたしは	きのう	としょかんで	5じかん	ほんを	よみました
Subject (Topic)	Time	. Place	Duration	Object	Verb
Yesterday, I read a book at the library for 5 hours

 

 

 

わたしは	いつも	3じに	1じかん	こうえんを	はしります
Subject (Topic)	Frequency	. Time	Duration	Place	Verb
I always run in the park for 1 hour at 3 o'clock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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