Japanese Sentence Structure: How Word Order Really Works

Here's an ordinary Japanese sentence: 私は昨日、友達と東京で寿司を食べました (わたしはきのう、ともだちととうきょうですしをたべました). Word for word it runs: I, yesterday, friend with, Tokyo in, sushi, ate. English would say "I ate sushi in Tokyo with a friend yesterday." Almost everything after "I" comes in the opposite order, and the verb is last.

Textbooks sum this up as "Japanese is subject, object, verb". That's true as far as it goes, and it leaves out most of what you need. The verb's place is fixed. Nearly everything else is settled by particles and by what the listener already knows.

The verb goes last

English order is subject, verb, object: I eat an apple. Japanese puts the verb at the end: 私はりんごを食べます (わたしはりんごをたべます), "I apple eat". The same goes for sentences that end in an adjective or in a noun with です, like この本は高いです (このほんはたかいです), this book is expensive. Whatever makes the statement closes the sentence. Only small sentence-ending particles such as か, ね and よ come after it.

The one real exception is casual speech, where people tack a forgotten piece on after the verb as an afterthought: 食べたよ、寿司 (たべたよ、すし), "I ate it, the sushi." You'll hear this all the time in conversation and see it in manga. In writing and in polite speech, the predicate ends the sentence.

Building a sentence one piece at a time

A Japanese sentence can be a verb and nothing else. Start there and add one piece per step.

Each new piece went in front of what was already there, and each arrived with its own tag: を after the thing eaten, で after the place, と after the companion, は after the topic. 昨日 has no tag. Relative time words like yesterday, today and tomorrow usually go without one, while clock times and dates take に, as in 三時に (さんじに, at three o'clock).

All six lines are complete, correct sentences. The first five don't say who ate. We'll come back to that.

Particles leave the order free

In "the dog bit the man", position tells you who did the biting. Swap the two nouns and the meaning flips. Japanese marks each noun's role with a particle placed right after it, which leaves position free.

That table is a rough sketch, and our guide to particles has the detail. For word order, what matters is that the tag travels with its noun. You can shuffle the pieces in front of the verb and the sentence still means the same thing:

• 友達と東京で寿司を食べました。 (ともだちととうきょうですしをたべました。)
• 東京で友達と寿司を食べました。 (とうきょうでともだちとすしをたべました。)
• 寿司を友達と東京で食べました。 (すしをともだちととうきょうでたべました。)

All three say "I ate sushi in Tokyo with a friend." The difference is a slight shift in emphasis. What you can't do is move the verb off the end, or separate a particle from its noun.

Free doesn't mean random, though. There's a usual order that sounds the most neutral: topic first, then time, then the remaining pieces, with the object sitting close to the verb. And in casual speech は and を are often dropped altogether, as in 寿司食べた？ (すしたべた, "Did you eat sushi?"). When that happens, the usual order and the context carry the meaning.

Topic first, then a comment

は doesn't mark the subject. It marks the topic, the thing the sentence is about, and the rest of the sentence is a comment on it. Often the topic and the subject are the same, as in 私は学生です (わたしはがくせいです, I'm a student), and that hides the difference. These three show it:

• 象は鼻が長い。 (ぞうははながながい。) As for elephants, the nose is long. In natural English: elephants have long noses.
• この本はもう読みました。 (このほんはもうよみました。) As for this book, (I) already read it.
• 今日は仕事です。 (きょうはしごとです。) As for today, it's work. In natural English: I'm working today.

In the first sentence 象 is the topic and 鼻 is the subject of 長い, marked with が. In the second, the topic is the thing being read, which English would call the object. In the third, "today" isn't doing anything at all. English has to rebuild each sentence around a subject. Japanese says what we're talking about and then says something about it. The split between は and が takes a while to settle in, and we cover it in a separate post on は and が.

What gets left out

Once something is clear from context, Japanese drops it. Subjects go first. 行きますか (いきますか) is "Are you going?", and the answer はい、行きます (はい、いきます) is "Yes, I am", with no "you" and no "I" anywhere. Objects go too. Asked whether you've read a book, 読みました (よみました) is a full answer.

That's why step one of the sushi sentence was already complete. It's also why opening every sentence with 私は sounds off. It isn't ungrammatical, but it comes across as insisting on yourself, a bit like "Me, I ate sushi. Me, I went home." Say 私は once to set the topic, or when you're contrasting yourself with someone else, and then leave it out. The same applies to あなた (you). People use the other person's name, or nothing.

Modifiers come before what they modify

Anything that describes a noun goes in front of it. With adjectives that matches English: 赤い車 (あかいくるま) is a red car. The surprise is that whole clauses do it too. English puts them after the noun, as in "the book that I bought yesterday". Japanese puts them before the noun, with no word for "that":

• 昨日買った本 (きのうかったほん): the book (I) bought yesterday
• 友達が作ったケーキ (ともだちがつくったケーキ): the cake my friend made
• 東京に住んでいる人 (とうきょうにすんでいるひと): a person who lives in Tokyo
• 日本語の先生 (にほんごのせんせい): a teacher of Japanese (の links one noun to another the same way)

The clause uses the plain form of the verb (買った, not 買いました) and plugs straight into the noun. Adverbs sit in front of the verb in the same way: ゆっくり話します (ゆっくりはなします) is "speak slowly".

In long written sentences this means the noun you're waiting for can arrive after a lot of description, just as the verb arrives after everything else. When a sentence won't parse, find the verb at the end, then find the noun at the end of each chunk, and work backwards from those.

Questions and negatives

Neither one changes the word order. A question is a statement with か at the end: 寿司を食べましたか (すしをたべましたか), "Did you eat sushi?" Question words stay where the answer would go and don't move to the front. 何を食べましたか (なにをたべましたか) is literally "what ate?", and どこで食べましたか (どこでたべましたか) is "where at ate?". In casual speech か is usually dropped and a rising tone does the work.

Negation lives in the ending of the predicate:

In more formal language じゃありません becomes ではありません, and you'll also hear the mixed forms 食べないです and 学生じゃないです in everyday polite speech.

Because the ending comes last, you can't tell whether a sentence is positive or negative, past or present, a statement or a question until its final word. Listen to the end before you react. All those endings are covered in our verb conjugation guide.

Common questions