Your first Japanese sentence

After you have fully memorize the first few most commonly used Japanese words. Its time to understand some sentences. Lets take a look at the following sentences.

わたし　は　がっこう　に　いきますwatashi wa gakkou ni ikimasu

The above sentence means, I go to school.

Now Japanese sentences are different from English sentences as they are post-position. Some of you might not understand what I mean here. Lets take a look at a simple English sentence.

This sentence, “I go to school” is pre-position meaning subject -> verb -> noun. While you can see that Japanese sentences are post-position so it goes like “I school go”. So you get subject -> noun -> verb

Let’s take a look at another example.

“I eat rice” but for Japanese “わたし は ごはん を たべます” which goes “I rice eat”

So now you can see that all Japanese sentences are post-position.

My personal tip here: By remembering the position in the sentence structure, you are able to form your own Japanese sentences without any worries. Even if the grammar is wrong, it will be understood mostly by the Japanese. Just make sure you pronounce it as accurately as you can.

Let’s break down the sentence.

“watashi wa gakkou ni ikimasu”

“watashi” means I. So this part is easy to understand, same as English.

“wa” is a topic marker. So watashi is the topic. “wa” is used only when you want to introduce new information to the person you are talking to.

“gakkou” means school. This is a noun.

“ni” is a particle to show location or direction where you want to go.

“ikimasu” means “to go”, “will go” or “go to”. Japanese is not similar to English where we would usually used the “to” or “will”. Just assume that all Japanese verbs already includes “to” and “will” in it. So you don’t have to think of it when forming your own sentences.

So this means that the sentence “I will go to school” or “To go to school” or “I go to school” is the same meaning as “わたし　は　がっこう　に　いきます”. Its all included in it.

So let’s take a look at the earlier sentence I introduce.

”わたし　は　ごはん　を　たべます”

“gohan” means rice

“wo” is a particle to show some that a verb is acting directly on an object. So you can see that the word “gohan” is being acted upon by the word “tabemasu”

“I eat rice” ”わたし　は　ごはん　を　たべます” So you should understand by now, “I will eat rice”, “To eat rice” and” I eat rice” is the same meaning as ”わたし　は　ごはん　を　たべます”.

Before I end this post. Can you guys tell me what does “わたし　は　みず　を　のみます”　means?