School and Grade: Grammar

A single brown pawn sits to the left of a group of seven brown pawns on the right Let's talk a little bit about Japanese grammar before we watch the video.

Image note: what is the difference between the set of pawns on the right and the lone pawn of the left? In grammar, we call this difference number and refer to singular and plural. Later in this lesson, we'll discuss how Japanese addresses this concept.

Grammar

-wa

In Japanese, -wa is a particle indicating the topic of the sentence.

In Lesson 2 we learned about a set of very common and important words in Japanese which are called particles. We were introduced to two sentence-final particles: -ka and –ne.

In Lesson 5 we meet -wa, which is one of the most frequently used particles. The function of -wa is to point out the topic of the sentence, and that is why it is called the topic particle.

O-namae-wa? - Your name?
Pen-wa doko desu-ka? - Where is the pen?
Naomi-san-wa doko desu-ka? - Where is Naomi?
Gakkoo-wa Jefason-Kookoo desu. - The school is Jefferson High School.
Timu-san-wa daigaku-sei desu-ka? - Is Tim a college student?
Baabara-san-wa nan-nen-sei desu-ka? - What grade is Barbara in?
Sensei-wa Timu Kukku-sensei desu-ne? - The teacher is Mr. Tim Cook, isn’t it?

Nan-nen-sei? (What grade?)

If you want to find out what grade someone is in, you can ask Nan-nen-sei? You can also ask: Nan-nen-sei desu-ka? Notice how the question and answer line up.

Question:
- Nan-nen-sei desu-ka?
Answer:
- Ichi-nen-sei desu.

The word order is exactly the same for both the question and the answer. The question has Nan, which means what and at the end has the question particle -ka. For the answer, you put a number (Ichi) in place of Nan and drop the -ka.

Doko (where?, which place?)

The word doko can mean where? or which place? in English. Look at the following examples.

Gakkoo-wa doko desu-ka? Which place is your school? (What’s the name...?)
West-Kookoo desu. It’s West High School
Gakkoo-wa doko desu-ka? Where is your school?
Atorante desu. It’s (in) Atlanta.

The question Gakkoo-wa doko desu-ka? can refer to the name of your school or the location of your school. The context determines the appropriate response.

Singular and plural nouns

Consider the Japanese word for "picture of book" which we call in English a guidebook. In Japanese, one guidebook is written the same way as many guidebooks:

gaidobukku:
- Singular: guidebook
- Plural: guidebooks

Consider the Japanese speaker who is learning English and encounters singular and plural noun forms such as cat ~ cats, box ~ boxes, foot ~ feet, child ~ children, mouse ~ mice. These present quite a challenge since Japanese usually does not even make the singular/plural distinction.

Pen desu.
- It’s a pen.
- They are pens.
Kookoo-sei desu.
- It’s a high school student.
- They are high school students.
Sensei-ni kiite kudasai.
- Please ask the teacher.
- Please ask the teachers.

In most situations you can distinguish between singular and plural from the context.

[CC BY-NC-SA 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION - INTENDED ONLY FOR USE WITHIN LESSON.
Billion Photos/Shutterstock.com. Image used under license from Shutterstock.com and may not be repurposed.
Lesson content based on material created by Georgia Public Broadcasting, 1996. All rights reserved. Used with permission.