Talk:Japanese particles

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[edit] Kara and no de Translations

Japanese and English differ in thier casuse and effect statement order, however I think it would be better to translate "Niku o tabenai kara, rāmen wa dame da" or "Jugyō ga aru no de, ikenai" (and the like) to standard English style (I can't go because I have a test, Ramen isn't good because I don't want to eat meat), and explain the reversal. Comments? -- Nictius 03:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] ka

Is "wakaru ka" acceptable? When using the short forms ka is omitted as a question particle, a rising intonation towards the end is usually used. I suggest it is changed to "wakarimasu ka".

Omission of ka when using the kudaketa register depends on the context. An informal friendly question wakaru? would indeed be indicated by tone, while adding the ka at the end allows the tone of voice to be different while still clearly being a question. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Another issue about ka -- from animes I've picked up that dare ka means "someone/anyone" (e.g. Macross Plus -- dare ka tasukete! = "Someone help me!"). Does this mean ka can turn a questioning word (like dare, nani, doko etc.) into the "some-" or "any-" form? E.g. nani ka = "something/anything". Didn't want to edit in case I was totally wrong... I think mo(u) might also have an effect, turning these questioning words into "every-" forms (e.g. nani mo = "everything"). Dave-ros 17:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
From textbook learning, I've never seen nani ka or dare ka translated to some/any forms... but in living in Japan, it is certainly used that way in casual speech. I'm not sure on the translated difference between dare ka tasukete! and dare mo tasukete!; though dare ka sounds more informal to me. This would make sense, because anime-style speech is extremely informal. 'Mo' (not Mou) is the typical particle used to make any-/some- in Japanese. -- Nictius 03:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
"Dare mo tasukete" sounds very strange to me. "Minna wo tasukete" (help everyone), "minna tasukete" (everybody help), "dare ka tasukete" (someone help), "dare ka wo tasukete" (help someone), "dare mo tasukenai" (nobody helps / helps no one), "dare mo ga tasukeru" (anyone would help) instead all sound normal to me. I'm not sure why you say that "anime-style" speech is extremely informal, as animes contain speech of all formality levels and the general level, while informal, is most of the time appropriate for the situations depicted and most of it is not particular to anime. Perhaps it's just me, but I wouldn't use the word "extreme" of any way of speech itself, but would reserve it instead for improper choices of words in specific situations, as you can't reach the extremities without stark contrast between the words and the situation. -- 130.233.24.129 02:37, 19
To answer the original question, learning Japanese from my teacher, I was made to learn that "wakaru ka" is not technically correct. If you say it to a Japanese person, they'll understand (I've made that mistake a few times), but the particle 'ka' is really only used with the verb two (I form) 'masu' form. For example 'Wakarimasu ka?'. When using the verb three dictionary form (U form), it would be 'wakaru no?'. Basically, 'wakaru no?' is equivilent to 'wakarimasu ka?', but wakaru no is more casual. Both wakaru no and wakarimasu ka mean 'do you understand?', but, again, wakaru no is more casual. So according to my instruction (Sorry if I'm totally offbase), you do not use ka after a verb three form. Only after the verb two with masu. Instead, with verb three, you use no. Hoshi.ni.Drifting

[edit] ni/de and ni/e sections

Wrote sections on "ni/de" and "ni/e" and made cosmetic changes to some particle examples. I also included links to non-Japanese-specific grammatical pages, which may not accurately describe the grammatical processes of Japanese. If anyone has input on the case links, please let me know. JFHJr 20:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your edits. --DannyWilde 00:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed

I'm not sure who the following note is aimed at: it seems a little distracting. First we discuss an "o" prefix which may be confused with the particle "o", then we add on the kanji, then we add on another reading of the kanji as well? Better to keep things simple.

The same honorific 御 is often pronounced go, in which case it may be written as ご.

--DannyWilde 00:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Removed incorrect dake example:

Dake also means "exactly", and is often used after question words.
Kore wa nan dake na, "What exactly is this?"

The actual J phrase is kore wa nan da kke na, with the kke a colloquial ka. Also heard in the phrase ano hito wa dare datta n kke? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 00:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure that "kke" and "ka" are related somehow? According to the dictionaries I use, "kke" ("ke") comes from "keri" and is used to indicate either that the speaker is recollecting something ("ano hito to yoku umi ni ittakke, natsukashii naa") or is asking about something he has forgotten or isn't sure he remembers correctly ("ano hito ha dare dattakke"). "Dattankke" sounds to me like the "n" doesn't belong there. -- 130.233.24.129 03:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
kke from keri is the orthodox view presented in the『日本語文法大辞典』as well. And datta n kke is decidedly bizarre. (Not to mention unpronounceable?!) Maybe there's some confusion with kee < kai ~ ka? --RJCraig 04:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links

Added/replaced links to the Japanese grammar article in two places: one in the wa/ga, where information on wa/ga is already available (as opposed to a link to nothing) and is rather exhaustive; the other is at the end for reference to the particle section of the grammar article. ...Or does anyone think it's worth putting wa/ga in this article also? JFHJr 00:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The information in the Japanese grammar page is very far from exhaustive. --DannyWilde 03:10, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
What do you suggest? Working on it on the Japanese grammar entry, or moving info from there to this one and then building on it that way? JFHJr 06:54, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Subordinate clause no

I don't understand the change made to the subordinate clause no line. The comment left in the edit was that there is no wa in subordinate clauses, which means the same thing as I had previously written: that the no replaced the wa in such cases. The subordinate clause is watashi-no tsukutta instead of *watashi-wa tsukutta, even though watashi is the topic of the subordinate clause. The marking of the subordinate clause no bearing on how the noun it modifies is marked, so keeki can be marked with either wa or ga, each meaning different things. Also, the construction watashi-ga tsukutta keeki-wa oishikatta is possible, so the ga in subordinate clauses is not necessarily replaced. In fact, the use of no and ga in subordinate clauses are complementary/contrastive, just like wa and ga in other conditions. So while the example currently up is gramatically correct, it no longer demonstrates the compulsory use of no that I wanted to show in adding this to the section.

Perhaps the wording should be something along the lines of "No must be used instead of wa in subordinate clauses to mark topic;" along with the original example. How does this sound?

JFHJr 07:04, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Please clarify your meaning on the main page as you like. --DannyWilde 07:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Added

I added a whole lot of particles and tried to be careful only to include true particles. Various postpositions are ambiguously verb- or noun-like, and I tried to keep out of that until the section at the end about English prepositions. I didn't get a chance to fill-in info for quite a few of them. Any that should go? Any glaring omissions? JFHJr 17:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Great work! But please visit http://www.nihongoresources.com/searchpindex.html, click Search with no parameters, and review the list of particles. Even that is not complete, as it's missing common things like e to (as is ), and in some cases is less complete than the Wiki, but there are some entries or usages there which are not represented here. You also may want to look through the book All About Particles by Naoko Chino, and absorb some of the material within. For instance, there are more uses of ni than you've got listed in the Wiki.

At this point I've added postpositions which derive from nouns and verbs because their function is postpositional, and because native English speakers might intuitively seek information about these postpositions assuming they are like particles. Do they belong here? JFHJr (㊟) 08:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe better to have a separate Wiki linked from here?

[edit] Inconsistencies

A relatively minor point, but I note that some entries indicate combined joshi, and some don't -- demo vs bakarika, for instance. Unless anyone has strong objections, I move to make this consistent, ideally by pointing out joshi combinations and etymologies (kashira as an abbreviation of ka shiranu, lit. "I don't know if it's X (but it might be)"). Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 00:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea to me. JFHJr (㊟) 15:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I know we're encouraged to be bold, but I want to run this by everyone before jumping in here. I've puzzled over the format of this article for a while, and though it works as a list, it seems a bit バラバラ to me. Here's an example of what I'm thinking, the current format followed by my mock-up. I'm going for tighter, conciser, less chatty, and more to-the-point. Let me know what you all think of it.

[edit] bakari

Bakari can come after nouns, i-adjectives, and verbs, meaning "just, only, full of".

Tabeta-bakari desu, "I just ate"; tabeta meaning "ate".
Tōkyō-wa hito-bakari desu, "Tokyo is just full of people"; hito meaning "people".

It also comes after the te form of Japanese verbs to indicate a repeated activity.

Kare wa tabete bakari iru., "He's always eating."

It is usually written with the hiragana ばかり. Colloquially, bakkari and bakka are often used instead of bakari to mean the same thing.

[edit] bakari

ばかり

Following:

Meaning:

  • "just, only, full of"
Tabeta bakari desu, "I just ate"; tabeta meaning "ate".
Tōkyō wa hito bakari desu, "Tokyo is just full of people"; hito meaning "people".

Following:

Meaning:

  • A repeated activity
Kare wa tabete bakari iru., "He's always eating."

Colloquially, bakkari ばっかり and bakka ばっか are often used instead of bakari to mean the same thing.

A list of bullet points strikes me as more succinct and more easily accessible, less explanatory text to dig through. That's why I ditch the explanation of the hiragana spelling and just give it at the beginning. Also note that I want to avoid hyphens unless we're dealing with a compound noun that simply looks too long written all together in romaji. So not "Tōkyō-wa hito-bakari desu", but rather "Tōkyō wa hito bakari desu".

This takes up more space vertically, so one thought might be to put the "Following" and "Meaning" bits into a table, with "Following" on the left and "Meaning" on the right.

Anyway, your thoughts, please!  :) Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 06:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that as the article is now, it's too free in form. It started out chatty, and when I added, I stuck with what was already there. How un-bold of me. Anyway, I personally find it useful to see particles attached to the words they modify, unless they end a phrase or sentence. I can definitely understand that some people would find it easier to read without hyphenation, though. I like your idea about the chart. Here's an idea using no below... JFHJr (㊟) 12:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] no

の (乃) [not a serious proposition for no; just if there were non-obligatory kanji used] [etymology, combination derivation, or fun fact here]
Following: Function Rōmaji Meaning
Nouns: posession sensei no kuruma the teacher's car
Nouns: possessive pronouns Watashi no ga ii. Mine is best.
Nouns: linking kuruma no Toyota Toyota the car [company]
Nouns: topic marker in subordinate clauses (see also: wa below) Kare no tsukutta kēki ga oishikatta. The cake that he made was tasty.
i-adjectives: nominalization Yasui no wa, kore. This is the cheap[er] one.
Verbs: nominalization Taberu no ga daisuki. I love eating.
Non-nominal phrases: question marker Mō, tabeta no? Have you eaten?
Kuruma na* no?
*Na, a form of the copula, serves here to de-nominalize the noun. See na above.		 Is it a car?

What do ya think? JFHJr (㊟) 12:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I like this, it's visually tighter than what I had and flows better. I very much like your use of bold to show what the particle attaches to. If other folks like this format too, I'm happy to start putting in the time to re-do the page. I have one puzzlement, though -- what do you mean by "Following: Function"? In my example, "Following" was meant to show what the particle follows, but I'm stuck here as to what it signifies.
On a different tack to look at the meaning of this entry rather than the structure :), would we need the distinction between "Possession" and "Possessive Pronouns"? I feel like the first includes the second, but I'm open to being convinced. Also, in the note about "na", my interpretation is that rather than "na" de-nominalizing the noun (an idea I'm struggling with, a bit like de-icing ice), the "no" nominalizes the copula. So rather than kuruma no, i.e. "the car's" or the possessive, you get kuruma na no with the emphasis on the copula, on the "is it" aspect. Does this interpretation fly?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 15:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
"Following: Function" was just a heading name. That's the format I had organized the column into. The kind of word the particle follows, colon, what the particle does to the word. Something else could be the heading name, too. "Use," "environment," whatnot. It was just a fast stab. And now that you mention it, you're right about the silliness of the "na" note. It's pretty convoluted, and "no" does nominalize the copula. But I wonder if there needs to be a note at all. I struck it out above and corrected the bold.
I'm not sure why the possessive pronoun line is there. I don't feel one way or another about it. I'll leave it out if I'm the one editing "no" when it's put into a chart. I don't think anyone would object to the chart; it's way less vertical, just a little different to edit. There's always editing help just in case, right?
Have you started on it yet? If not, also don't mind getting to work on at least putting the current info into charts (minus inconsistencies!), and shaping it up... Lemme know if you'd like to do it, though. JFHJr (㊟) 12:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Didn't see any messages for a while, so I put about half of the particle list into charts, using what was previously there most of the time. I hope I haven't stepped on any toes. Any suggestions or changes? Have at it. Bed time for me. JFHJr (㊟) 15:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Hey there -- Thanks for starting. Part of why you didn't see any messages from me is that I'm in a different time zone -- UTC -8, a.k.a. the US West Coast, to be specific.  :) I'll continue your work when I can grab the time today. Incidentally, I'm wondering if there should be a line between each term to better visually separate the entries? Or would that be too messy? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Thinking it through a bit, perhaps "Use" should be changed? To say "Use: Nouns" is not very clear, and makes it sound at first as though the particle in question is used as a noun instead of after a noun. Would switching this back to "Following" or "Follows" be acceptable, to indicate what it comes after? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 17:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Japanese grammar

Regarding my proposed merge from Japanese grammar, Mkill described that this Japanese particles entry and the particles section of the Japanese grammar entry have different purposes. Specifically, this entry mentions each particle separately, providing easy lookup of a specific particle. By contrast, the particles section on the Japanese grammar page groups them by usage and leaves out the less common ones to show the larger picture.

In order to improve the quality of both entries, I propose that we move the "big-picture" content about particles from the particles section of the Japanese grammar entry to this Japanese particles entry and that we copy each single Japanese particle to Wiktionary. See, for example, the entry I just created at wikt:ばかり. How does that sound? The Rod (☎ Smith) 06:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm, while I get your point, moving all these particle examples one by one to separate Wiktionary pages would 1) be tedious and 2) render this no longer a list where users can quickly see all the particles at once, for easier comparison / contrast and discovery. I'm not so sure we should remove what we've got here. That said, it might be a good idea to have these in Wiktionary as well, and I like your sample entry. Perhaps any users of this page as a reference could chime in? I contribute, but I don't really use the page to look anything up, so I might be overestimating the utility of having all the particles visible in one place. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, Eiríkr Útlendi. I'll wait for more input into this matter, but in the meantime, note that if include the [[Category:Japenese particles]] in the Wiktionary entries, they will all appear on the wikt:Category:Japanese particles page. The Rod (☎ Smith) 21:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Excellent that they can be so easily listed. One concern is that such a list would have only the header (i.e. the particle itself), and not also include the text. But again, I'm not sure how important this is. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 21:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I propose to move the "big picture" of particles currently presented on Japanese grammar into this page. Particles that do not fit into the categories currently show on Japanese grammar could remain at the bottom of this page. Please let me know if there are any further objections or recommendations. The Rod (☎ Smith) 00:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe you should just start. --Mkill 17:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I will. I just wanted to allow time for further objections after I answered Eiríkr Útlendi's objection. The Rod (☎ Smith) 19:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I have begun this process. To track progress, I am linking each particle migrated to Wiktionary. When all particles are migrated, it be time to move the particle-related content from Japanese grammar to here. Any help would be appreciated, otherwise, I will proceed, but slowly. The Rod (☎ Smith) 03:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
My vote for this goes for no. It's more accessible in the table form. Half of the reason to have a list of particles is so that if you want to know what particle to use for a particular purpose, you can just look through. If you put them all in the same category, you'll have a list for if you want to know what particle X does, but as for knowing what particle to use for purpose Y... you're boned. If some underlying thought here is that having a list of particles is somehow unencyclopedic, it seems like pretty good appendix fodder to me -- and appendices are still part of an encyclopedia. --Dookama 18:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Just throwing in my two cents, I personally enjoy things how they are. I'm a college student studying japanese and often use this page and the japanese grammar page, yet think both are pretty much fine as they are. Midusunknown 04:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kanji for nanka/nante

This "なんて" (from "などとて"), I believe, cannot be written as "何て"/"何と" ("what a ..." or something), and this "なんか" is usually written without any kanji. However I couldn't decide just to remove these kanji versions. I hope it is going to be solved. Mulukhiyya 10:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article is a bit of a mess

At a glance, a great number of the "particles" listed in this article aren't particles at all. 何か? め? もの (perhaps supposed to be 物)? ずつ? 沿い? 達? Short phrases and adpositional words are not necessarily particles. I am going to be removing many of these shortly. I suggest reviewing the equivalent Japanese-language article over at ja:助詞 as well as EDICT for a better idea of what does and does not constitute a particle. tgies 22:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. But as for もの, it's not 物/thing. だって、そうだもの/そうだもん。Meaning 'But that's what it is.'　I wanted to explain the difference between が and を, but I don't trust my English writing. Will you help me? ご飯が食べたい is 'what I want to eat is rice', you know. --Oda Mari 16:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edited

In the explanation of 'kedo', the word 'okashii' was used as strange... In order to keep the english translation correct, I changed 'okashii' to 'hen'. Reason being that okashii is used in japanese not as strange, but more as crazy. Hen is the appropriate word for strange. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure about this one. Hoshi.ni.Drifting 16:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)Hoshi.ni.Drifting

[edit] Extra Detail for de and ni

I'd like to make a few suggestions for additional information to add to the article, specifically around the particles ni and de. This is my first go at wiki, so I haven't made any changes directly to the article - I wanted to run it past everyone first, just to be on the safe side. Here are my suggestions:

de

  • Expansion of the instrument category to add a little more detail. The book I'm using to study Japanese (see below for reference) suggests this particle is used for methods/means (i.e. Koko dewa Nihon-go de hanashimashou), tools (i.e. Naifu to fouku de tabemasu), transportation method (i.e. current instrument category example) and materials/ingredients (i.e. Kore wa ringo to satou de tsukurimasu).
  • Addition of a new category to illustrate usage of this particle to indicate the number of people doing an action (i.e. Kinou wa hitori de uchi e kaerimashita).

ni

  • Expansion of the location category to add a little more detail. Specifically, the use of ni to indicate the place of existence specifically when using iru/aru (i.e. Koko ni hon ga arimasu) and to indicate the place where the result of an action remains (Kono kami ni anata no namae o kakimashou).
  • Addition of a new category to illustrate usage of this particle to indicate the time that actions are performed (i.e. Juu-ichi-ji ni machiawase o shimashita).

What do you think? By the way, the book that this information came from is The JET Programme Japanese Language Course Beginning Level Book 3 (2005) Fujitsu Learning Media Limited, Tokyo.

Clownba0t (talk) 00:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)