User:Jun-Dai/Np/L4

= Lesson 4: Parts of speech (品詞) =

Vocabulary

 * 1) 名詞 (めいし) - noun
 * 2) 動詞 (どうし) - verb
 * 3) 形容詞 (けいようし) - adjective
 * 4) 助詞 (じょし) - particle; relational

Overview
The Japanese word for the English part of speech is 品詞 (ひんし). It refers to all the different elements that can be used in a Japanese sentence, including the Japanese equivalents to English nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, as well as a few extra ones.

The Japanese equivalent of the English noun is 名詞 (めいし). Like in English, 名詞 can refer to people, places, things, ideas, types of activity, etc. In Japanese it is not necessary to explicitly include a noun in every sentence. Though one is always implied, it can be omitted if it is clear what you are talking about. Also, Japanese does not have a grammatical sense of pluralization or countability. While you can, in certain situations, explicitly pluralize a noun, it doesn't effect the way the rest of the sentence is formed.

The closest equivalent of the English verb is 動詞 (どうし). 動詞 refers to actions, and it can be conjugated to reflect tense, state, mood, etc. As Japanese is an SOV language, the main verb of every sentence goes at the end. Unlike English, Japanese does not require the presence of a verb, and in many cases there simply isn't one. Like English, 動詞 can be either 他動詞 (たどうし, transitive verb) or 自動詞 (じどうし, intransitive verb).

Japanese has two 品詞 for the English adjective: い-形容詞 (い-けいようし) and な-形容詞 (な-けいようし). They are both used to describe 名詞, but they are treated entirely differently within Japanese grammar. Because they are often used in a similar manner to nouns (名詞), the な-形容詞 are often called "adjectival nouns" in English. い-形容詞, on the other hand, are often referred to as "true adjectives."

One 品詞 that has no real equivalent in English is 助詞 (じょし), which is usually referred to as a "particle" or "relational" in English. 助詞 are used to indicate how the other 品詞 relate to each other. That is to say, placing the 助詞 を after a 名詞 indicates that that 名詞 is functioning as a direct object of whatever 動詞 is being used in the sentence or phrase. Among other things, this eliminates the need to have a constrained word order (as in English) or declension (as in German and in romance languages) to indicate the function of a particular part of speech. It also makes word boundaries fairly clear, and so most written Japanese does not have spaces between words.

Let's examine these 品詞 in more detail.

名詞
Like the English noun, Japanese 名詞 refers to people, places, objects, or ideas that are acting, being acted upon, or being related to in some way. As such, it includes 代名詞 (だいめいし) (pronoun),