How to Construct a Japanese Sentence

Basic Japanese sentence structure in 8 levels, starting from one word.

In this post, we are going to build a Japanese sentence step by step, using one very simple word: 寒い (samui), “cold”. We start with one word and finish with a long, natural sentence.

New to the basics? See our Japanese grammar lessons and the JLPT N5 preparation checklist on Japanese Sentence Builder.

Table of Contents

1. Level 1: One Word Is a Full Sentence
2. Level 2: Adding “Very”
3. Level 3: Adding “Today”
4. Level 4: The Particle は
5. Level 5: Adding です
6. Level 6: The Sentence-Ending Particle よ
7. Level 7: Adding “Because”
8. Level 8: Word Order
9. Summary

Level 1: One Word Is a Full Sentence

In Japanese, you only need one word to make a complete sentence.

Let’s say you wake up in the morning, you go outside, and it’s cold. You would say:

寒い。
Samui.
“It’s cold.”

That’s it. I didn’t shorten anything, and I didn’t omit anything. It is a full, complete sentence. From here, you can add more information and nuance.

Level 2: Adding “Very”

Now I’m going to add a word that is a casual, colloquial way of saying “very”:

めっちゃ寒い。
Meccha samui.
“It’s very cold.”

Pretty simple. There are many ways of saying “very”, depending on your personality, where you are from, or your generation:

• めっちゃ (meccha): colloquial
• とても (totemo): more formal
• マジ (maji): if you want to try the “gyaru” fashion, you should say maji, like マジ寒い (maji samui). It was pretty popular in the ’90s and early 2000s.

So many choices!

Level 3: Adding “Today”

Now I’m going to add 今日 (kyou, “today”):

今日めっちゃ寒い。
Kyou meccha samui.
“It’s very cold today.”

But here’s the thing: I added “today” even if I didn’t have to. And if I add something when I don’t have to, maybe there is a reason. For example, maybe I was thinking about today as a bright new day where I can do so much stuff, like watching educational videos for research purposes. So adding something is adding nuance.

Level 4: The Particle は

Now I’m going to use the particle は (wa):

今日はめっちゃ寒い。
Kyou wa meccha samui.
“It’s very cold today (now).”

は is typically called a topic marker, but it does much more than just introducing a topic. In this case, it kind of highlights “today”, possibly because it wasn’t cold yesterday and I want to emphasize the contrast. There are other possible interpretations, depending on the context and the speaker’s intention.

Here I’m explaining natural, native Japanese, which might be different from textbook versions of Japanese, which are often simplified for learning purposes. Real-life Japanese is complex and full of nuance and ambiguity. By the way, this doesn’t mean textbooks are inherently bad. They have their own place, like they’re useful for not incurring the wrath of the Green Owl. 🦉

If you want to understand the complexity, ambiguity, and nuance of real-life Japanese, keep reading our particle lessons, where we explain the real Japanese people speak today.

Level 5: Adding です

Let’s say you’re at work and your coworker asks you if it’s cold today. You might say:

今日はめっちゃ寒いです。
Kyou wa meccha samui desu.
“It’s very cold today.”

We typically use です (desu) with strangers, people who are older than us, and often coworkers. By adding です to plain Japanese, I’m kind of acknowledging the hierarchy, distance, or relationship between us.

Level 6: The Sentence-Ending Particle よ {#level-6}

Now let’s use the sentence-ending particle よ (yo).

Let’s say you are at work and you see your coworker trying to go outside wearing only a T-shirt. Since you’re a very nice person and you want to save your coworker from hypothermia (because it’s not very fun to die), you would say:

今日はめっちゃ寒いですよ。
Kyou wa meccha samui desu yo.
“It’s very cold today, you know!”

Particles like よ add nuance and make the sentence conversational. We often use よ to tell somebody something that they might not know. Maybe you’re telling your coworker because they don’t know, or maybe you’re just reminding them.

Level 7: Adding “Because”

Now I’m adding “because”, and I’m also going to use December:

12月だから、今日はめっちゃ寒いですよ。
Juunigatsu dakara, kyou wa meccha samui desu yo.
“It’s cold today because it’s December.”

You know, Japanese people are often too busy working to notice that it’s already a new month. 😄

You want me to say it faster? This is a pretty long sentence. It’s pretty amazing that you can understand this kind of sentence in a short amount of time!

Level 8: Word Order

Some people say Japanese word order is reversed, because if you map the words of the original sentence onto the translation, it does seem reversed. But from a Japanese person’s perspective, English sentences are reversed, because Japanese word order is clearly the right order.

In English, the conclusion comes first: “It’s cold today because it’s December.”

But in Japanese, the extra information comes first: “Because it’s December, it’s cold today.”

12月だから、今日はめっちゃ寒い。
Juunigatsu dakara, kyou wa meccha samui.

But here’s the thing: in conversation, we often say something like this:

今日はめっちゃ寒いよ、12月だから。
Kyou wa meccha samui yo, juunigatsu dakara.

It’s kind of like English. It’s pretty common in conversation, and it is completely natural. But in formal writing, we might just write something like the first version, because how we write Japanese can be very different from how we speak Japanese.

Natural spoken Japanese is not widely taught. If you want to learn how we actually speak Japanese, follow our Japanese grammar series. Textbook Japanese can sound very unnatural and non-native in real life.

Summary

Want more? Visit reading-japanese.com for free Japanese lessons, vocabulary lists, and learning resources.

Related posts

• Japanese Grammar Lessons
• Japanese Particles Explained
• JLPT N5 Preparation Checklist
• 100 Hiragana Words