Understanding particles are essential for becoming good at Japanese. Each particle has its own connotation and grammatical function. The さ (sa) particle has two primary uses: to add inflection and emphasis to a sentence and to modify adjectives into nouns. This article will go over both of these functions and how to use さ (sa) … Read more
Japanese particles are among the most fascinating and important to your understanding of the language. Particles are suffixes – they attach themselves right after words (nouns, verbs, and adjectives) and phrases in the sentence. Think of a Japanese sentence as being built out of separate blocks of information. Particles work as the glue and the … Read more
Wa and Ga: A Tale of Two Particles When I started learning Japanese way back in 2002, my white-haired professor shared a daunting, darkly hilarious fact: by the end of our first semester, we would have a good idea how to use wa and ga correctly, but it would take us until we were his … Read more