JpPlaza.com - All about Japanese Particles | Ebooks

Some things are easier to learn than others. Take, for instance, Japanese nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Once you have a little grammar under your belt, you can pick them up and squirrel them away with relative ease. For some reason, though, this doesn’t work with particles. They can’t be looked up, pinned down or pigeonholed in the same way that their fellows can. Yet their correct usage is essential to speaking Japanese with any degree of fluency.

Why are particles so elusive? Because particles are next to meaningless as isolated entities. A particle, in fact, might be defined as

a non-conjugating part of speech, bearing an absolute minimum of independent meaning, which attaches itself to other parts of speech and thereby places them in context. Thus, a statement consisting of a single particle would&t convey much meaning. But the addition of another word would make a world of difference. A phrase like Tokyo ni (to Tokyo), for instance, would communicate something, but not ni by itself. The rule of thumb might be: Japanese particles have virtually no meaning bereft of context.

In this book, I propose to clarify the functions of a considerable number of particles, to describe their various usages1 and, most important, to exemplify each and every usage with sample sentences. Only in this way - through context - can the student truly come to grips with the Japanese particle.

Don’t be surprised by certain of the particles taken up here. For example, there is -ba, as in nomeba (if [you] drink). You may think that -ba is not a particle at all, but an inflection of the verb nomu. Grammatically speaking, however, -ba is one of a species of particle that follows conjugated verbs (in this case, nome-).Since -ba and others of its tribe are not only true particles but exhibit a multiplicity of usage well worth your attention, I have chosen to include them.

An effort has been made to present the particles in order of frequency?the more common first; the less, later. An attempt has also been made to group particles by meaning. Neither the ordering nor the grouping, however, is entirely consistent, since the two systems are now and then at loggerheads. A further complication is that some of the more basic particles have usages belonging more properly to an intermediate or advanced level of study. (All usages at these two levels are marked with asterisks.)

Cross references are provided where similarities exist between different particles. This was not done without some misgivings, for while certain particles may be basically alike, they are usually not true equivalents in the sense that one can replace another without even a slight change in meaning or a certain oddness creeping in. In particular, there are numerous comparisons between wa and ga because of the frequent interplay between these two particularly pesky particles.

(Source: All About Particles book)