Please note that I am not interested in the minutiae of grammatical terminologies, nor absolute accuracy of their uses. Here I only present the grammatical terminologies that are relevant and useful while learning Japanese using this website. Since Japanese is a completely different language from European languages, it has concepts that do not have direct counterparts in European languages. Since you are here to learn Japanese, and also I have no desire to be a linguistic scholar, all those concepts are presented in Japanese and no attempt will be made to translate them in English. Those correct linguistic jargons won’t help you at all to actually learn a language. After all, we all speak our native languages without ever learning them.
Word classes
Japanese has the following word classes:
- 動詞 (どうし)-> Verb
- 形容詞 (けいようし)-> Adjective
- 形容動詞 (けいようどうし)-> Adjective-Verb (adjective with a conjugating ending)
- 名詞 (めいし) -> Noun
- 副詞 (ふくし)-> Adverb
- 連体詞 (れんたいし)-> Adjective that has to be followed by a noun, and cannot be a predicate itself
- 接続詞 (せつぞくし)-> Conjunction
- 感嘆詞 (かんたんし) -> Interjection
- 助動詞 (じょどうし) -> Auxiliary verb
- 補助動詞 (ほじょどうし) -> Helping verb. Normal verbs that modify other verbs when combined
- 助詞 (じょし) -> Particle
Also there is another grouping:
- 用言 (ようげん) -> 動詞, 形容詞, 形容動詞. Words that conjugate, and can be predicates
- 体言 (たいげん) -> 名詞
Conjugation
- 未然形 (みぜんけい) -> Connected to 助動詞 of negation and/or intention
- 連用形 (れんようけい) -> Connected to 動詞, 助動詞 or 助詞
- 終止形 (しゅうしけい) -> Terminal
- 連体形 (れんたいけい) -> Connected to 体言(=名詞)
- 仮定形 (かていけい) -> Hypothetical
- 命令形 (めいれいけい) -> Imperative