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A blog about the language spoken in anime.
In Japanese, konna koto mo arou ka to こんな事もあろうかと, meaning "[I] thought something like this might happen, [so I prepared this in advance]," is a phrase commonly as a gag in comedy manga and anime, by a character who is just too well prepared, specially for a situation nobody would have expected to happen.
In Japanese, sometimes a phrase ends with dai だい or kai かい that would normally end with the da だ copula or the ka か question marker. This extra i い is a sentence-ending particle and is generally used to make a sentence more soft and amicable.
The sentences above mean the same thing as themselves without the particle: nanda, sou ka, iku zo, akireta wa.
In Japanese, a "counter," or josuushi 助数詞, is a word that comes after a number to say what sort of thing is being counted, e.g. "3 slices," mi-kire３切れ. More technically, it's a morpheme suffixed to a quantifier, which includes non-numbers like zen~ 全～, "all," and nan~ 何～, "how many."
So you know nothing about Japanese and you want to know what a sentence in Japanese says. Well, this article is for you. For starters, the basic structure of a simple, typical Japanese sentence looks like this:
For example:
As you can see above, you often have a "n. p. n. p." noun-particle pattern, and v.'s tend to come after p.'s.
Some sentences have different structures, and we still don't know what adverbs, adjectives, verbs, nouns, and particles look like exactly. In this article we'll see all of this and some more, so you'll have a starting point even if you know nothing about Japanese.
Then, once you figured out the structure of the sentence, all that's left is to look up the words of the sentence in a dictionary (e.g. jisho.org), and with luck you'll understand what it means.
Note: this article is only about grammar. It's recommended you familiarize yourself with the Japanese "alphabets" before continuing.
One question many weebs ask themselves is: can you learn Japanese with anime? Or: can you learn Japanese with manga? Or with light novels, visual novels, Japanese games, Japanese songs, Japanese dramas, etc.?
The answer is... yes, you can! Except you still have to study. If you work real hard and spend all your time reading raw manga in Japanese, you'll get really good at Japanese... found in raw manga, which is maybe all you wanted anyway.
In this article, I'll explain how it works, and provide some guidance to learn Japanese by consuming media.
In Japanese, ka no you ni かのように means someone does something "as if" something else were true. Syntactically, this is (likely) the ka か particle turned into a no の adjective qualifying you 様 followed by the ni に adverbial copula. Other conjugations include: ka no you na かのような, ka no you da かのようだ, and ka no you desu かのようです.
What does ~you ni suru ～ようにする mean in Japanese?
Most likely, it means "to make [something] become in a way that does/doesn't do something," i.e. "to make [it] start doing" or "to stop doing" something; specially "to make it so it would do something" when something else happens, "to ensure" it happens in that case; or "to make it possible for [it] to do something/for something to happen;" Syntactically, this is you 様 followed by the ni に adverbial copula modifying the verb for "to make become," suru する.
What does ~you ni naru ～ようになる mean in Japanese?
Most likely, it means "to become in a way that does/doesn't do something," i.e. "to start doing" or "to stop doing" something; or "to become able/unable to do something;" it can also mean to "to become like/similar to something else." Syntactically, this is you 様 followed by the ni に adverbial copula modifying the verb for "to become," naru なる.
What does you ni ように mean in Japanese?
Most likely, it means something "will become," naru なる, in a way that does X, i.e. it will start doing X; it may also mean to stop doing X by becoming in a way that doesn't do X; it may mean "to make Y become," suru する, in a way that does or doesn't do X; to ensure X happens; to do Y so that X happens; at the end of sentences it may be a prayer wishing that X would happen; it may also mean to do or be X "like" one were Y, in similar way; or to do X like Y were true, as if. Syntactically, this is you 様 followed by the ni に copula.
What does you na ような mean in Japanese?
Most likely, it means to be similar, as in "an X that is like an Y," or "an X that is like of an Y;" or it being "like," "as if," something had happened; or to say someone or something is "the sort" of person/thing that would do something. Sometimes it's found at the end of an incomplete sentence where ki ga suru 気がする is omitted, in which case it would mean "[I] have the impression that." Syntactically, this is you 様 followed by the na な copula. It could also be the end of the volitional form followed by a na な particle, in which case it means "let's do X, shall we?"
What does you da ようだ mean in Japanese?
Most likely, it means "it seems that (something is true)" or "(this thing) is like/is similar to (this other thing)." Syntactically, this is you 様 followed by the da だ copula (you desu ようです is polite form). There are also other words pronounced you よう it could be, like you 用, "business," but normally only you 様 is spelled with hiragana. For example:
In Japanese, you よう (or yoo よー, yoo よぉ with a long vowel) may mean various different things depending on context, specially as there are multiple homonyms so it may spell different words. For disambiguation:
Ironically, you よう doesn't mean "you," the second person pronoun. For that, yuu ユー would be the katakanization, e.g. ai rabu yuu アイ・ラブ・ユー, "I love you."
In Japanese, you よう, also spelled you 様, homonymous with ~sama ～様, has several different meanings: it refers to the way something is "like," to say one thing is like another; to say that it's like something that isn't true were true; it can be used to say someone is or isn't the sort of person that would do something, also works for sorts of things; it's used to make future-tensed certain phrases (verbal statives) that would otherwise be present-tensed; it can refer to the desired way things should be that you attempt to cause by doing a certain thing; it's used to say that you have been making yourself do, or not do, something, trying to gain a habit or lose it; it's used in sentences that express wishes, specially in prayers; it's used to say there doesn't seem to be a way to do something; and it's used to express you have made a conclusion based on some evidence but you aren't certain the conclusion is true, you're merely proposing it based on available evidence.
In Japanese, you 用 means various things: it refers to something you have to do, a "task" or "business" you have to care of; the "use" of a thing in doing a task; "for what task" is a thing suitable, its "purpose;" and to refer to the usefulness of a thing in the sense of how many uses it has, what tasks it can do, its "purposefulness."(日本国語大辞典:用)
