Grammar 1 · — the machine, finally named

Six rules, one sentence

Seventeen chapters have used this sentence; today's sheet is the first to explain it. Six rules, and all six are operations on the same five words — negate it, put it in the past, turn it into a question, say me too, join two nouns, add a name. Learn the one sentence and the six things it does, and you have the whole page.

≈16 minutes · the six grammar points of Minna no Nihongo I lesson 1, in the book's own order · every claim checked against Jisho.org and the textbook

This is a new kind of page for the course, because it is a new kind of sheet: typed, numbered Grammar Lesson 1, and about rules rather than words. Every previous chapter brought grammar the way luggage brings sand — a particle hidden in a set phrase, a verb ending attached to a word list. This sheet stops and writes the rules down. Grammar lessons get their own numbered track here, beside the day lessons: a day lesson brings new words, a grammar lesson names what those words have been doing all along.

Where this sheet runs ahead of the book

The six rules are Minna no Nihongo lesson 1's own grammar points, in the book's order. One block goes further: the book teaches and now and saves the two past forms for lesson 12. The sheet hands over all four at once — and it can, because the four are a closed set: one word, four shapes, every one printed on the page. Nothing here asks you to build a form the sheet does not show. The verbs' own endings stay exactly where chapter 14 left them — untouched.

1.Rule 1 — the frame:

The sheet writes the frame as an equation: N₁ + + N₂ + 。 N₁ is who the sentence is about. N₂ is what N₁ is — a name, a job, a nationality. The sheet labels N₂ the Object, and it is worth one sentence of care here: this course keeps the word object for the -word a verb acts on, which chapter 17 taught. In this frame nothing is acted on — is not what you do, it is what you are. Same slot on the sheet, different job in the language.

わたしは がくせいです。

, the sheet says, has no meaning of its own: it closes the sentence and makes it polite — the job English gives the word is. Every sentence with no verb in it ends on . Two of the sheet's four examples, with the other two waiting in sections 2 and 3:

  1. 1.I am Mike Miller.

    Japanese

    わたしは マイク・ミラーです。

    watashi wa Maiku Mirā desu

    Arabic

    أَنَا مَايْك مِيلَر.

    anā Mayk Mīlar

  2. 2.I am a doctor.

    Japanese

    わたしは いしゃです。

    watashi wa isha desu

    Arabic

    أَنَا طَبِيبٌ.

    anā ṭabīb

One name on the sheet to correct

The sheet writes and — four times across its two pages, always without the long vowel. The textbook's character is , with the that lesson 8 taught and the that separates the halves of a foreign name — and the course's own reading chapter already prints him that way. Learned as , so the two pages agree.

Trick 1 · One character, two sounds — and now the rule

Chapter 11's sheet transliterated and with wa, correctly, and never said why. Today's sheet finally states the rule: is read ha at the start of a word and wa whenever it is doing particle work — in the middle or at the end, marking what the sentence is about. One character, two sounds, and the sound tells you the job: hear wa, and you know the word in front of it is the topic.

Trick 2 · One sentence, one ending

The sheet's footnote is a parsing tool, stated as a law: a sentence with a verb ends on ; a sentence with none ends on ; never both. So the last two characters of any polite sentence tell you what kind of sentence you just heard — states what something is, states what someone does, chapter 17's frame exactly. One boundary to keep: this is the law of the polite style this course speaks, not of all Japanese — the textbook stays in it until well past this workbook's horizon, so it will not mislead you for a long time.

2.Rule 2 — the four shapes of

English changes is to was and isn't; does the same work by changing shape, and the sheet lists all four shapes as a set. Present or past, yes or no — two switches, four cells, and the rest of the sentence never moves:

PositiveNegative
Presentですじゃありません
Pastでしたじゃありませんでした

The negative has a formal twin: is compressed speech for , so is the same word in its written, formal dress — and the inside it is still read wa, exactly as Trick 1 promises. One sentence through all four shapes:

  1. 1.I am a student.

    Japanese

    わたしは がくせいです。

    watashi wa gakusei desu

    Arabic

    أَنَا طَالِبٌ.

    anā ṭālib

  2. 2.I am not a student.

    Japanese

    わたしは がくせいじゃありません。

    watashi wa gakusei ja arimasen

    Arabic

    لَسْتُ طَالِبًا.

    lastu ṭāliban

  3. 3.I was a student.

    Japanese

    わたしは がくせいでした。

    watashi wa gakusei deshita

    Arabic

    كُنْتُ طَالِبًا.

    kuntu ṭāliban

  4. 4.I was not a student.

    Japanese

    わたしは がくせいじゃありませんでした。

    watashi wa gakusei ja arimasen deshita

    Arabic

    مَا كُنْتُ طَالِبًا.

    mā kuntu ṭāliban

One cell on the sheet to correct

Under form 4 the sheet prints the formal twin as — the is missing. The full form is . The sheet's own transliteration keeps the n, and the version two lines up keeps the , so the page disagrees with itself one line apart — the same shape of slip as chapter 13's , and like chapter 13's it sits in the column that gets memorised. Learn the form with its .

Trick 3 · The vanished vowels — trust your ears, not the romaji

Romaji writes desu and deshita, and that is not what Tokyo says: the u and the middle i are whispered away, so the words land as des and desh-ta. This is a regular rule of the standard language — the vowels i and u devoice between voiceless consonants and at the end after one — not laziness. Press the 🔊 buttons above and listen for it. The sheet knows: its own transliteration column writes des and deshta, more honestly than romaji does.

Trick 4 · Japanese conjugates its ending; Arabic conjugates its opening

Line the four Arabic sentences up against the four Japanese ones and the same grid appears at the opposite end of the sentence. Where Japanese is present and positive, Arabic spends no word at all — أَنَا طَالِبٌ is two nouns side by side, nothing doing 's job. Negate, and لَيْسَ steps in at the front; put it in the past and كَانَ does; both at once and it is مَا كُنْتُ. Japanese swaps the shape of its full stop; Arabic swaps the word it opens with — and the noun quietly changes ending too (طَالِبٌ → طَالِبًا), which the reading chapter noted on this very sentence.

3.Rule 3 — asks the question

Take any statement and put after the final or : it is now a question, and nothing else in the sentence moves — no swapped words, no question mark needed. The sheet adds the answering rule: a question is answered with , a question with — the question hands you the shape of your own answer.

  1. 1.Are you a student?

    Japanese

    あなたは がくせいですか。

    anata wa gakusei desu ka

    Arabic

    هَلْ أَنْتَ طَالِبٌ؟

    hal anta ṭālib?

  2. 2.— Yes, I am a student.

    Japanese

    はい、わたしは がくせいです。

    hai, watashi wa gakusei desu

    Arabic

    نَعَمْ، أَنَا طَالِبٌ.

    naʿam, anā ṭālib

  3. 3.Is Mr Miller American?

    Japanese

    ミラーさんは アメリカじんですか。

    Mirā-san wa amerikajin desu ka

    Arabic

    هَلْ مِيلَر أَمْرِيكِيٌّ؟

    hal Mīlar amrīkiyy?

  4. 4.— Yes, Mr Miller is American.

    Japanese

    はい、ミラーさんは アメリカじんです。

    hai, Mirā-san wa amerikajin desu

    Arabic

    نَعَمْ، مِيلَر أَمْرِيكِيٌّ.

    naʿam, Mīlar amrīkiyy

The second pair is chapter 11 paying off twice over: was that sheet's own example for the ending, and the Arabic answers with the nisba ـِيّ — the same country-to-national operation, one language appending a kana, the other a suffix.

Trick 5 · The question word sits at opposite ends

Both languages ask yes/no questions with a particle, and they put it at opposite doors of the sentence. Japanese finishes the thought and then marks it: , question last. Arabic warns you first: هَلْ, question first, and the sentence follows unchanged. English does a third thing and rearranges (he is → is he). So an Arabic listener knows a question is coming before it starts, and a Japanese listener finds out as it ends — the same mirror chapter 17 found with the verb.

4.Rule 4 — means too, and it replaces

When a second sentence says the same thing about a new person, that person's becomes . It is a swap, not an addition — is impossible. The sheet's three-line demonstration, one swap at a time:

  1. 1.I am a student.

    Japanese

    わたしは がくせいです。

    watashi wa gakusei desu

    Arabic

    أَنَا طَالِبٌ.

    anā ṭālib

  2. 2.You are a student too.

    Japanese

    あなたも がくせいです。

    anata mo gakusei desu

    Arabic

    أَنْتَ أَيْضًا طَالِبٌ.

    anta ayḍan ṭālib

  3. 3.That gentleman is a student too.

    Japanese

    あのかたも がくせいです。

    ano kata mo gakusei desu

    Arabic

    ذٰلِكَ السَّيِّدُ أَيْضًا طَالِبٌ.

    dhālika s-sayyidu ayḍan ṭālib

The last held-out particle arrives

is the particle this course had deliberately not taught — the reading chapter met it in and flagged it as the one particle on the page still to come. The teacher's sheet has now reached it, which is how everything enters this course, and that flag is closed. The particle set is now .

Trick 6 · replaces; أَيْضًا adds

Japanese says too by changing something already there: the particle slot after gives up its and takes . Arabic — and English — say it by dropping in an extra word (أَيْضًا, too) and touching nothing else. So when you build the Japanese sentence, resist the instinct to add a word: the too lives in the slot you already have.

5.Rule 5 — joins two nouns

N₁ + + N₂: the first noun owns, locates or describes the second — English 's, or of read backwards. is the university's student; is an employee of IMC — and that second example is one the course saw coming: 's own word card has said "takes a company in front of it — " since chapter 11. Today is the rule that card was quoting.

  1. 1.I am a university student.

    Japanese

    わたしは だいがくの がくせいです。

    watashi wa daigaku no gakusei desu

    Arabic

    أَنَا طَالِبُ جَامِعَةٍ.

    anā ṭālibu jāmiʿa

  2. 2.Mr Miller is an employee of IMC.

    Japanese

    ミラーさんは IMCの しゃいんです。

    Mirā-san wa IMC no shain desu

    Arabic

    مِيلَر عُضْوُ شَرِكَةِ آي إم سي.

    Mīlar ʿuḍwu sharikat Āy Im Sī

Trick 7 · and the iḍāfa run in opposite directions

Arabic joins two nouns the same way — no of, just the pair — and in the mirror-image order. Japanese puts the owner first: , university → student. Arabic puts the owned thing first: طَالِبُ الْجَامِعَةِ, student → university. Same two nouns, same relationship, read in opposite directions — and 's card made the related point in chapter 11: where Japanese puts after the owner, Arabic hangs an ending on the thing owned (كِتَابِي, my book). The pattern to keep: Japanese marks possession between the nouns, Arabic marks it on them.

6.Rule 6 —

After an adult's name: , — the sheet glosses it Mr/Mrs, and chapter 11's card gave the Arabic pair سَيِّد أَوْ سَيِّدَة. One character of politeness, either sex, married or not, first name or family name.

The sheet stops one sentence short of the rule that matters most, and the course already owns it: chapter 11's directional law — the polite form never points at the speaker. is given, never claimed: Mr Miller is to everyone in the room and plain to himself. Introduce yourself as , never — the same rule that filed as a title you are given while is the job you claim.

7.Sources

  1. Minna no Nihongo I, 3A Corporation — the sheet's six rules are 's grammar points in the book's order, with the two past forms of brought forward from . Read the book's own for lesson 1 if you read one thing — it is these six rules with the book's own example sentences, which the reading chapter reproduces line by line.
  2. Jisho.org, over JMdict/EDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) — checked 2026-08-23: as the colloquial form of , the full negative-past (the sheet's missing ), and every content word on the sheet — all of which already carry a card in chapters 11 and 17. A grammar sheet brings no new words; that is what makes it a grammar sheet.
  3. Japanese phonology (Wikipedia) — the devoicing rule behind Trick 3: close vowels i and u lose their voice between voiceless consonants and finally after one, which is why and land as des and deshta.
  4. Reading 1 — the same six rules as the book actually prints them, sentence by sentence, with audio. The block of is this sheet's Rules 1–4 in four lines.
  5. Lesson 11 — the words this sheet runs on (), and the directional politeness rule that finishes Rule 6.
  6. Lesson 17 — the frame that Trick 2's example belongs to.