One thing about Japanese (Nihongo) that varies from English (Eigo) is the fact that Eigo is a subject-verb-object language whereas Nihongo is a subject-object-verb language.
For instance in eigo:
Mother bought bread.
In Nihongo:
Okasan pan o kaimashita.
(mother) (bread) (bought)
Also Japanese sentences may have a subject or topic bt they must have a predicate. (The subject is followed by the particle ga, and topic followed by particle wa.) The predicate is the core of the nihongoga sentence. It comes at the end and it must be a verb or verbal form. (a verbal form can be like eigo is or are, or a verbal adjective.)
In the sentence:
Haruko san wa Nihongo o hanashimas.
(Topic) (Predicate)
Hanashimas is the predicate of our sentence, and it means "SPEAKS", Haruko speaks Japanese. This is an example of: verb.
In the sentence:
Haruko san wa Nihonjin desu.
(Topic) (predicate)
Haruko is Japanese. "des" meaning "is" and "Nihonjin des" is a noun+copula.
In the sentence:
Kudamono wa takai des.
(Topic) (predicate)
The fruit is expensive. "Takai des" "is expensive" is the verbal adjective.
Besides the subject/topic + predicate there are other parts that may be in the sentence, like object, indirect object, adverb and so forth. They come before the predicate and are not a part of it.
The two things that hold true in a nihongoga sentence are:
1. The predicate must be at the end of the sentence.
2. A particle must directly follows the word or words it marks.
Other than this the word order is not rigid. The subject/topic generally comes first. Expressions of time usually precede place. Most modifiers precede the words they modify.
Kare wa mainichi uchi de shinbun o
(he) (topic marker) (every day) (home) (at)(newspapers)(object marker)
takusan yomimas.
(many) (reads)
*Hope this helps..
