Sentence Enders
“I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.” - Abraham Lincoln
Let’s take a quick break from learning tons of vocab (though, we’re actually taking a break so you can make sure to catch up and work on your vocab) this chapter and next to take a look at a few very small, but very important concepts in the Japanese language: Sentence Enders.
If you learn sentence enders, and learn how to use them well, you’ll sound a lot more fluent and natural in your Japanese. It’s one of the things that separates good speakers and speakers that sound like robots. Sentence enders are also very important in another area of the Japanese language, that being “gendered language.” Basically, if you use sentence enders one way, you can sound more like a girl. If you use them the other way, you could sound more like a guy. Naturally, you’ll want to pick the one best suited for you.
We’ll start by taking a look at a couple of neutral sentence enders … sentence enders that both men and women can use. Then, we’ll take a look at the gendered sentence enders. You should look at and learn both of them, for sure, since you’ll want to know what to do just as much as you’ll want to know what not to do.
As you go through this chapter, I also want you to make sure that you continue to study your vocab lists. Consider this as a chance to catch up before having to dive into the adjectives vocab, coming up soon.
First, though, we’ll take a look at a word that’s very important in the “sentence ender” world. It’s a word / phrase you’ll see and use all the time, but it becomes particularly useful (I think) when you have sentence enders to use it with.