Clauses that describe nouns: the key to long sentences

If you learn only one thing from this course, make it this. It is how Japanese turns "The dog that I saw in the park where I used to go to school" into a single, neat noun phrase, and it's the main reason long Japanese sentences look so hard.

In English, descriptions of a noun can come after it: "the book that I bought yesterday".

In Japanese, everything that describes a noun goes before it, and that includes whole clauses.

Read it left to right: "yesterday bought book". The clause 昨日買った ("bought yesterday") sits right before 本 and describes it. There is no "that", no "which", no "who". Just the clause, then the noun.

Verbs:

Adjectives (you already do this):

Nouns take の (である in formal writing):

な-adjectives take な:

You've been doing exactly this since the lesson on adjectives. A clause is just a longer version.

The verb inside the clause can be in any plain form, with its own tense and negative:

The tense inside the clause is its own: it describes the time of the clause relative to now. 食べた人 is "the person who ate"; 食べる人 is "the person who eats".

This is where reading takes practice. The noun at the end is also a part of the clause in the sense that the clause has a gap where it would go:

The same noun can fit different gaps, and Japanese does not mark which. You work it out from meaning. As you read, ask: "If I took the noun out and put it back in the clause, where would it go?"

Here's a phrase that would give any beginner a headache:

Break it up. Start from the end:

1. The main noun is 人 (person).
2. The clause on it is 友達が昨日買った本を読んでいる ("is reading the book that a friend bought yesterday").
3. Inside that, 友達が昨日買った describes 本.

So the structure is a series of boxes, each inside the next:

[ [ 友達が昨日買った ] 本を読んでいる ] 人

Read the noun first, then work outward: "a person ... who is reading a book ... that a friend bought yesterday". The English comes out in reverse order. That is the trick: the order of the Japanese is the opposite of the order of the English you'd produce.

Inside a describing clause, the subject can take の instead of が. They mean the same, but の is common in writing:

You can't use は inside this kind of clause, because は is reserved for the main sentence's topic.

Many clauses end in a general word like 人, 時, 所, 物, 事, 日. These words mean "person", "time", "place", "thing", "matter", "day", and they let you describe nearly anything:

Words like こと and の, which have almost no meaning on their own, turn any clause into a noun. The next lesson shows how.

When the content is a name, a title or a reported idea, という ("called that") connects it:

This is the skill to practise most. Each passage below is built from nested clauses; the method is always to find the final noun and peel backwards.

Clauses that name an idea with という:

• Everything that describes a noun comes before it, including a whole clause.
• The clause is in plain form; nouns use の, な-adjectives use な.
• No "that / which / who" word. The noun just follows the clause.
• To read one, find the final noun, then work backward.
• The subject of the clause can use が or の, never は.
• という connects a name or an idea to a noun.