Preamble

This guide will cover most of the grammar needed to understand basic japanese. It’s not going to go into too much detail, and it won't cover much vocabulary. If you are reading this in a browser, install a dictionary lookup extension like Yomitan so you can easily look up the words in the example sentences. Some words are basically grammar, though, so they will come up in specific lessons.

There are no exercises:

• Skill building, as in reading a grammar explanation and answering questions about it, doesn't work when it comes to learning a new language.
• A lot of people are poisoned by modern education and will basically fry their brains if there's anything to "work" on.
• Grammar guides are a terrible place to learn vocabulary.

If you want to pass a Japanese proficiency test, like the JLPT, this guide isn't targeted at you. You will likely be fine if you use it, because achieving Japanese proficiency is all that is needed to pass such tests, but it will likely betray your expectations in the short term. The topics in this guide are not sorted by JLPT difficulty and if your goal is to pass early levels in a short amount of time, you might be better off using JLPT-specific resources instead.

Not even the best linguists in the entire world can explain simple ideas like "gonna" with any less than an impenetrable book-length essay. That's not a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of explaining what things really mean, or how they work. Simple incomplete explanations are good, but have holes in them. This guide tries to walk the line and warn you about things it can't explain, but it's really hard. As a reader, you are expected to be flexible and take things written here at “face value”. Understand that this is how Japanese works, and that asking why is often not going to lead you anywhere.

This grammar guide does its best to give you some basic exposure to Japanese grammar. It can't teach you it. It can only introduce you to it. Your job is to turn that exposure into acquisition. The exposure is just a foot in the door.

And, by all means, if something is too hard, skip it. You're not trying to memorize something so you can pass a test. You're not trying to memorize something so you can identify it with 100% precision when you're consuming Japanese.

You're trying to get something into your head. If you can't, that's fine, you'll pick it up naturally later.

Don't look back.