Japanese vs English: An Introduction

Japanese vs English: How they differ and how they relate

Before you read: 
In grammar, sentences are broken down into some basic sections. I will focus on only three of them for this post. 

Words to know
Subject: The topic of a sentence that one is speaking about.
Example: David drives a car.
David = subject
Object: Something involved in an action, in relation to a verb, in a sentence. For simplicity, it can be thought of as the noun (or noun phrase) in a sentence.
Example: David drives a car. 
A car = object
Verb: The action that happens in a sentence.
Example: David drives a car.
Drives = verb 

The Grammar of the English Language Compared to Japanese

English is a West Germanic language.

The grammatical structure is (very) basically:

Subject / Verb / Object

Example:

      I       /         go       /        store

 Sub.    /       Verb      /    Object

Japanese has origins that are unknown and debated among linguists and historians alike. It is known as a "language isolate." It shares no known connections with other Asiatic languages with the exception of writing with Chinese and grammar with Korean.

However, Japanese is (very) basically the (exact) opposite of that.

   I       /        store      /       go

 Sub.    /       Object     /    Verb
                  私は　          店に           行く (Japanese)

 Of course, this is just the basic structure of each language. Neither language is as simple as noted above. But for those who are unfamiliar with either structure will see how far apart they are. In fact, Japanese does not even require a subject in order to make a sentence! To further surprise the uninitiated, it doesn't even require an object!

Believe it or not, neither does English!

Here is an example. Minus subjects. Let us compare how they differ and how much each makes sense when missing a certain grammatical component.

English:

    Go    /    store. 

Verb      /    Object

Japanese: 

Store      /       go. 

Object     /    Verb
店に　/　行く 

You can see now, how different they are?

But wait! There's more.

English:

    Go  

Verb

Japanese: 

   go. 

 Verb
(Possible Japanese translations without context)
行く  ( (I) go)
行きなさい (imperative(You) go!)
 

There we have it. We have removed the object of the sentence and now what are we left with? A word? Or a sentence? In English we can interpret "go" as the imperative "go." As in "one must go," however, Japanese, by its structure and conjugation does not require such an interpretation based on on the simple breakdown of the original sentence "I go to the store."