ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Japanese parts of speech. It highlights some notable differences between Japanese and English grammatical categories. Grammar points are followed by contextualized examples and exercises which allow students to reinforce and consolidate their learning. Japanese, like English, has grammatical categories of words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Japanese has a class of words that are called Verbal Nouns (VN) or suru-verbs. VNs behave like nouns on their own but like verbs when accompanied by suru do. There are a large number of VNs of Chinese origin and Western origin. In addition, there are many native VNs. English has many compound words likewise Japanese also has numerous compound words. Some have meanings that are easily predictable based on the component words, but others do not.
