What are Japanese participles?

In English relationships between the words of a sentence are shown mostly by word order.
In Japanese, however, the sentence function of nouns and pronouns is shown by additional words that are placed immediately after the noun or pronoun. These words, which are called particles.

In English, there are special words called prepositions. Japanese has no prepositions, but particles have many of the same functions as prepositions.

Japanese uses particles after words to mark what they are for. Particles will follow the words they control. That is why particles are sometimes called postpositions.

There are many kinds of particles like: ga/が, which is a to things you give attention marker; wa/は, which is a topic marker; o/を, which follows the direct object; no/の, which means “of” in most of the English senses of the word, and indicates possession; and ka/か, which indicates a question.

Let’s learn particle kara/から for now.

How to use particle kara/から

kara/から is similar to the English preposition from.

In English, prepositions are always followed by a noun group and make a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase plays the grammatical role of an adjective or adverb.

Similarly, kara/から always follow a noun group and make a postpositional phrase, which plays the grammatical role of an adverb. That is, postpositional phrases usually tell us more about verbs.

<Example 1>
Watashi wa tookyoo kara ki-mashita.
わたし　は　とうきょう　から　きました。
私　は　東京　から　来ました。
[I as-for Tokyo from came]
I came from Tokyo.

kara/から indicates start point

kara/から is used to show where the action starts. Let’s have a look at an example.

<Example 2>
Ie kara eki made aruita.
いえ　から　えき　まで　あるいた。
家　から　駅　まで　歩いた。
[house from station until walked]
I walked from my house to the station.

Here, kara/から comes after “ie”, and this tell us that house is where the act of walking starts.

kara/から indicates start time

kara/から is used to show when the action starts. Let’s have a look at an example.

<Example 3>
Ashita kara hataraki-masu.
あした　から　はたらきます。
明日　から　働きます。
[tomorrow from work]
I’m going to work from tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the time when the act of working starts, and we know this because “ashita” is followed by kara/から.

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