Need help w/ sentence (+possibly more)

[moggyishere]

So I’ve been using “80/20 Japanese” for learning Japanese grammar. I’ve gotten to noun phrases (Ch.10) and I’ve hit a roadblock. In Ch.10.5, it mostly focuses on adding extra information to your noun phrases but also introduces joint/nested noun phrases. Basically two or noun phrases in the same sentence.

Everything’s good until I get to the exercises and I’m asked to translate this sentence into Japanese: "I ate a delicious lunch at a new restaurant in Namba with some friends that I met (got to know) at university. "
I gave it a go before giving up and looking at the answer sheet. It was meant to be translated to this: 「大学で知り合った友達と難波にある 新しいレストランでおいしい昼ご飯を食べました。」
Is there a specific order I’m meant to put joint noun phrases in? I feel like I wasn’t given enough resources beforehand to translate this sentence. Idk, maybe I’m not getting it because it’s so late and I’m tired.

I’ve attached pictures of what info it gave me pre-exercise. If anyone has any related resources that could help me out, I’d really appreciate it!

[HeyDuda32]

You’re much further along in your studies than I…but I too am interested in this and what the pro’s here say . A lot of times, I understand how an individual clause or grammar function works…but then get lost on where they fall in line with each other within a sentence.

I’m starting to put the pieces together bit by bit…but in general, clause order in sentences tends to trip me up.

[Mannelito]

Its a bit sticky, and I tend to also get stuck with this. I usually try to figure out what the most basic concept of the meaning is, that is, if we remove all adjectives and details, what do we get?

The bare-bone sentence would be something like “I do this action here”.

私は朝ご飯を食べました
私はレストランでご飯を食べました

This sentence follows the basic Subject Object Verb (SOV) construction of a japanese sentence, with location tossed in there, see here for the theory

https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/japanese-word-order/

Thats about all you need to get the word order in place. Then you can start modifying, or add information. First, add friend:

私は友達とレストランでご飯をたべました

Now we want to spice up the nouns 友達 ごはん レストラン with additional information, and we do that by stapling short forms infront of nouns to create new nouns.

Short form + Noun = New noun

Since the resulting combo is considered to be a noun, you can just keep on adding according to the same rule*

Short form + New noun = New new noun

新しい + レストラン = New restaurant
難波にある + 新しいレストラン = New restaurant in Namba

大学で知り合った + 友 = Friend met at university

おいしい + 朝ごはん = Delicious food

Take your new nouns and replace your old nouns with them

私は 友達 とレストラン で ご飯 をたべました

私は大学で知り合った 友達 と難波にある 新しい レストラン でおいしい昼 ご飯 を食べました

Again, it can become very convoluted, and you’re probably tired. Take a break and try again a bit later. I would probably need at least a couple of tries to get it right.

Keep on practicing and sooner or later it will feel less hard.

Hope it helped somewhat.

*Terms and conditions may apply

[HeyDuda32]

@Mannelito - this was a very well formatted, constructed and thought out explanation. Thank you! I literally just printed your comment and added it to my study notebook because for me, it helped break down a complex issue into something much easier. That, and if I practice a few English—Japanese translation like that on my own, I think it will help with the motor reflexes to better help “think” in Japanese quicker on my feet.

If I could read Japanese sentences with all of the clauses color coded, or parenthesized I feel like it would rapidly accelerate my reading and comprehension speeds.

My question for you is—I’m sure there are limits to how much, or how long you continue to create “new nouns”, or clauses. OP’s example, at least for me had quite a bit going on. Can you over do it? I guess I would say, maybe analogous to an English run-on sentence?

Thanks again! Great light bulb example for me.

[jrmr50]

I was literally doing this exercise the other night! I think it’s a brilliant chapter (compared to genki which has about one paragraph on noun phrases!). Great to find someone else studying from this book.

I think I also got the order slightly differently than the books, but I didn’t stress too much over it, as the particles were in the right places.

@Mannelito has done a briliant job !

I found it hard also until I remembered what is done in the chapter, make little noun phrases like lego blocks and then assemble them together into bigger constructions.

The thing I kept getting wrong was forgetting the necessary verbs to describe locations like 台所にあるテーブルの上に財布. Oh and putting の at the end of the verbs. I was also a bit surprised that I could do 何々のをV as I don’t think I’ve ever read that in the wild.

Yeah a brilliant chapter that’s helped my understanding of Japanese a lot.

Really good book （bit on the expensive side mind as I got the physical copy - there;s something about having a physical book sitting on the shelf looking at me, guilting me into studying it)

[jrmr50]

I found myself running out of breath when I read the sentences out loud, so that’s usually an indication a comma is required. When I’ve been reading, noun phrases (or relative clauses as I’ve also heard them called) are sometime broken up this way… it can be quite trickey to spot I agree

[moggyishere]

Thank you so much! This is really helpful, breaking it down makes it SO much easier to understand. Thanks for the link as well, I’ll have a thorough look at it when I’m less busy.

[Mannelito]

Gramatically, you could probably keep going into absurdum, but as my teachers often told me:

“It’s gramatically correct, but nobody says it like that”

Try doing nested sentences in english and see how far you can push it before it starts to sound excessive. If it’s too much in english, then it’s probably also too much in japanese.

[Sidgr]

The rat the cat the dog chased attacked hides.

English is fun.