#japaneseparticles

If you know how to make a basic sentence, then you've used the particle は, and maybe even を and が. Well, now it's time that you start linking nouns together to make your sentences even longer. The three particles you'll use to do that are と, や, and とか. The particle と is used to make a complete list of nouns, while や and とか are used to make incomplete lists of nouns, implying that there are more things that could go in the list that you're choosing not to include. 

In the video I focused on the question "どんな動物が好きですか？", so I'll focus on the question "何を食べましたか？" in this post. All three dialogues can be translated to:

Akira: What did you eat?

Sakura: I ate an apple and a sandwich.

But the different nuances of the particles change the meaning of the sentences slightly.

と

As I just said, this particle is used to make a complete list of nouns.

晃：何を食べましたか？

桜：りんごとダンドイーチを食べました。

This dialogue means that Sakura only ate an apple and a sandwich. The と implies that she only ate those two things.

や

This particle, as well as とか, is used to make a partial list of nouns, meaning that there are other things that could be listed, but the speaker is choosing to only include a few.

晃：何を食べましたか？

桜：りんごやサンドイッチを食べました。

This dialogue means that Sakura ate an apple and a sandwich, but other things were eaten too.

とか

This particle is basically the same as や, but it's more casual and you can use it after listing only one noun.

晃：何を食べましたか？

桜：りんごとかサンドイッチを食べました。

This dialogue just means the same as the last one. Sakura ate more than just the apple and the sandwich, but she's choosing to only list those two items.

晃：何を食べましたか？

桜：りんごとか。

This dialogue means that Sakura ate an apple, but she ate more things too. In this case you could translate the sentence into "An apple and stuff like that".

Vocab

何（なに）- what

食べました（た・べました） - ate

りんご - apple

サンドイッチ - sandwich

と - and

や - and