I've just started with grammar on renshuu, but so far it's just about particles and hasn't explained what order the words go in- all I know is that it's very different from English! Is there a basic general order the words go in? (Noun-particle-adjective-verb, just as a random example of what I'm asking for).
"Subject (が part) + object (を, に, へ, and と part) + verb, i.e. SOV, is the basic structure. Temporal nouns and locations (に and で parts of sentences) are placed at the beginning. Supplementary information should be between subjects and objects. The は part of the sentence should be placed at beginning. In conversation, word order often varies. Verbs are always placed at the end."
Because particles label chunks of the sentences, telling the listener what they are doing, you can move the chunks around, but most sentences tend to follow this basic flow.
There’s nothing wrong with thinking about Japanese as an SOV language, but just be aware that there are tons of exceptions. Even the verb-final rule has an exception called “inverted word order.”
