Tip: Look for the noun and then read backwards.
One issue I see coming up a lot in my lessons is students struggling to understand ‘clauses’. I’m no linguist and there are many fancy ways to specifically talk about what exactly a clause is (and isn’t) but for the purposes of this article, clauses are like mini-sentences within a larger sentence. An introduction to what I am talking about can be read about on Tae Kim’s website
Generally you want to identify the beginnings and ends of words and clauses by the position of kanji and particles. Also, generally the types of clauses that tend to cause issues are basically just adjectives and verbs being used to describe specific ideas (generally nouns). Let’s go through an NHK Easy Article and look at a few examples.
Article here: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10012928001000/k10012928001000.html
交通事故になりやすい「危険なバス停」が１万か所あった
So from the headline, we already have an example. As you’re reading, you should be looking at the kanji and possible particles to try and work out where one word ends and the other starts. The first candidate for a particle に, only has found kanji in front of it, so probably not a clause. The next is が, and by the presence of 危険な we can almost be certain that バス停 is a noun (which it is, bus stop). So putting it together by working backwards from the noun, we have:
危険なバス停, a dangerous bus stop
But then, in front of that we have no particle, so it’s likely we can assume that this is part of a clause. The next part
なりやすい, easy to become
Now here we have a particle, but に is joining なりやすい to 交通事故 (こうつうじこ, traffic accident), so it becomes all part of the same clause. At this point, read it from the back.
バス停➡危険な➡交通事故になりやすい
Bus stop➡dangerous bus stop➡easy to become (involved) in a traffic accident➡ Dangerous Bus stops (where) it is easy to become involved in a traffic accident. So you can see that everything before ‘bus stop’ is being used to modify ‘bus stop’ because it’s not a usual bus stop, it is a specific idea of certain bus stops being dangerous because of the high levels of traffic accidents that occur nearby.
道を渡っていた女の子が車にはねられて亡くなりました
Again if we start scanning, first particle is を but it is just joining 道 and 渡る, but if we keep going we see a noun after the verb, 女の子 followed by が. So 女の子 looks like the noun that is getting modified by everything before it:
女の子➡道を渡っていた
girl➡crossing the road
The rest of the sentence is ‘died after being hit by a car’, therefore, ‘A girl crossing the road was hit by a car and then died’.
バス停に止まったバスが邪魔になっていた
Doing the same process here, we see a に particle which isn’t showing much, but the presence of a noun after a verb again should at least make us think of clauses. It’s not just a bus, it’s a bus stopped at a bus stop.
３年以内に人がはねられた事故があったバス停などです。
Here the first が is just showing a grammatical relationship between 人 and はねられた, but the second shows a noun following a verb so it’s likely we have a clause again. Reading backwards, ‘an accident where a person was hit by a car within the last 3 years’. However it actually goes further, because we see another noun following a verb, and so the full sentence is actually ‘bus stops where an accident where a person was hit by a car within the last 3 years’.
Hopefully this tip can help you understand grammar better and start to get into translating sentences into more natural English. Once I started doing this, I found my understanding of Japanese increased dramatically, and I hope yours will too!
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