Japanese sentence structure
Hi!

I'm very beginner at Japanese, and am a little confused at some of the sentence structure. For example, why is the topic "red car" in the sentence "aka no kuruma wa anata no desu ka?" but not "pink house" in the sentence "dare no pinku no ie desu ka?" - instead, the topic seems to be "whose". How is the sentence topic dictated? I'm sorry if this is worded badly!

Question

Japanese sentence structure
Hi!

I'm very beginner at Japanese, and am a little confused at some of the sentence structure. For example, why is the topic "red car" in the sentence "aka no kuruma wa anata no desu ka?" but not "pink house" in the sentence "dare no pinku no ie desu ka?" - instead, the topic seems to be "whose". How is the sentence topic dictated? I'm sorry if this is worded badly!

Answer

aka no kuruma wa anata no desu ka?
(aka no kuruma) wa (anata no) desu ka?
(red car) is (yours) + question?

anata no aka no kuruma desu ka?
(anata no) (aka no kuruma) desu ka?
(yours) (red car) + question?

pinku no ie wa dare no desu ka?
(pinku no ie) wa (dare no) desu ka?
(pink house) is (whose) + question

dare no pinku no ie desu ka?
(dare no) (pinku no ie) desu ka?
(whose) (pink house) + question?

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