From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWater, and this time what I'd like to share is the glories of...

Well, let me get you into it through the back door.

Let's say that you try to learn some Japanese, as ever more people do these days.

Well, Japanese can seem quite the challenge for we English speakers, partly because you

don't get very many cognates.

The words are all of a completely different shape than we're expecting, but also because

Japanese seems from our perspective to have crazy word order.

It seems like it's almost deliberate, and so for example, let's say somebody's name

Shuiichi, and you're talking about something that Shuiichi's friend did.

Shuiichi's friend bought a book in Osaka, okay?

Simple sense.

In Japanese, the way you say that is Shuiichi of friend Osaka in a book bought.

Shuiichi no tomodachi Osaka de hono kata.

Kata is bought all the way at the end.

So Shuiichi of friend Osaka in a book bought.

Why do you have to put it that way?

Why is it all backwards and screwed up?

Well, you know, that sort of thing makes more sense than you think, as I often say linguistics

is about at least trying to find the order in chaos.

And the question is, why is word order so different from language to language?

And the answer is that word order varies in ways that make a certain kind of sense, and

...