Japanese Word Order

[steven]

"S-V-O
yukino ikutokorowa gakkoudesu.
( not really svo but English and Japanese are not one-to-one languages)"

To translate this really straight into English it would become:
The place where yuki goes is school.

The "is" in this case would be the "desu" in Japanese... so in my opinion that still kind of follows the SOV pattern.

"僕の好きな色は赤です。 "

It's similar to this. The subject is "boku" the object is "suki na iro" and the verb is "desu" (even though it is optional).
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"O-V-S
gakkouni ikunowa yukidesu.
( again not actually dvs)"

I think this would be OSV... I think so for the same reason as the example above.

The object is "gakkou ni ikunowa" the subject is "yuki" and the verb is "desu".
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"V-O-S
I can't make one"

I can think of a "V-O", which is close... it would be something like this:
”行きます、コンビニへ”

"V-S-O
I can't make one"

Here's a V-S
食べる、俺

Both of these are borderline, but I've heard them (maybe with different verbs or subjects or whatever) in spoken Japanese a lot of times.
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I have to say though, for the SVO and OVS examples, I could go either way on them... it all kind of depends on how you look at them.

I agree with what you're saying though... every phrase kind of has its own set word order/word choice.

[chiuchimu]

^ Yeah I know some didn't fit well, but English is the same too.

SVO
I gave Harry the keys.

OVS
The Keys were given to Harry by me.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by chiuchimu

OVS
The Keys were given to Harry by me.

Believe it or not, "the keys" here is a subject, not an object. The (indirect) object here is "Harry," and "me" is the ablative/instrument.

So the sentence is SVO.

[chiuchimu]

^ My grammer sucks in both languages!

Actually I remember vaguely about passive speech.

[Columbine]

Originally Posted by chiuchimu

^ My grammer sucks in both languages!

Actually I remember vaguely about passive speech.

OVS is really rare. I think only a very small handful of languages use it with any frequency. We can't really use it in English as something like "I love him" would come out as "He love I"; so the meaning gets really confused and backwards!

[curiosityshop]

Thanks for all the advice guys! So you think I should start using 'tamani' when in a sentence, and 'tokidoki' when it's a one-word answer?

e.g. Sometimes, I go to school
Tamani, gakkou ni ikimasu.

and

A: Do you go to School? B: Sometimes...
Gakkou ni ikimasu ka. Tokidoki...

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Another point: I was having a bit of trouble using wa and ga in sentences. Almost every textbook or online learning page says you should roughly translate 'watashi wa' as 'as for me...', but that never really stuck for me. Would it be ok to think of it like this:

Watashi wa ongaku ga suki desu.
'About me, it is music I like'.

Supootsu wa tenisu ga suki desu.
'About sports, it is tennis I like'.

Watashi wa Yuko desu.
'About me, I am Yuko'

Watashi ga Yuko desu.
'It is me who is Yuko'

(Ignoring the fact that 'watashi wa' is rarely used in day to day language. In fact, this kind illustrates why it isn't? You wouldn't say 'about me' in every of your sentences in English either. Ok, the logic isnt perfect, but it works for me...>.>)

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Columbine

OVS is really rare. I think only a very small handful of languages use it with any frequency. We can't really use it in English as something like "I love him" would come out as "He love I"; so the meaning gets really confused and backwards!

Well, technically it would be "Him love I" because "him"is a direct object, while "he" is a subject.

[steven]

"Thanks for all the advice guys! So you think I should start using 'tamani' when in a sentence, and 'tokidoki' when it's a one-word answer? "

I think that's generally a good idea. That's not to say that "tamani" can't be used in a word-word-answer situation either, though (and it most certainly is used in that way). The point is "tamani" gets way more usage and when "tokidoki" is used, it's mostly in a one-word-answer situation.

"A: Do you go to School? B: Sometimes...
Gakkou ni ikimasu ka. Tokidoki..."

I think there is a negative connotation there-- as in you're supposed to go to school, but you only go "sometimes" (I personally feel that same connotation is present in your English phrasing as well). If that's what you want to say, then it's fine. If you only have to go to school once or twice a week, it might be a good idea to put that in there just so you don't come off as a "slacker" (excuse my lack of a better term) when you don't want to.

"Another point: I was having a bit of trouble using wa and ga in sentences. "
If we're talking about spoken Japanese, you don't really have to have は. Even if you have the subject, you still don't have to have は. There are alternatives as well (like って and stuff like that).

"(Ignoring the fact that 'watashi wa' is rarely used in day to day language. In fact, this kind illustrates why it isn't? You wouldn't say 'about me' in every of your sentences in English either. Ok, the logic isnt perfect, but it works for me...>.>)"
It is my opinion that you are trying to compare Japanese to English too much. I think doing so will cause a lot of confusion (from the basics to the advanced). Somethings just don't make sense in one language even though they make perfect sense in another.

As for this example:
"Watashi ga Yuko desu.
'It is me who is Yuko'"

I'm not so sure about this... I think you generally should just stick to 私は～（名前）.

As far as 私が～ goes, you could use it like this:
私が勝った犬 (the dog that I owned)
私が好きなサンドイッチ (the sandwich that I like)
私が好きだったアイスクリーム (the ice cream that I liked)

The subject in those cases would not be "I/私", but they would be whatever "I/私" is modifying. So if you have something like "私が勝った犬" it would be followed by an action or an adjective or soemthing like that.
ie: "私が勝った犬って可愛かった" (The dog I owned was cute)
ie: "私が好きなサンドイッチは売り切れちゃった” (the sandwhich I like got sold out)
etc.

That's how I look at it anyways... I mean in some situations you need it and sometimes you don't. For example "私が勝った犬って可愛かった” could just as easily be said as "俺の犬可愛かったな” (my dog sure was cute [or something to that effect]).

I hope that clears things up. I don't know if I did a good job explaining it though.

[steven]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

Well, technically it would be "Him love I" because "him"is a direct object, while "he" is a subject.

I think it creates the "Yoda" effect while speaking, if you know what I mean. It's interesting because that kind of speech sounds archaic in a sense. I wonder if the word order of English wasn't different at some point. I have no idea about the history behind that but it sounds like an interesting thing to look into.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by steven

I think it creates the "Yoda" effect while speaking, if you know what I mean. It's interesting because that kind of speech sounds archaic in a sense. I wonder if the word order of English wasn't different at some point. I have no idea about the history behind that but it sounds like an interesting thing to look into.

Word order used to be very loose in English over a thousand years ago. It was like German in that it had an extensive case system, so word order was not very important.