1. Basic Word Order

The sentence order is very different from English. In English we use Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), but in Japanese it is usually (but not always!) Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).

English S V O
I eat bread.
Japanese S O V
watashi wa pan o tabemasu.

Notice the "extra" words wa & o. These are called particles (or grammatical markers) and tell us a lot about the function of the word it follows. Don't worry! We will get to particles soon enough.

You can read more on Japanese Word Order here.