Dissecting Sentences

Lately I've been reading NHK Easy news articles for practice. When I first started out, I was actually pretty discouraged because I was kind of awful at it. I thought I'd never be able to understand any of it. But even in the past couple months, my reading ability there has vastly improved, allowing me to see how much I've truly progressed.

One thing that helps me improve my understanding of Japanese is occasionally taking sentences and "dissecting" them so I can see how all the parts work together. I think it helps familiarize me with Japanese grammar in general, and so the next time I go to read a longer sentence, the process is much more smooth due to increased comprehension.

I'm going to post a couple example sentences that I pulled from this article so I can take them apart and ensure I understand them correctly. This is a bit darker than usual, but the context is that there was a ceremony in Austria held for those who died at the Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp, as well as their families. The following is a quote from a Jewish man who was there:

「ナチスの時代の怖さを知っている人がいなくなることが心配です。今の社会は、ナチスが出てきた時代に似ていると思います」

Let's break the first sentence down into manageable chunks.

ナチスの時代 - Nazi period/era
怖さ - fear
知っている人 - people who know
いなくなる - to disappear, to stop being
こと - thing/event
心配 - worry

The main part of this sentence is in the first half with that long noun clause. If we put that together, we get ナチスの時代の怖さを知っている人, meaning something like "people who know the fear of the Nazi era." Combine this with the remaining nouns and verbs in the sentence and we have something like:

I'm worried that there won't be any people who know the fear of the Nazi era.

Now, on to the next sentence.

今の社会 - present world/society 
ナチス - Nazi
出てきた - emerged
時代 - period/era
似ている - resembling, similar to
と思います - I think

This one's a bit harder to understand initially, but it doesn't really have any long noun phrases that are too painful. ナチスが出てきた時代 is saying something like "the period when the Nazis emerged." Let's put it all together now.

I think that present society is resembling the period when the Nazis emerged.

「ナチスの時代の怖さを知っている人がいなくなることが心配です。今の社会は、ナチスが出てきた時代に似ていると思います」

"I'm worried that there won't be any people who know the fear of the Nazi era. I think that present society is resembling the period when the Nazis emerged."

So there we have it. Difficulty in understanding sentences can be alleviated to some degree by breaking them up into smaller chunks, especially with the lengthy noun phrases that Japanese tends to have. Sentences will obviously get harder since this is only from NHK Easy, but that's where further grammar and vocab studies come in to play.