Hi there, I don’t know if this has been addressed or not. (because I not sure if the search function is working.)

But I found the explanations of particles overly confusing. I understand that it is important to explain things in a way that is helpful to people who don’t understand how grammar works but as someone who has studies languages before and has a firm grasp on English grammar I found it mostly confusing.

“Particles hold sentences together. Words like ‘and, is, or, am, are, etc’ are all considered particles. They are the glue that holds words together to make sentences, and can’t really be defined because they don’t really mean anything.”

For me “is” and “am” and “are” are conjugations of verbs and do have meaning and are not the same as particles. Particles function differently than verbs. Even though I can see what you are saying and how it might be helpful to some I wanted more from this explanation.

Am I the only one on this point?

(aside: How I personally like to understand particles is as follows:
Particles are indicators, or sign posts, that tell you how a word FUNCTIONS in a sentence. Is it the subject of a sentence? or the object in the sentence? How are the things in the sentence relating to each other. Check the Sign posts! (particles). In English we indicate function through word order (subject, verb, Object) and the use of prepositions (in, to, with). But the Japanese do it with particles.

Also for Germanist out there. I like to equate particles to a simple version of noun declension. Same principle or indicating function.)

Anyways this has been annoying me for the past few days so I thought I would voice it.

Also sorry if there is already a thread for this.