kodomotachi wa suberidai to buranko de genki ni asonde imasu.

The children are playing energetically on the slide and swings.

Breakdown of kodomotachi wa suberidai to buranko de genki ni asonde imasu.

• は: topic particle
• 子こ供ども: child
• と: noun-connector particle
• で: location particle

Questions & Answers about kodomotachi wa suberidai to buranko de genki ni asonde imasu.

Why are there spaces between the words?

In normal Japanese, sentences are usually written without spaces.

So this sentence would normally appear as:

子供たちは滑り台とブランコで元気に遊んでいます。

The spaces here are just a learning aid, so it is easier to see the different parts of the sentence.

What does 子供たち mean, and why is たち added?

子供 means child or children, depending on context.

たち is a common suffix that makes it clear you are talking about more than one person, so:

• 子供 = child / children
• 子供たち = children

A useful thing to know is that Japanese does not always mark plurals as strictly as English does. Even 子供 by itself could sometimes mean children if the context makes that clear. Adding たち just makes the plural idea more explicit.

What does the particle は do in this sentence?

は marks the topic of the sentence.

So 子供たちは means something like:

• As for the children, ...
• The children are ...

It does not work exactly like the English subject marker, but in many simple sentences it feels similar to the children at the start of an English sentence.

Here, it tells you that the sentence is talking about the children, and then the rest of the sentence says what they are doing.