Strap on your chaps and coil up your lassos, because it’s time to round up some more Japanese conjunctions. Here are three more simple words to power up your speaking and have you 複雑な文章を繋ぎ合わせている (fukuzatsuna bunshō o tsunagi awasete-iru, stringing together complex sentences) in no time.

I introduced some of them (しかし, それで, のに, etc.) back in February, but here’s a quick おさらい (o-sarai, refresher): Conjunctions, referred to in Japanese as 接続詞 (setsuzokushi), are the connective tissue that link your sentences together. A simple Japanese sentence includes at least one 名詞 (meishi, noun), 動詞 (dōshi, verb) and 助詞 (joshi, particle). By using 接続詞, you can string simple sentences together to form complex thoughts.

ここでちょっと例を挙げましょう (Koko de chotto rei o agemashō, I’ll give an example): If you took a gamble on some marked-down fruit, you might say, このミカンはすごく安かった。でも後で皮をむいたら腐っていた (Kono mikan wa sugoku yasukatta. Demo ato de kawa o muitara kusatte-ita, These tangerines were super cheap. But when I peeled one later, it was rotten). That でも (demo), that’s the 接続詞. It shows contrast between two complete clauses and links them into a compound sentence.