As we hinted it in our example above comparing English and Japanese, languages differ in the basic word order of verbs, subjects, and objects in simple declarative clauses. German, French, English, and Mandarin, for example, are all SVO SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) languages, meaning that the verb tends to come between the subject and object. Hindi and Japanese, by contrast, are SOV languages, mean-SOV ing that the verb tends to come at the end of basic clauses, and Irish and Arabic are VSO languages. Two languages that share their basic word order type often have VSO other similarities. For example, VO languages generally have prepositions, whereas OV languages generally have postpositions.