SOV vs SVO

Most languages have a certain way of ordering words in sentence, and this is technically referred to as constituent order.  The most important order is that of the subject, the verb predicate and the object (usually abbreviated as S, V, O). English, for example, is a typical SVO language. This means that in English sentences, the three components appear in the order of SVO, as you can figure out from this text. Japanese, however, sort them in a different way, namely SOV. 私はカニを食べた (literally I crabs ate).

It should be noted that the order of these three is not rigid. People might alter the order to convey particular information. An example of this would be th sentence You, I hate. Here the object is promoted to the front because the speaker wants to emphasize it.