Lesson 1, get to the right track with Verbs

Japanese Verbs are special

I started learning Japanese when I was in first year of university. Why? The purpose is to get academic fulfillment points, to be honest, but the more I learned about the Japanese Language, the more I get addicted to it.

My personal experience

I started learning Japanese with Hiragana, and since I know Chinese, I have a certain advantage in Kanji (but soon find out it might be a burden, later on this).

1st level was not that hard, I mean, all those 食べます、飲みます、休みます。。。simple verbs.

Ok, so after the 1st level, it's time for 2nd level, also for academic point, no because of having an interest in Japanese. But then, many things changed drastically, getting used to Katagana is one of them, but I think there is more serious problem need to be taken care of. They introduced te-form, which is the most important form because it has wide application in grammar. Then I stuck there because all those "masu" verbs being taught make no sense. It was like I need to remember multiple formats for literally a verb, for me it was just redundant. Some te-form verbs even sound the same but are different verbs. I don't believe that the Japanese could be that stupid in their language system. I also realized that there are many other forms like nai-form, ta-form and so on which will be learned in level 3 class. That kind of vocabulary memorization simply will not work, the memory will be exploded exponentially if I was going to learn them as new verb every time.

Then I decided to do a bit research on it instead of fully rely on the textbook. It was right a few weeks before my exam, I found the key to learn it, but I don't have much time to relearn all those grammar so I just merely passed my 2nd level test. That being said, I started gaining interest in Japanese and tried to correct myself on what I'd learned. So this time for 3rd level class, I enrolled not because of getting points, it's purely on interest. I came prepared so everything passed in flying color despite many colleagues struggles, to be honest, getting A in the exam is a piece of cake. Except for the Kanji, I was getting demerit because of wrongly written Kanji, so I sometimes scrawled the writing in the hope that the teacher won't notice it. Confusion between Japanese Kanji and Chinese writing can be a headache, It is also quite embarrassing to accidentally read Chinese in Japanese.

Personal thought

Frankly speaking, a lot of people are innocent when they are learning the Japanese Language as a beginner. Yes, I am criticizing the way they teach Japanese in a language school or whatever place. If you are a teacher, I'm sorry, but I'm just telling you my feeling of being taught Japanese for the 1st time. I mean, teaching the basic of writing is fine but the grammar, I think you should use a better way.

I won't mention the writing format (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji), you can learn for yourself. What I will like to emphasize in this post are the verb and related grammars, and the proper way to learn it.

Hiragana and Katagana are fine, it may take some time to practice. Kanji is basically Chinese word so if you know Chinese, great. If not, you can learn better than Chinese because you don't have a mixed bag of memory between Japanese Kanji and true Chinese writing, they have subtle differences in many ways.

List of Hiragana and Katagana

You probably need to get familiar with Hiragana and Katakana, and some Kanji 1st before you continue for grammar and vocabulary. Yes, please start learning Kanji even if you are a beginner, that will make your life easier later, the Japanese adapted Kanji without reason though.

Here we go.

It still takes time to learn everything, it is part of the learning curve, but the point is where you should start the learning? Did you see that? Where you should start learning Japanese so that it is the easiest route and trouble-free later in advanced grammar?

Especially Japanese verb, because Japanese has only limited writing form in Hiragana, also it is not fully alphabet like a to z, it cannot just cascade multiple Hiragana like English all the time. Hence their verb can undergo many forms of changes in order to fit different grammars. 

For example, to eat "食べる", it can be transformed into:
masu form: 食べます／ません／ました／ませんでした
root form: 食べる
nai form: 食べない／なかった
ta form: 食べた
te form: 食べて
conditional: 食べたら
potential:食べられる
imperative:食べろ
volitional:食べよう
passive:食べられる
causative:食べさせる

So, yeah, Japanese makes their verb changes as part of their grammar integration, so you probably need to pay attention to their verb transformation. But once you get the idea, everything will be as simple as ABC or math, literally.

The Root-form

There is a key idea to all those verb form changes. In the example, you may see that the verb ends with "る" appeared more frequently than any other forms. Yes, the key to learning Japanese verb is to memorize its "root-form", like ”食べる". Why? Why not the "masu" form in most of the textbook? Maybe Japanese care about politeness more than any other languages.

Here is why. In Japanese, there are 3 groups of verbs. Each of them has different rules for transformations. The one that determines which verb ends up in which group is the second last Hiragana of the verb. Not all verbs can fit the rules of grouping so there are exceptions too.

Referring to the 1st row of Hiragana (あいうえお), the verb with their last-second word ends with sounds（あ、う、お）will end up as Group 1 verb. Whilst the verb with their last-second word ends with sounds（い、え）will be Group 2 verb. Lastly, the verb that did not fit in or has a special transformation will be Group 3 verb. 

 

* NA = not applicable

There are quite a number of exception that seems like Group 2 verbs but it actually is Group 1 verb, try to take note on that (Why? Some people explain that because the reading is part of the Kanji writing and not read as separate Hiragana writing, which makes sense too as shown in the example, but there may have other reasons too, I don't know, I'm not Japanese). Also, there are Group 1 verbs with special cases too but will discuss it later.

Ok, are you still following? Good. So as you can see, Group 1 verb can end with different "う" column word like く、ぶ、る、む、etc. but Group 2 verbs all ended with る only. In the meantime, the form that changes the verb to end with る will automatically become Group 2 verb (potential, passive and causative form). If you are a beginner, you may not need to learn these form yet but, you will catch it up eventually.

I think it is better to explain the verb by groups so that to clarify some of the complications.

I also prepared some tables for clarity.

TLDR,

- root-form = casual of masu-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- nai-form = casual of masu-neg-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- ta-form = casual of masu-past-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- nakatta-form = casual of masu-past-neg-form, also to fit specific grammar usage

- te-form = for general purpose grammar fitting

- other forms function exactly as what they named.

- verb stem = verb's masu-form minus the 'masu' suffix, very important in many cases too, will be discussed in details in another post since many grammars make use of verb stem.

Ok, do not be fear, I know the table looks scary, but it is for my personal reference, you only need to focus on the root-form. Once you get which verb is which group, then only you learn other forms.

Group 1 Verb

Above is the summary for Group 1 verb. Basically, the pattern of changes is similar, i.e. changes of the last-second word by mean of (あいうえお) column shifting as shown below:

Except for ta-form and te-form, they do not follow the pattern. So next time when you want to use the particular verb, make sure you know which group it belongs to, then you will be able to use the ta-form and te-form grammars correctly. Do remember some exception る verbs too.

Take note on 行く and ある, they behave quite differently in a certain form as highlighted in the table. They are the special one.

Group 2 & 3 Verbs

Regarding Group 2 verbs, the form changes are totally different from Group 1 Verb, but in a much simpler manner. No fancy word changes, just replace the る with corresponding appendices. It's potential form and passive form are the same so it may cause confusion, depending on the context of the conversation.

As you can see for Group 3 Verbs, that is する and 来る, their form can't fit either Group 1 or 2, hence they are special, sometimes their words completely changed into another word. It is usually used to attach to noun so that it can become a verb. For example:

結婚する to marry

連絡する to contact

ゲームする to play game

Ok, that roughly wraps up everything about Japanese Verb. Similar to English, their verbs have tenses such as past tense, present tense and future tense, but they will be explained in another post. Hope that it helps and make you gain more interest in the Japanese Language.

ここまで日本語の動詞の解説をまとめます。上のノットがあなたに役に立てれば嬉しいです。

* 役に立てれば =  役に立つ（root-form) + (potential form) + (conditional form), more specifically:

 役に立つ（root-form) + (potential form) = 役に立てる

In the meantime, the form changed the verb into Group 2, so 

役に立てる + (conditional form) = 役に立てれば

which means (to be helpful + can + if), or (if can be helpful). See I told you, is literally math. 

So, that concludes everything about verbs. The grammars that involve verb's forms can be a bit complicated which will be posted in other articles. 

The Japanese Forms are the building block of entire Japanese grammar so make sure you get it right at the start. 

If you are a beginner, it's ok to learn other casual forms other than masu form because masu form is only for polite manner. Politeness is important, but the basics still need to be known from the start.

Next article will be adjectives.

Oops, I forgot explaining the particles, I guess that's fine, they will be discussed in depth in another post too. Just focus on the root-form and that's all for this post.

Jump to post:

Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns 

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars

日本語を学ぶことはとても楽しいですよ！諦めないでもっと頑張りなさいね！