Learning Japanese Conjugation of Verbs

For many beginners in the Japanese language probably one of the most complex structures are the verbs. The Japanese verbs plays an important part of understanding the speaker’s intentions. Hence, the verb is conjugation (AKA changed) into various forms to express intentions of “to want”, “to become”, “probably will”, “may want”, etc.

The confusion

Now, for the first-half of my self-learning, I could not figure out how godan (五段) verbs and ichidan (一段) verbs were conjugated (AKA changed) and why verbs like:

- nomu (のむ, to drink) become nonde (のんで, drink) or,
- arau (あらう, to wash) becomes araimasu (あらいます, to wash in polite form) and aratte or,
- why aruku (あるく, to walk) becomes aruite (あるいて, walk).

To me, it looks like the entire verb was changing and it was just baffling. I was forced to memorize each verb and each conjugation which became a bottleneck and was just really silly and ineffective way of learning.

To make it worst, many sources both in the Internet and even in books like to describe the difference between godan and ichidan verbs as “ichidan verbs tend to end with ‘eru’ and sometimes ‘iru’ and godan tend to end with their i-form + ‘ru’ but some have ‘eru’ ending as well”. Like hello!?? What planet am I on? Some try to explain it using things like base1, base2 or masu-form, te-form, which adds on to the confusion.

On top of that, how does one recognise kaeru (かえる), which is an ichidan verb meaning “to change”, and kaeru (かえる), which is a godan verb meaning “to return”?

Fear not! It took me a while, but I finally figured it out and its so easy once you know it.

Those angmohs again

It turns out that most of the Japanese language books are written for the non-Chinese speakers and readers (i.e the main bulk are Westerners). Indeed, many of the Internet sites and even some books teach Japanese with a heavy dosage of romanji (alphabetized Japanese). Personally, its bad way of teaching Japanese and this is also one of the main reasons why so many non-Japanese English-speakers (mainly Westerners) speak Japanese like English.

Romanji is very useful at the initial stage of learning Japanese, especially the alphabets (i.e. Hiragana/Katakana). It provides a good means of approximating the pronounciation of Japanese alphabets, but it has its limits. For example, most people will pronounce つ (tsu) as soo or tsoo and ん (n) just like an English n. However, they sound more like tsue (with a very short ue) and ng. What I am saying is that romanji should be used to learn the prounciation of the Kanas (i.e. あいうえお), but once it comes to words and sentence structures, they and the teachers should stay clear of any romanji, except the initial few weeks of introducing words. Nevertheless, Romanji is very useful for dictionary search on the Web, when your keyboard is only configured with English.

Secondly because its assumed that the general beginner has little or no knowledge of Kanji (漢字), some Internet sites and even beginner books excludes Kanji from it. I cannot blame them, for even the Japanese find it difficult to learn Kanji.

However, this is not an effective nor useful way of learning. Sure you can read and write the Kanas, but can you read the Kanji menus in a restaurant?

Sidebar: My Japanese colleague asked me how we learned Chinese and I said “character by character”. And he exclaimed that it must be very difficult! He asked this because the Japanese learn Kanji via the Kanas and he couldn’t think of how we could learn to Chinese characters without some sort of alphabet-based learning system.

So its this combination of using Romanji and trying to avoid Kanji that leads to this convoluted way of learning the verbs and why its so baffling for the beginners (esp. Chinese-English speakers).

The light

The mystery of verbal conjugation is easily understood once you start using Kanji. In my previous examples above:

- 飲む [のむ] (to drink) becomes 飲んで (drink)
- 洗う [あらう] (to wash) becomes 洗います (to wash in polite form) and 洗って (wash)
- 歩く [あるく] (to walk) becomes 歩いて (walk).

and we can now recognise between 変える, kaeru (to change) and 帰る, kaeru (to return)

As we can see, the root words 飲, 洗 and 歩 don’t change. What’s changed in the conjugation is its tail. Hence, it makes so much more sense to see the words as Kanji and to conjugate them. All you need to know is the ending for each verb to know, although sometimes you do need to know if a verb is ichidan or godan and the above shows.

I found a great internet site “Collin’s note on Japanese” that present this concept the way it should be, although I cringe at the liberal use of Romanji.

Below I have made of copy of his table, but taken away all the romanji noise:

Verb Type	あ-base	い-base	う-base	え-base	お-base	て-base	た-base
一段	[none]	[none]	-る	-れ	-よう	-て	-た
(-す) 五段	-さ	-し	-す	-せ	-そう	-して	-した
(-く) 五段	-か	-き	-く	-け	-こう	-いて	-いた
(-ぐ) 五段	-が	-ぎ	-ぐ	-げ	-ごう	-いで	-いだ
(-ぶ) 五段	-ば	-び	-ぶ	-べ	-ぼう	-んで	-んだ
(-む) 五段	-ま	-み	-む	-め	-もう	-んで	-んだ
(-ぬ) 五段	-な	-に	-ぬ	-ね	-のう	-んで	-んだ
(-る) 五段	-ら	-り	-る	-れ	-ろう	-って	-った
(-つ) 五段	-た	-ち	-つ	-て	-とう	-って	-った
(-う) 五段	-わ	-い	-う	-え	-おう	-って	-った

This provides a strong visual means of verbal conjugation, which psychologist would probably agree, is a more effective way to learn. We just need to know which column in the あいうえお Kana table a conjugate uses and what is the verb’s root. For example, the negative conjugate in plain form uses あ-base + ない. So :

- 話す becomes 話さ + ない
- 泳ぐ becomes 泳が + ない
- 洗う becomes 洗わ + ない

Hence, conjugation of verbs becomes a simple case of knowing your Kana tables, which you must in the first place. Below is the example provided from the website, I have again stripped the Romanji.

Verb Type	あ-base	い-base	う-base	え-base	お-base	て-base	た-base
食べる (to eat)	食べ	食べ	食べる	食べれ	食べよう	食べて	食べた
話す (to speak)	話さ	話し	話す	話せ	話そう	話して	話した
歩く (to walk)	歩か	歩き	歩く	歩け	歩こう	歩いて	歩いた
泳ぐ (to swim)	泳が	泳ぎ	泳ぐ	泳げ	泳ごう	泳いで	泳いだ
呼ぶ (to call)	呼ば	呼び	呼ぶ	呼べ	呼ぼう	呼んで	呼んだ
飲む (to drink)	飲ま	飲み	飲む	飲め	飲もう	飲んで	飲んだ
死ぬ (to die)	死な	死に	死ぬ	死ね	死のう	死んで	死んだ
作る (to make)	作ら	作り	作る	作れ	作ろう	作って	作った
待つ (to wait)	待た	待ち	待つ	待て	待とう	待って	待った
洗う (to wash)	洗わ	洗い	洗う	洗え	洗おう	洗って	洗った

Some other quick references:
- Collin’s Japanese Language and Culture Page
- Wikibooks: Kana Tables and Japanese Lessons
- Wiki books: Japanese Grammar
- Free Japanese Lessons
- Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC Japanese-English Dictionary Server