Chapter 2. Verb conjugation
Table of Contents
This chapter will deal in more detail with the way verbs are conjugated in Japanese, reiterating the system of conjugational bases, and explaining which constructions are created using which base, and how.
As mentioned in the outline on Japanese, Japanese verbs (in modern Japanese) have five bases of conjugation, which are used for all sorts of inflections and conjugations. While Japanese has no auxiliary verbs in the same way most western languages do, there are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to denote particular grammatical notions such as past tense, verbal list form, etc.
The way the bases are created differ depending on the verb class, but the way verbs are conjugated is the same for all verb classes. While the way to form the 連用形 requires different steps for different verbs, every verb can be made plain past tense using their 連用形 for instance.
Japanese has three verb classes, namely the 五段 class, also referred to by literature as class I or う-verbs (because of the way the verb changes through its bases), the 一段 class, also referred to by literature as class II or る-verbs, and the 変格, or irregular, class of verbs.
Before we jump into the long list of how to create every conceivable verb conjugation with any Japanese verb we can find, it may be a good idea to review the way in which to create the verb bases again for the 五段 and 一段 verbs:
| how to form the 五段 bases | how to form the 一段 bases | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The modern imperfective base, this base is used for four (though translated, 6) constructions: the negative, the passive, the potential, the honorific, the causative, and what is known as a pseudo-futurum (called pseudo, because Japanese has no real future tense). I say "translated, 6" because one construction, the (ら)れる conjugation, plays three roles in Japanese while being only one construction.
2.1.1.1. Direct negative 1 - ぬ
There are two ways to create a verb negative in Japanese. The first way involves using the classical helper verb of negation, ぬ. Since this is itself a verb, it also has a series of bases of its own, but because of its role it has no 未然形 or 命令形
| 連用形 | ず |
| 連体形 | ぬ/ん |
| 已然形 | ね |
When putting this helper verb behind verbs in 未然形, the verb in 未然形 has been turned into a negating construction. In modern Japanese, ん is used more than ぬ for verb negation.
However, this is a very 'crude' way to make a verb negative. There's an unwritten rule in Japanese that, if it were a written rule, would read something along the lines of "the longer your word, the more formal it is." Since this is the shortest way in which verbs can be made negative, it's also the most direct and informal way to construct a negation for a verb.
2.1.1.2. Direct negative 2 - ない
A less informal way to turn verbs into negative form is to, instead of using the classical helper verb ぬ, use the helper adjective of negation, ない (無い). This might seem like a strange idea, using an adjective to turn a verb into a negative, but one has to remember that Japanese doesn't follow the rules of western grammar, nor does it have any reason to. While perhaps strange, ない is still a verbal, and as such also has a series of bases that can be used to further conjugate:
| 未然形 | なく |
| 連用形 | なく |
| 連体形 | ない |
| 已然形 | なけれ |
This negative is slightly longer than using ぬ/ん, and as such is somewhat less impolite. Since ない is a normal adjective like any other, this negative form can be made more polite simply by adding です, which places any verbal adjective in a polite form.
Even though ない is less informal than ぬ, it is still considered informal. The formal negative is to take the polite version of a verb, created by taking the verb's 連用形 and adding ます, and then turning ます into a negative: take its 未然形 and combined it with ん. ます is somewhat special in that it cannot take ない as negation, so ません is entirely possible, while ませない is not. ます will be treated in more detail in the 連用形 section.
You will know the English "perfect" form of verbs as the "-ing" form of a verb, or "-ed/-en" form for past tense, such as "to be eating/ having eaten" or "to be walking/ having walked", with the negation using the word "not": "not eating / not having eaten" and "not walking / not having walked" respectively.
In Japanese this perfect form works slightly different. The normal perfect uses a 連用形 construction, while the negative perfect uses the 未然形 paired with the 連用形 of the previously mentioned classical helper verb of negation, ぬ. As will be explained in the 連用形 section, verbals in 連用形 can also function as a noun, which means that (perhaps curiously) the Japanese negative perfect actually acts as noun and can even be used adverbially by using に as with any noun adjective that is used adverbially. To illustrate this, an example:
| 食べずに来ました。 |
| [I] came without eating. |
Here, 食べる (meaning "to eat") has been put into negative noun form, 食べず, and has been combined with the particle に, which in this particular case stands for something similar to the preposition "as". If we look at the literal decomposition of the above sentence, we see the following:
as "not eating", [I] have come.
It must be reminded this is a very literal decomposition, and that に does not literally translate to "as". It is merely a marker that in this negative construction indicates the way in which something is done. Thus, "coming" has been performed in a "not eating" way. In a normal translation this would simply be "coming without eating", or "coming while not having eaten" or the likes.
This 連用形 way of making negative verb constructions is, perhaps because it's more complex than normal negation, considered quite elegant. It is important to remember that when using this version of the negative to work in conjunction with another verb, you cannot omit the particle に (it is possible to omit the に using this as a purely subordinate sentence, but this will be explained in the 連用形 section).
Examples for 五段 verbs for the aforementioned inflections:
| verb | classical negation | negative perfect | informal negation | polite negation |
| 買う, buy | 買わ + ん | 買わ + ず | 買わ + ない | 買い + ません |
| 歩く, walk | 歩か + ん | 歩か + ず | 歩か + ない | 歩き + ません |
| 泳ぐ, swim | 泳が + ん | 泳が + ず | 泳が + ない | 泳ぎ + ません |
| 話す, talk | 話さ + ん | 話さ + ず | 話さ + ない | 話 + しません |
| 待つ, wait | 待た + ん | 待た + ず | 待た + ない | 待ち + ません |
| 済む, end | 済ま + ん | 済ま + ず | 済ま + ない | 済み + ません |
| 遊ぶ, play | 遊ば + ん | 遊ば + ず | 遊ば + ない | 遊び + ません |
| 死ぬ, die | 死な + ん | 死な + ず | 死な + ない | 死に + ません |
| 分かる, understand | 分から + ん | 分から + ず | 分から + ない | 分かり + ません |
Examples for 一段 verbs for the aforementioned inflections:
| verb | classical negation | negative perfect | informal negation | polite negation |
| 見る, see | 見 + ん | 見 + ず | 見 + ない | 見 + ません |
| 寝る, sleep | 寝 + ん | 寝 + ず | 寝 + ない | 寝 + ません |
| 伸びる, stretch | 伸び + ん | 伸び + ず | 伸び + ない | 伸び + ません |
| 食べる, eat | 食べ + ん | 食べ + ず | 食べ + ない | 食べ + ません |
Examples for the irregular verbs for the aforementioned inflections:
| verb | classical negation | negative perfect | informal negation | polite negation |
| する, do | せ + ん | せ + ず | し + ない | し + ません |
| 来る, come | こ + ん | こ + ず | こ + ない | き + ません |
Examples for the special verbs for the aforementioned inflections:
| verb | classical negation | negative perfect | informal negation | polite negation |
| ある, to be | あら + ん | あら + ず | ない | あり + ません |
| です | じゃ + ん | じゃ + ない | じゃ + あり + ません | |
| では + ない | では + あり + ません | |||
| ます | ませ + ん |
It should be noted that the classical negation is very rarely used, but even when it is, せん and こん are only really used in dialects such as ones found in the Kansai region of Japan (the area around the Oosaka-Koube-Kyouto triangle in the Kinki prefecture).
The helper verbs -れる for 五段 and -られる for 一段 verbs are used to create 3 possible meanings, being the passive form of verbs, the (long) potential form of verbs, and a form of honorific. These helper verbs are both 一段 verbs, so they themselves conjugate as follows.
| られる | れる | |
| 未然形 | -られ | -れ |
| 連用形 | -られ | -れ |
| 連体形 | -られる | -れる |
| 已然形 | -られれ | -れれ |
| 命令形 | -られ | -れ |
A passive verb describes a state of the world, rather than describing some action taking place in it. For instance, in "I throw a ball" the verb "throw" is active, describing an action, but in "A ball is being thrown", rather than directly describing an action, the state of the world, as far as the ball is concerned, is being described. "The cat ate the food" versus "The food was eaten by the cat" is another example of active vs. passive verb form.
In Japanese this form is created by adding れる to the 未然形 of 五段 verbs, and られる to the 未然形 of 一段 verbs.
| 買う | 買わ + れる |
| 歩く | 歩か + れる |
| 泳ぐ | 泳が + れる |
| 話す | 話さ + れる |
| 待つ | 待た + れる |
| 済む | 済ま + れる |
| 遊ぶ | 遊ば + れる |
| 死ぬ | 死な + れる |
| 分かる | 分から + れる |
| 見る | 見 + られる |
| 寝る | 寝 + られる |
| 伸びる | 伸び + られる |
| 食べる | 食べ + られる |
| する | either せ+られる or さ+れる |
| 来る | こ+られる |
2.1.2.2. Passive form of bother - 迷惑の受身
This is a refinement of the passive form, and is used to indicate that something has happened (typically caused by someone) that is in general an unpleasant occurrence. For instance, if your brother's bicycle has been stolen, you can say two things in Japanese. Of course you could say "My brother's bicycle has been stolen", but you can also use a passive construction to say "My brother had his bicycle bestolen." This is not grammatical English, but it is grammatical Japanese:
| 弟の自転車が盗んでいます。 |
| My brother's bicycle has been stolen. |
| 弟が自転車を盗まれました。 |
| "My brother had his bicycle bestolen". |
For this passive form, the indirect object, or indirect verb actor, is indicated by に:
| 弟が誰かに自転車を盗まれました。 |
| "My brother had his bicycle bestolen by someone." |
Another thing this form can signify is the (long) potential of a verb. The potential form of a verb in western languages is typically constructed using the auxiliary verb "can", but in Japanese this is a conjugation (or rather, two conjugations) instead:
| 泳ぐ: to swim |
| 泳よがれる: to be able to swim |
| 見る: to see |
| 見られる: to be able to see. |
An important thing to note is that the irregular verb する has a -(ら)れる form, but that this cannot be interpreted as a potential form. Instead, the verb 出来る, "to be able to do", is used when one wishes to express the potential form of する.
This form is called the "long" potential form, and is primarily used for 一段 verbs. For 五段 a much more commonly used potential form is the "short" form, arising from the 連用形 and the helper verb 得る; we will discuss this form in more detail in the 連用形 section.
A thing to note is that in their potential form, transitive verbs technically turn into intransitive verbs. However, quite often the direct object particle を will be heard used in combination with these verbs, rather than the subject particle が. While strictly speaking ungrammatical, this is a matter for "what feels right" and is therefore considered correct speech regardless of what the grammatical rules dictate in this case.
Also on a final note, people are dropping the ら from られる these days when creating a potential form akin to the “short potential” form of the 五段 verbs.
While the same as the passive and potential in form, the honorific is something that many people have difficulty with. In honorific form, the verb doesn't actually change meaning at all, but only becomes honorific in respects to whom or what it describes. For instance:
| 石田さんのお父さんが来ました。 |
| Ishida's father has arrived. |
| 石田さんのお父さんが来られました。 |
| Ishida's father has arrived. |
The meaning of the verb has not changed at all, but in the second sentence, Ishida's father is being spoken about in an honorific manner. This unchanged meaning of a verb even though it's been inflected trips up a lot of people, since the idea that a verb can mean the exact same thing while being more or less polite, or more or less honorific or humbling, is something that doesn't exist in a lot of western languages.
ご飯は食べられました。
| passive | Dinner has been eaten. (likely meaning) | |
| bother | [Someone] has eaten [my] dinner [and that wasn't the way it was supposed to be, so it's a bother]. (possible meaning) | |
| potential | [Someone] could have eaten dinner. (unlikely meaning) | |
| honorific | [Someone] ate their dinner. (possible meaning) |
来られますか。
| passive | (improbable meaning) | |
| bother | (improbable meaning) | |
| potential | Will [someone] be able to come? (likely meaning) | |
| honorific | Will [someone] come? (likely meaning) |
パフェが作られます。
| passive | Parfaits are being made. (possible meaning) | |
| bother | (impossible meaning) | |
| potential | [I] can make parfaits (likely meaning) | |
| honorific | [Someone] makes parfaits. (unlikely meaning) |
This form is used to express the causative form of verbs. In English this is generally expressed as "make [someone] do [something]" and indicates an involuntary action. This is done in Japanese by adding させる or せる in the same way as (ら)れる is added to the 未然形 to form the passive. Like (ら)れる, (さ)せる follows the 一段 scheme:
| させる | せる | |
| 未然形 | -させ | -せ |
| 連用形 | -させ | -せ |
| 連体形 | -させる | -せる |
| 已然形 | -させれ | -せれ |
| 命令形 | -させ | -せ |
As mentioned, the way these two helper verbs are added is identical to the way (ら)れる is added:
| 買う | 買わ + せる |
| 歩く | 歩か +せる |
| 泳ぐ | 泳が + せる |
| 話す | 話さ + せる |
| 待つ | 待た + せる |
| 済む | 済ま + せる |
| 遊ぶ | 遊ば + せる |
| 死ぬ | 死な + せる |
| 分かる | 分から + せる |
| 見る | 見 + させる |
| 寝る | 寝 + させる |
| 伸びる | 伸び + させる |
| 食べる | 食べ + させる |
| する | さ + せる |
| 来る | こ + させる |
| お母さんが子供に朝ご飯を食べさせました。 |
| Their mother made the children eat breakfast. |
Some more examples:
| 待たせたね。 |
| [I] made you wait, [didn't I]? |
| 妹に起こさせました。 |
| [I] had [my] (younger) sister wake me up. |
2.1.4. Causative passive - (さ)せられる
The title sounds like a combination of the causative and the passive, and that's essentially what it is. It's long, and its use is not rare. In English this form reads "have been made to do ..." and is also quite long. So, just like in most western language, the more nuance you want to place in your verb conjugation, the longer it'll get:
| 子供がお母さんに朝ご飯を食べさせられました。 |
| The children were made to eat breakfast by their mother. |
| 先生に宿題をやり直させられました。 |
| [I] had been made to redo [my] homework by [the] teacher. |
This form is used for three things, which are called the presumptive ("it's probably the case that..."), the dubitative ("will/shall ...?") and the cohortative ("let's ...").
2.1.5.1. Dubitative/cohortative
These forms, as mentioned in the outline for Japanese, turn the 未然形 into something that ends on an お sound, through a contraction. There's both a normal and a polite form of this construction, with the polite form simply being the verb in polite form, with ます turned into a pseudo futurum. The way the direct pseudo futurum is constructed is different for the two verb classes: 五段 verbs get う added to the 未然形, but this leads to a contractions where the あ sounds contract with the う to become long お sounds. For 一段 verbs, we add よう to the 未然形 and, for the irregular verbs we see する pretending to be a さ-五段 verb again, and くる acting as 一段. For the special verbs, the copula です and the politeness helper verb ます, we see two special cases:
| forming the pseudo-futurum | pseudo-futurum | polite pseudo-futurum | |
| 買う | 買 [ わ → お ] + う | 買おう | 買い + ましょう |
| 歩く | 歩 [ か → こ ] + う | 歩こう | 歩き + ましょう |
| 泳ぐ | 泳 [ が → ご ] + う | 泳ごう | 泳ぎ + ましょう |
| 話す | 話 [ さ → そ ] + う | 話そう | 話し + ましょう |
| 待つ | 待 [ た → と ] + う | 待とう | 待ち + ましょう |
| 済む | 済 [ ま → も ] + う | 済もう | 済み + ましょう |
| 遊ぶ | 遊 [ ば → ぼ ] + う | 遊ぼう | 遊び + ましょう |
| 死ぬ | 死 [ な → の ] +う | 死のう | 死に + ましょう |
| 分かる | 分か [ ら → ろ ] + う | 分かろう | 分かり + ましょう |
| 見る | 見 + よう | 見よう | 見 + ましょう |
| 寝る | 寝 + よう | 寝よう | 寝 + ましょう |
| 伸びる | 伸び + よう | 伸びよう | 伸び + ましょう |
| 食べる | 食べ + よう | 食べよう | 食べ + ましょう |
| する | し + よう | しよう | し + ましょう |
| くる | こ + よう | こよう | き + ましょう |
| だ・です | だろう | でしょう | |
| ます | ましょう |
Some examples to show its use
| 海に行こう。 |
| Let's go to the beach. |
| 海に行こうか。 |
| Shall [we] go to the beach? |
| どこでしょうか? |
| Where could it be? |
| あの本は面白いでしょうか。 |
| [I] wonder if that book [over there] is interesting. |
| そうしましょう。 |
| Let's do so. |
The presumptive form uses the pseudo-futurum of the copula (だ/です) to turn verbs into presumed acts, with the pseudo-futurum for だ being だろう, and the pseudo-futurum for です being でしょう. While this form uses the 未然形 of the copula verb, the verb conjugation itself is actually technically a 連体形 conjugation, and therefore is explained in more detail in the section on 連体形. For now, it suffices to say that it lets us say things like "This computer will probably still work" or "I am sure my coffee isn't cold yet" and similar presumptive statements in Japanese:
| コーヒーはもう冷めただろう。 |
| The coffee's probably cold by now. |
2.1.5.3. The pseudo-futurum + と + verbs
One of the special things about the pseudo-futurum is that when combined with several verbs, the intuitive meaning isn't always preserved. We can distinguish at least the two cases for using the pseudo-futurum with とする and と思(おも)う.
While [...]+と+する means "to consider something [...]", when paired with the pseudo-futurum, the meaning changes to "at the point of doing [...]":
| ご飯を食べようとしたら、電話がかかってきた。 |
| As [we] were about to eat, the phone rang. |
On its own, 思う means "to think", but used with the pseudo-futurum the construction becomes more nuanced, and expressing "thinking about":
| 手紙を書こうと思います。 |
| [I]'m thinking about writing a letter. |
2.1.5.4. Negative pseudo-futurum
Since the pseudo-futurum doesn't quite end on a new verb that can be placed in a 未然形, creating the negative form cannot be done using ぬ or ない. Instead, the negative pseudo-futurum uses the classical helper verb まい. Unlike 一段 verbs, 五段 verbs use the 連用形 as a basis for negative pseudo-futurum, which explains the polite negative pseudo-futurum form for 一段 verbs (using the 五段 helper verb of politeness, ます):
| negative pseudo-futurum | polite negative pseudo-futurum | |
| 見る | 見 + まい | 見 + ます + まい |
| 寝る | 寝 + まい | 寝 + ます + まい |
| 伸びる | 伸び + まい | 伸び + ます + まい |
| 食べる | 食べ + まい | 食べ + ます + まい |
Examples of use are easy to give, but this is a pattern that you will likely not hear too often, as there are other constructions that express negative expectations which are used more frequently.
| その映画を見ようか見まいか。 |
| Should [I] go see that movie, or not see that movie... |
| どうしても伸びまい。 |
| That shouldn't stretch regardless of what [you] do. |
The 連用形 is used to (con)join all manner of clauses. It can join verbs to form conjugations or compound verbs, it can join up sentences to form compound sentences, and can even turn verbs or adjectives into nouns which can be used like any other in noun phrases. This makes the 連用形 a very important base, and it has quite a number of conjugations and constructions that use it.
One of the things the 連用形 can do is join up sentences. As mentioned in the outline, normal Japanese single sentences typically end on a verb. If we look at two of these sentences:
| 友達のサイトを見つけました。 |
| [I] discovered [my] friend's web site. |
| とてもすてきだと思います。 |
| [I] think it's very nice. |
we can join up these two sentences by letting the first sentence end in 連用形 instead, and then simply running the whole thing as one sentence:
| 友達のサイトを見つけ、とてもすてきだと思います。 |
| [I] discovered my friend's web site [and I] think it's very nice. |
The Japanese comma is not strictly required, but makes it easier to read (clearly in spoken speech you won't have a comma). When translating this kind of conjoined sentence, one can usually either use a comma, or the conjunction word "and". However, it should be noted that the real meaning is just a comma: since this construction creates a sentence where the second part of the full sentence is merely a continuation of a story started in the first part, there is no real "and" to speak of. Typically in English the word "and" will look like it belongs there, but you must remember that the Japanese sentence only faintly implies it.
Aside from sentences, the 連用形 can also conjoin verbs and verbal adjectives with other verbs, verbal adjectives, and even nouns.
The most common conjunction is the verb/verb conjunction. This takes two verbs, and forms a compound verb with them, by placing the first verb in 連用形 and combining it with the second verb in its normal form. There are plenty of examples to choose from for this type of conjunction:
| 飛ぶ - to fly |
| 出す - to take out |
| 飛び出す - to come flying out |
| 歩く - to walk |
| 回る - to go round |
| 歩き回る - to walk in circles |
When verbs are conjoined this way, it is quite common for the okurigana (the hiragana that indicates inflection on verbs and verbal adjectives) of the first verb to be removed:
| 飛び出す may be written as 飛出す |
| 歩き回る may be written as 歩回る |
A lot of the time compound verbs created this way have a meaning which is readily guessable, but sometimes the compound verb is one that's been in use for ages and its meaning has changed over time. This is a good reminder that while the grammar explains forms, it doesn't necessarily readily explain the semantics. Be careful when creating your own compound verbs - it's not unlikely you'll come up with a combination that already means something else in some (sometimes not so subtle) way.
There are a few special verbs which when used in this compound fashion add a specific meaning to the compound. These are:
・ 直す - fix, correct, repair, cure
Used as second verb in a verb/verb compound, this verb creates a "to re-[...]" verb, such as:
| 書き直す, from 書く, to write, means "to rewrite" |
| やり直す, from やる, to do, means "to redo" |
・ 込む - crowd, fill up, go into, enter
This verb helps create compound verbs that call forth a mental image of something going into something else, such as something being filled up, something entering something else, or even something being invested in something else. Examples of this are:
| 入り込む, from 入る, "to enter", means "to go into [someone's house/room]" |
| 巻き込む from 巻く, "to roll/wind", means "to become involved with/entangled in" |
・ 切る - cut
Used in compounds, 切る can mean anything from to cut physically to cutting conceptually, such as cutting off someone's speech, cutting a meeting short, or doing something and nothing but that something (which can be thought of as cutting off any other option). A few examples are:
| 言い切る, from 言う, "to say", means "to declare" or "assert". i.e., say something and cut off further discussion. |
| 分かり切る, from 分かる, "to understand", means "to fully understand". |
・ 出す - come out
When used in compounds, 出す indicates something of the inverse of 込む, signifying something is going or coming out of something else. This can be objects from a container, words from a mouth, or even thoughts from a cloudy mind:
| 思い出す, from 思う, "to think", means "to suddenly remember", signifying thoughts coming out of murky memory |
| 言い出す, from 言う, "to say", means "to break the ice" i.e. "to start talking" |
There are a three adjectives that are commonly used in verb/adjective compounds, and they're 易い, 難い and 難い, used to mean "easy to ..." and "hard to ..." (twice). For instance, if a book is easy to read, then this can be said in Japanese by combining the verb for reading, 読む, with the adjective easy, 易い, to form 読み易い, meaning "easy to read". In English this is a noun phrase, but in Japanese this is still an adjective, and can be used to describe objects, such as for instance:
| 読み易い本。 |
| An easy to read book. |
| 言い難い事。 |
| Something that is hard to say. |
| (lit: a hard-to-say thing) |
Unlike the verb/verb conjunctions, this type of conjugation does not drop the okurigana. Also, while both にくい and がたい signify "hard to ...", にくい is a more modern reading; most things that are "hard to ..." in modern Japanese will use the にくい reading. Examples of the がたい reading are found in for instance 有り難い, which is common known paired with the verb ございます to become ありがとうございます (thank you).
This conjunction is a very nice one, because it shows an elementary simplicity in the creation of some of Japanese's nouns. Examples of this form of conjunction are:
| 着物, meaning kimono, coming from 着る meaning "to wear", and 物 meaning "thing". |
| 乗り場, meaning stop (like a bus stop or train stop), comes from 乗る meaning "to get on", and 場 meaning "place". |
With all this conjunction going on, you'd almost forget that the 連用形 is used for far more. Almost, if it were possible to ignore these conjugation forms, but one can't. They dominate the Japanese language, so they definitely deserve attention.
One of the important constructions that the 連用形 is used for is to place verbs in a polite form, using the helper verb of politeness, ます. This is a classical verb that has its own set of bases that are somewhat deviant from what is used today:
| 未然形 | ませ (ましよ) |
| 連用形 | まし |
| 連体形 | ます |
| 已然形 | ますれ |
| 命令形 | ませ (まし) |
Of these forms, only the 未然形 and 連体形 are used frequently, with the 命令形 typically being used for formal commands, such as a store keeper yelling "いらっしゃいませ" at its customers as they come in, literally translating to "come".
To turn a verb polite, the 連用形 of a verb is suffixed with the following forms, to effect the corresponding inflections:
| affirmative | negative | |
| present | ます | ません |
| past | ました | ませんでした |
You may notice that the past negative form relies on the copula verb です for its past tense. This is the only verb for which this is the case, and temporal inflection using です is further reserved for nouns and the very classical verb べし (so classical that it doesn't fit any word class from modern Japanese, treated in the particles, nominaliser section).
The short potential form is called "short" because it is simply a lot shorter than the full 未然形+(ら)れる version of the potential. However, in modern Japanese this construction only exists for 五段 verbs. For 一段 verbs, the only grammatically correct potential form is the られる potential form.
To create the short potential form, the 連用形 is paired with the verb 得る, "to aquire", to express an "attainable" form of verbs. For 五段 verbs this means that the final い-row syllable of the 連用形 contracts with the え sound from 得る to become an え-row syllable instead. As an example:
読む, "to read", becomes 読み+得る becomes 読[みぇ]る becomes 読める.
While this construction normally leads to contractions, there are a few verbs that have never been used contracted, such as ありえる for the existential 五段 verb ある, or 起こりえる for the 五段 verb 起こる, "to occur". Interestingly, this Chinese influenced potential can also be seen in certain modern 一段 verbs, such as 見える, "to (be able to) see", or 煮える, "to (be able to) boil".
Just like with the 未然形 potential form, verbs placed in this short potential form become intransitive, which means that technically they can only be used in relation to subjects, and no longer in relation to direct objects, meaning that all potential verbs take が rather than を. However, again, in real life this is a matter of "what feels right", and を is often accepted as sounding proper even though grammatically one should be using が.
| 五段 verb | short potential form |
| 買う | 買え + る |
| 歩く | 歩け + る |
| 泳ぐ | 泳げ + る |
| 話す | 話せ + る |
| 待つ | 待て + る |
| 済む | 済め + る |
| 遊ぶ | 遊べ + る |
| 死ぬ | 死ね + る |
| 分かる | 分かれ + る |
| ある | ありえる |
As mentioned in the 未然形 section, する has no potential inflection, and the verb 出来る is used instead.
The direct past tense for verbs is created using the classical helper verb of past tense, た. Being a classical verb, it too has a few bases, but the 連用形 and 命令形 are missing, because of the nature of the verb:
| 未然形 | たろ |
| 連体形 | た |
| 已然形 | たら |
The past tense for 一段 verbs and 五段 verbs differ slightly: for 一段 verbs, the plain past tense is formed by adding た directly to the 連用形. For 五段 verbs, contractions occur when た is added to the 連用形 according to set rules. The rules for these contraction changes are:
- Verbs ending on -く/-ぐ end on -いた/-いだ respectively in their plain past tense.
- Verbs ending on -す end on -した in their plain past tense.
- Verbs ending on -つ/-る/-う all end on -った in their plain past tense.
- Verbs ending on -ぬ/-ぶ/-む all end on -んだ in their plain past tense.
The exception to this rule is with the verb 行く, which instead of becoming 行いた becomes 行った:
| ヨーロッパに行った事がありますか。 |
| Have [you] ever been to Europe? |
It should also be noted that the plain counterpart to です, だ, has an unexpected plain past tense だった.
| どうだった？ |
| How was it? |
| コンサートは先週だった。 |
| The concert was last week. |
But there's more. The helper verb た is itself somewhat of a 五段 verb in the sense that it can be placed in a pseudo-futurum form using the 未然形 + う to construct something that means "will probably have ...":
| 本はもう読んだろう。 |
| [He] probably already read the book. |
Also, it has an 已然形, so we can also use it to construct a past tense hypothetical, "should [someone] have done [verb], ...":
| 町を歩いたら、面白い見物をいっぱい見ます。 |
| Should [you] walk around town, [you] will see many interesting sights. |
This means that our list of example verbs looks as follows when put in plain past tenses:
| plain past tense | plain past pseudo-futurum | plain past hypothetical | |
| 買う | 買った | 買ったろう | 買ったら |
| 歩く | 歩いた | 歩いたろう | 歩いたら |
| 泳ぐ | 泳いだ | 泳いだろう | 泳いだら |
| 話す | 話した | 話したろう | 話したら |
| 待つ | 待った | 待ったろう | 待ったら |
| 済む | 済んだ | 済んだろう | 済んだら |
| 遊ぶ | 遊んだ | 遊んだろう | 遊んだら |
| 死ぬ | 死んだ | 死んだろう | 死んだら |
| 分かる | 分かった | 分かったろう | 分かったら |
| 見る | 見た | 見たろう | 見たら |
| 寝る | 寝た | 寝たろう | 寝たら |
| 伸びる | 伸びた | 伸びたろう | 伸びたら |
| 食べる | 食べた | 食べたろう | 食べたら |
| する | した | したろう | したら |
| 来る | きた | きたろう | きたら |
| 行く | いった | いったろう | いったら |
| です | でした | でしたろう | でしたら |
| だ | だった | だったろう | だったら |
| ます | ました | ましたろう | ましたら |
The negative past tense is formed by placing the verb in plain negative form first, and then turning this negative into a past tense, forming -なかった (see the verbal adjective section, past tense).
Remember that verbs that in their normal form indicate a process, like "become" or "to rise" in past tense actually represent an achieved state. For instance:
| 日が出た。 |
| The sun's come up. |
While the past tense of the verb 出る in Japanese, the translation is actually present tense (present perfect progressive to be exact), because 出る means "to rise" (in this case), and once the act of rising is completed, the effect is that the sun's up in the present, and will remain up until it starts to 沈む, set. An alternate translation, to match up verb tenses between Japanese and English, would be "The sun has risen", but you must be careful not to translate too literal: while this translation is now also 'past tense', the Japanese meaning is only the past tense of a process, leading to the present tense of a state. There is nothing wrong with translating this present tense state as a present tense English construction.
the -て form of verbs is used for at least three things in Japanese, of which verb chaining is probably the most encountered one. Aside from this, it can also be used to issue negative imperatives, or can be used in combination with several special verbs to create special constructions. What it cannot be used for is the verbal gerund. I say this, because many people claim that the て form is the Japanese version of the gerund, which is simply not true.
2.2.2.4.1. What is the gerund?
The "gerund" or "gerundive" form of a verb, is that form of a verb when it is written as verb, but used as if it's a noun. For instance, compare the following two simple English sentences:
| "Whistling, I walked to school." |
| "I love whistling." |
In the first sentence, "whistling" describes an act being performed. This is what verbs are used for, so there is nothing remarkable about this use of the verb "whistling"; it's a verb being used as a verb. In the second sentence however, "whistling" doesn't indicate an act being performed, but is used as a noun describing the act of whistling. We can see that this second sentence is using a verb as if it's a noun by simply replacing it with one:
| "Chalk, I walked to school." |
| "I love chalk." |
The first sentence makes no real sense, but the second sentence is still a perfectly grammatical sentence.
This "using a verb as if it's a noun" concept is what is called the "gerund". Whenever someone talks about a gerund, they mean a noun-used verb (provided they use the term properly). In Japanese there are two ways to turn a verb into nouns, one of which is a verb form, and the other a nominalisation through the use of nominaliser particles. The verb form construction involves placing a verb in 連用形, but this creates a verb-derived noun, creating nouns like the English nouns "[a] walk" or "[a] frame". The second way to create nouns from verbs involves explicitly nominalising the verb, using a nominaliser such as the particle の:
| 歩くのは好きです。 |
| [I] like walking. |
In this sentence, the gerund "walking" maps to the clause 歩くの, not the verb 歩く. So as you can see, the gerund form has nothing to do with the て form in the slightest. Of course, while sentences may have a verb that ends on "-ing", such as:
| 歩いて学校へ行った。 |
| Walking, I went to school. |
Sentences like these do not contain a gerund just because there is a verb in "-ing" form in the translation. The English translation for this sentence (and really only the translation) uses a present progressive, as it indicates an act being performed. In Japanese this isn't a progressive per se, as the て form on its own does not have any inherent inflection, as we will see in a moment.
2.2.2.4.2. Verb action chaining
An important skill to have is to be able to chain verb actions. If you want to express going to school and starting class in one sentence, then you're going to have to know how to do this. Luckily, the way to do so isn't very complicated, and uses the classical helper verb of completion つ. This verb contracts in the same way that た does when used with 五段 verbs, and has its own bases:
| 未然形 | て |
| 連用形 | て |
| 連体形 | つる |
| 已然形 | つれ |
| 命令形 | てよ |
But of these, only the 連用形 is really used. This should tip you off as to what this verb does: it conjoins sentences. However, unlike a plain verb 連用形 this construction preserves the order in which the verb actions occur:
| 朝ご飯を食べて、学校に行って、授業に出ました。 |
| [I] had breakfast, went off to school and went to class. |
| 学校に行って、授業に出て、朝ご飯を食べました。 |
| [I] went off to school, went to class and had breakfast. |
These are two very different ways of spending one's morning you have to admit. You may have noticed that only the last verb in the sentence has an inflection that indicates affirmative/negative and present/past. This is a consequence of using て - it indicates verb completion, but it doesn't indicate in which way it's been completed. To indicate the particular completion, the last verb is placed in whichever form it should be, and this form then applies to all previous verbs in て form:
| 本を読んで音楽を聞きます。 |
| [I] read a book and listen to music. |
| 本を読んで音楽を聞きました。 |
| [I] read a book and listened to music. |
The negative て form is formed by placing the verb in plain negative form, first using 未然形 + ない, and then turning this negative into a て form, forming -なくて or -ないで (for more on this, see the verbal adjective section on chaining).
| 食べなくて帰りました。 |
| 食べないで帰りました。. |
| [I] didn't eat and went home. |
This is similar to the use of 未然形+ず+に, meaning "without ..." but there is the subtle difference that this is still a verb form, while -ずに is technically adverbial. Chaining multiple affirmative and negative verb actions is possible, while ずに doesn't quite allow this:
| 食べなくて学校へ行ってバスを乗らなくて着きました。 |
| 食べないで学校へ行ってバスを乗らないで着きました。 |
| [I] didn't eat, went to school, didn't take the bus and arrived. |
This sentence can just as well be translated as "I went to school without eating and arrived without taking the bus." but the nuance is different from the sentence
食べずに学校へ行ってバスを乗らずに着きました。
Which expresses the same as this "without ..." translation. In the て form sentence, we're chaining four different actions, while in the -ずに sentence we're actually listing two actions, both of which are adverbially constrained.
2.2.2.4.3. Negative imperative
The て form can also be used to create a negative imperative construction, where imperative should be read to mean the same thing it means in phrases like "It is imperative that we locate this item", and in English is seen in for instance things like "you cannot leave", in which 'cannot' doesn't apply to someone's ability to leave or not, but to the gravity of the situation. This construction is created by adding the particle は to the て form, followed by a negative expression, such as 駄目 ("no good") or いけない ("won't do"):
| 行かなくては駄目。 |
| [You] cannot stay. |
| (lit: you cannot not-go) |
This form is not as strong as a 命令形, and shouldn't be translated with "must" or "should".
2.2.2.4.4. Special て form conjugations
There are also several verbs which have special roles when used in conjunction with a て form. These verbs, of which 下さる, ある, いる, 来る, 行く, 置く, 見る and しまう are the most important, don't simply chain up with the verb in て form, but also subtly change meaning.
This is the formal request, which will be treated in more detail when treating verbs for giving and receiving. For now it suffices to say that using て+下(くだ)さい turns a verb into a polite command:
| 窓を開けて下さい。 |
| Please open the window. |
| 食べて下さい。 |
| Please eat [this]. |
Combining the て form with ある and いる profoundly changes the verb's meaning in terms of its grammatical role. Using these two verbs as helper verbs lets us turn any verb into a resultant state, present progressive form or habitual act, depending on whether the verb was transitive or intransitive, and whether we use ある or いる. The table of which combinations can imply which construction is as follows:
| て+ある | て+いる | ||||
| transitive | 1. Resultant state (implying something or someone caused the state) |
|
|||
| intransitive | (impossible combination) |
|
Looking at the table, we see that the て+ある form is used to indicate that something is in a particular state, and that this state was caused by someone or something. Examples of this "resultant state" are for instance:
| 窓が開けてある。 |
| The window is [in an] opened [state] (because someone or something opened it). |
| 車が止めてある。 |
| The car is [in a] stopped [state] (because someone or something stopped it). |
This construction describes the state of something, just like a normal intransitive verb would, but implies that someone is responsible for this state, rather than merely describing it. The reason for this is the fact that a transitive verb is used as basis: a transitive verb (or active verb) describes an action being preformed by something or someone. Thus, even if the something or someone that performs the verb is left off, the fact that a transitive verb was used is on itself enough to tell us that something or someone must have performed it.
On the other hand, the resultant state that is created using the て+いる form does not imply this additional "someone did it". Instead, because it uses an intransitive verb: an intransitive verb (or passive verb) merely passively describes the current state of the world without any implications of how it might have come to be this way:
| 窓が開いている。 |
| The window is [in an] opened [state]. |
| 車が止まっている。 |
| The car is [in a] stopped [state]. |
One principle difference is that while て+ある operates on transitive verbs for resultant state, て+いる operates on intransitive verbs. Another difference is that while て+ある can only be used to create a resultant state, て+いる can also be used to create the progressive verb form, as well as indicate a habitual action. Both these forms can be made with either transitive or intransitive verbs:
| いま映画を見ています。 |
| [I] am watching a movie right now. (transitive progressive) |
| よく新聞を読んでいます。 |
| [I] frequently read the newspaper. (transitive habitual act) |
| 窓が開いています。 |
| The window is opening. (intransitive progressive) |
| そのドアがよく軋っています。 |
| That door often creaks. (intransitive habitual) |
To make sure there's no mistakes possible: て+ある/て+いる can both do resultant state, but they operate on transitive/intransitive respectively: "Aru, trAnsitive, Iru, Intransitive". In addition to this, て+いる can also signify progressive state and habitual form of any verb.
Colloquially, the て+いる form is often shortened by dropping the い, to create て+る instead. This means that the following two sentences are technically the same, but the first is formal, and the second less formal:
| 何をしていますか。 |
| 何をしてますか。 |
| What are [you] doing? |
2.2.2.4.4.3. -てくる / -ていく (-てゆく)
Another important pair is the て+くる(来る)/て+いく(行く) pair, where いく is sometimes written or pronounced as ゆく instead (this is not wrong, but simply an alternate way to write/say 行く, used a lot in songs, poetry and many dialects). These two constructions stand for a gradual process directed either towards the speaker in some way, or heading away from the speaker in some way. This towards/away can be either a physical process or an abstract process such as "it feels like her mind is slowly slipping away":
| 春になってきた。 |
| It's (gradually) become spring. |
| 富士山が見えてきます。 |
| Mt. Fuji is (gradually) coming into view. |
| 夜になっていく。 |
| It's (gradually) becoming night. |
While the translation in this last sentence also uses 'becoming', because the verb いく is used, we can gather that this is something that is less desired than the evening that precedes it. Because this is phrased as if the process moves away from the speaker, a feeling of something that is less preferred is sketched.
When using this form, it is convention to write くる and いく, rather than 来る or 行く.
Also important is the て+おく construction. On its own the verb 置くmeans "to put [something] [somewhere]", but when paired with a verb in て form, it creates a construction meaning "to do something with the intention of leaving it that way [for whatever reason]". This may sound a bit cryptic, so let's look at an example for clarification:
| 電気を付けておいて下さい。 |
| Please turn on the lights. |
This sentence uses the て form of おく for a polite command (using 下さい), and asks for the lights to be turned on without there being a need for them to be on right now, other than it saving having to turn them on later. Literally this sentence would read "Please turn on the lights and leave them that way".
Colloquially, the combination of て+お is often changed to と instead, so the following two sentences are the same, except that the first is more formal, and the second more colloquial:
| 窓を開けておきます。 |
| 窓を開けときます。 |
| [I]'ll open the windows [now, rather than later]. |
Another construction that changes the meaning of the suffixed verb is the て+みる form. みる (見る) alone means "to see", but suffixed to て forms, this construction means "to do ... to see what it's like" or "to do ... to see what happens":
| 寿司を食べてみませんか。 |
| Won't [you] try eating some sushi? |
Here a negative question is asked as a more polite way of offering a suggestion, and the 食べてみます part stands for "trying to eat, to see what happens". In this case, the "to see what happens" is probably related to "seeing if you like it".
| 自転車を乗ってみましたが全然だめでした。 |
| [I] tried to ride a bicycle, but that failed horribly. (lit: but [it] was no good at all) |
Here the act of riding a bicycle was tried to see what would happen, but we can conclude from the remainder of the sentence that riding a bike isn't something reserved for this particular speaker.
The construction て+しまう is a very interesting construction. The closest English translations is "[completed verb action], sadly." such as "I finished reading 'the Lord of the rings', sadly" implying you wish you hadn't (maybe you wanted to read more, or maybe you didn't like it and didn't want to know how it ended, who knows). In Japanese, this actually uses a verb, しまう, which indicates verb completion, and connotes that the speaker would wish it hadn't been performed to completion.
| ああ、言ってしまった...... |
| Ah, *now* [you]'ve said it... |
| (lit: ah, you've said it (even though it would have been better if you hadn't)) |
One can expect to hear something like this when you've pointed out something that everyone knows, but no one dares say because of the repercussions, like when you finally can't stand it anymore and tell your boss outright that everyone in the department is better suited for his job than he is.
| ラジオを壊せてしまった。 |
| [I] broke the radio... (and that's definitely something I wish I hadn't). |
In this line it should be obvious why the fact that 壊せる, to break, having been completed is a bad thing.
Colloquially, て + しまう can be contracted into ちまう or ちゃう, (with で + しまう contracting to じまう or じゃう respectively) resulting in for instance:
| あっ、教科書を忘れちゃった。 |
| Ah! I forgot my textbook... |
Again, it is clear that 忘れる, to forget, is a bad thing when completed, especially in relation to needing your textbook in class.
2.2.2.5. Representative verb action listing - たり
If, instead of chaining, you want to only list representative actions for which order doesn't matter, such as "Today I read my book, played some video games and walked the dog" in which you probably did all those things a few times in no real order, then the て form is of little use. Instead, the classical helper verb たり is the one you want to be working with. This verb has the following bases:
| 未然形 | たら |
| 連用形 | たり |
| 連体形 | たり |
| 已然形 | たれ |
| 命令形 | たれ |
Just like つ, the 連用形 of たり is used to list the verbs, and just like つ and た, the same contractions apply for conjugations between 五段 verbs and たり. However, unlike the て form, たり sequences don't just get their inflection from the last verb, but always are closed off with an inflection of する, meaning "to do":
| 今日は学校に行ったり、授業に出たり、ご飯を食べたりしました。 |
| Today [I] went to school, went to class and ate. |
This sentence literally reads "Today I did: going to school, going to class, eating", and shows why this is only listing representative actions - there is no way to distinguish which occurred when, when we're literally only listing what we did today.
Verbs in たり form can also be used on their own in a sentence, in which case it translates to "doing things such as", and still get closed off with する:
| 昨日、本を読んだりした。 |
| Yesterday [I] did things like reading a book. |
(We see this use in a lot of listers, where a single use indicates a generalised case of the multiple instances)
The negative たり form is constructed by placing a verb in plain negative form first, and then turning this negative into a たり form, forming -なかったり (for more on this, see the verbal adjective section, representative listing).
We all have wants and needs, but where in many western languages we express the wants and needs of both first person, second person and third person with the same verb, in Japanese there is an important difference between the desires of oneself, and the desires of others. This is reflected in how one creates the desirative form, using -たい for first person, and -たがる when talking about the desires of others. However, there is also the distinction between desiring some verb action or process to take place, or for some state to be in effect. The first is described using the aforementioned たい and たがる, but the second uses the adjective ほしい, literally expressing "desire".
2.2.2.6.1. Ones own desire - たい
Unlike the previous constructions, -たい is actually an adjective (which has a kanji form, 度い, but this is not used in modern Japanese). Also, unlike the previous た, て and たり, this helper adjective doesn't contract, which makes forming the first person desirative very easy. Since this is an adjective it has a slightly different set of bases for further conjugation, but the way to create the desirative is still the 連用形 of a verb + たい:
| 未然形 | たく |
| 連用形 | たく |
| 連体形 | たい |
| 已然形 | たけれ |
| 買う | 買い + たい |
| 歩く | 歩き + たい |
| 泳ぐ | 泳ぎ + たい |
| 話す | 話し + たい |
| 待つ | 待ち + たい |
| 済む | 済み + たい |
| 遊ぶ | 遊び + たい |
| 死ぬ | 死に + たい |
| 分かる | 分かり + たい |
| 見る | 見 + たい |
| 寝る | 寝 + たい |
| 伸びる | 伸び + たい |
| 食べる | 食べ + たい |
| する | し+ たい |
| 来る | き + たい |
You may have noticed that です and ます are not listed here. The absence of です is easy to explain because it is the copula, and one cannot want something to be a particular property in Japanese using the copula (this uses the adjective 欲しい, ほしい, instead). The absence of a たい form for ます is more subtle: there is no たい form for ます because using たい to express one's own desire is intrinsically selfish. The level of desire expressed purely by たい is comparable to a child saying they want a new toy, and keep saying it until you buy it. It's selfish, and at some point plain annoying. To make a statement that expresses desire that is less selfish, the Japanese use a construction that expresses "I think I want/would like to ...", which makes the actual desire less strong because it's only a thought, rather than a real desire:
| 新しい車を買いたいと思います。 |
| I think I would like to buy a new car. |
This is a very civil way of expressing one's own desire, compared to the plain:
| 新しい車を買いたい。 |
| I want to buy a new car. |
Because たい is an adjective, it can also be followed by です to make it more polite, in which case the translation stays the same, but the perceived strength of the desire is tuned down just a bit, although not as much as when the desire is turned into a thought using と+思う.
| 新しい車を買いたいです。 |
| I want to buy a new car. |
To say one doesn't want something, たい is placed in a negative form, たくない:
| 今日は何もしたくない。 |
| I don't want to do anything today. |
2.2.2.6.2. Other's desire - たがる
Because of the way Japanese works, and the way the world is interpreted and thought about in the Japanese mindset, one never presumes to truly know what's going on in someone else's head. Because of this, you cannot say that "Bob wants an apple", because even though he might give off all the signals that he does, and even though he may have said so himself, you might still be interpreting the signals wrong, and he might have only said he wanted one instead of really wanting one. Because of this the classical helper verb たがる is used instead. Like たい, this form does not suffer from contractions, and is added directly to the 連用形.
| 未然形 | たがら / たがろ |
| 連用形 | たがり / たがつ |
| 連体形 | たがる |
| 已然形 | たがれ |
| 買う | 買い + たがる |
| 歩く | 歩き + たがる |
| 泳ぐ | 泳ぎ + たがる |
| 話す | 話し + たがる |
| 待つ | 待ち + たがる |
| 済む | 済み + たがる |
| 遊ぶ | 遊び + たがる |
| 死 |