Tag Archives: conjugation

Japanese consanant verbs that end with eru/iru

Japanese has two verb types, consonant (godan) verbs and vowel (ichidan) verbs, each with their corresponding conjugations. Here is an example of each with conjugation into the past and -masu forms. Vowel (ichidan) 食べる (taberu) – to eat Past: 食べた (tabeta) ~Masu (polite): 食べます (tabemasu) Consonant verb (godan) 分かる (wakaru) – to understand Past: 分かった… Read More »

食べられる (taberareru) vs 食べれる (tabereru)? The phenomenon of ら抜き (ra-nuki) in Japanese

The way I learned Japanese conjugations for the potential form of “eru/iru” verbs was to remove the stem and add ~られる。All other verbs involve removing only the last character and then adding a character with the same consonant, but with a え sound, (for example く would change to け )  followed by a る. Potential (可能)… Read More »

Special Na-adjectives in Japanese which are really not

As most of you studying Japanese probably know, the language has to types of adjectives: Na-adjectives (i.e. 素敵(な))and I-adjectives (i.e. 大きい). Each of these has different rules for conjugation into various forms. There is a few words in Japanese that look like Na-adjectives that derived from a I-adjective. Here is a list of a few… Read More »

Japanese verb dictionaries: are they really needed? [beginner]

There is one type of Japanese reference book that I often run across in bookstores that always makes me wonder. It’s the Japanese verb dictionary which have several hundreds of pages, each containing a verb and its various conjugations. For a beginner where money is no object and you just need to double check your… Read More »