IxrecConjugation

Grammar Part 2: Conjugation

The vast majority of this page is about verb conjugation. More than anything else, this page illustrates how my approach to language instruction is different from the norm. Here I literally attempt to list every single verb form in the entire language (and some other stuff), whereas a normal textbook would likely spend multiple pages if not entire chapters on each one of these forms (and probably never mention a lot of them).
Obviously, I don't expect you to memorize them all anytime soon. I doubt anyone could without seeing all of them in source material a number of times. So feel free to digest this material at whatever pace you like.
However, the order definitely matters, so don't skip or skim any sections.
You should also be aware that what I describe here, which I call the "gaijin model", is not how the Japanese themselves describe Japanese verb conjugation. They use what I call the "jodoushi model", which is very good for older forms of Japanese but kinda bad with modern Japanese, so I introduce it in the Old Japanese supplment.

The Basic Verb Forms
Negative and Polite Forms
-te Forms
Modal -te Forms
-i Forms
Compound Verbs
Conjugation Examples
Advanced Verbs Forms and Uses
-ra Form
Conjunctive -te
-tari Form
Modal Implications of Conditional Forms
Adjective Conjugation
Spelling Conjugated Verbs
More Conjugation Examples

The Basic Verb Forms

Every Japanese verb, in its infinitive form, ends with a "u" sound. This means it could end in any kana which happens to have a "u" sound. I call that kana its verb type. For instance, かく is a ku-type verb, はしる a ru-type verb, つかう an u-type verb, and so on.
The type of a verb determines precisely which kana each conjugated form will be spelled with. However, it has absolutely no effect on the meaning of those forms or the verb itself, so you can ignore the details of spelling conjugated verbs for quite some time (hence I put that section near the bottom). For now, what you want to focus on is the ability to recognize a given form on any verb type.

The basic verb forms you absolutely must know are:

When I say a verb form "ends in" something like "areru" I do not necessarily mean the kana あれる. I mean the sounds. Verbs in the passive form could end with the kana される, われる, られる, かれる, たれる, ばれる, まれる, なれる, or がれる, depending on verb type. Again, recognition is what's important here. Get to the point where seeing all of those kana as the same verb form comes naturally, then worry about how to conjugate each verb yourself. Similarly, the meanings column is a bit ambiguous because Japanese conjugation is unaffected by grammatical person. So my "to not _" could easily mean "I won't _", "You won't _", "He won't _", "They won't _" and so on. Here are a few random examples:

It's also very common for verbs to be conjugated into more than one form at a time:

Once you know all of the common forms, it's possible to conjugate a single verb several times in a row.

Now for some miscellanea:

• Although the nonpast form can be either present or future tense (as its name implies), it's actually more likely to be future, since the -te iru form is often used to specify present.


• The volitional form followed by とする means "to try _ing" as in "to attempt to do _" (this is distinct from the -te みる form below which means "to try _ing" as in "do _ and see what happens").


• When a verb is in the passive form, the particle に will correspond to the English particle "by." For example, 本は人に読まれる means "books are read by people."
• In extremely formal speech, both the passive and causative forms may be used solely for formality reasons, without any passive or casuative intent. It's very obvious when someone is talking like this, so it shouldn't be too confusing.
• In English, the passive voice ("to be _ed") only makes sense with transitive verbs. In Japanese, sometimes it still makes sense to use the passive form on an intransitive verb. If the speaker performs the action, the passive form implies the act is natural or spontaneous rather than deliberate (e.g. あいつのことが思い出される). If someone else performs the action, the passive form implies it affects the speaker (probably negatively), but it's also beyond the speaker's control (e.g., また人に死なれるのは怖い).
• When the causative and passive forms are combined, the resulting -aserareru can shorten to -asareru.


• Placing そう after a noun or verb means "seems like" or "as if". For nouns and verbs, its negative is either まい (which is also the negative volitional form below) or そうにない.

Negative and Polite Forms

-te Forms

There are some other verbs and adjectives which can be placed after the -te form, but their meanings in this case are identical to their normal meanings and thus there is absolutely no need to list them. Admittedly, the -te kuru form is usually like this, but it happens to be extremely common and occasionally gets used a bit oddly.

Modal -te Forms

Here are what I call the "modal" -te forms, because they're the closest thing I know of to explicit grammatical modes in Japanese. Unsurprisingly, these are probably the hardest ones to explain or understand. It may be best to find an example or two in source material before trying to make sense out of these.

-i Forms

Compound Verbs

The last important -i form is simply putting a verb after it, which creates what I call a "compound verb." Since this can be done between virtually any two verbs, many of the -te forms listed above can also be made using the -i form, and it's worth showing a whole table of examples. So here I've listed a few very common ones, plus all the ones I know of that have special meanings. You may notice that Japanese compound verbs often correspond to English phrasal verbs.

Conjugation Examples

That is all of the verb forms you might have to learn to reach Conversational Fluency. Now here's a bunch of examples of conjugating multiple times in a row:

走る to run → 走って run → 走っていく to keep running → 走っていこう let's keep running

言う to say → 言われる to be said → 言われ act of _ being said → 言われたい to want _ to be said → 言われたくない to not want _ to be said

作る to make → 作って make → 作ってくれる to make _ for me → 作ってくれて make _ for me → 作ってくれてありがとう thank you for making _ for me

笑う to laugh → 笑い act of laughing → 笑いあう to laugh at each other → 笑いあえる to be able to laugh at each other → 笑いあえれば if _ can laugh at each other

見る to see → 見 act of seeing → 見に行く to go to see → 見に行って go to see → 見に行ってあげる to go see _ for someone → 見に行ってあげて go see _ for someone → 見に行ってあげてしまう regrettably go see _ for someone → 見に行ってあげてしまった regrettably went to see _ for someone

With enough experience, things like たくない, しまった and ってあげる will start to feel like single steps, and even conjugations like 見に行ってあげてしまった will become natural, despite the fact that English can never conjugate a single verb that much.

Now for a bunch of example sentences using conjugated verbs. The format here is the same as before, though since I'm using a lot more verb forms, it's worth explicitly stating that each step of conjugation is done on a separate line in the breakdown (though you may have noticed that already).

You may be wondering if there are any rules there are governing the order which forms can be applied to verbs. There definitely are, but I don't think it's worth the effort to try and come up with a set of rules myself, or make you learn one. The language is very consistent with what orders it chooses, so by the time you've mastered the forms themselves, you'll have naturally picked up more than enough of the ordering rules.

Advanced Verbs Forms and Uses

Up until now, I've been defining each form with one sentence or less. Now we're going to look at the forms where that simply isn't an option, as well as some additional uses of forms you already know. For the most part, this is because these forms affect the meaning of the entire sentence and not just that of the verb, which makes them significantly more difficult.

-ra Form

Either the infinitive plus "nara" or the past plus "ra" (usually "tara"). "nara" usually means "if _" and applies to the entire clause, not just the verb, while "tara" tends to mean "if/when" and applies to just the verb. The conditional "eba" form is different from both in that it has no temporal implications. It's hard to explain this with examples, but:

店に行けば買うかも。 = If _ goes to the store _ might buy it.

店に行くなら買うかも。 = If _ is going/will go to the store then _ might buy it.

店に行ったら買うかも。 = "_ might buy it if/when _ goes to the store." or "If _ went to the store _ might buy it."

Conjunctive -te and -i

Yet another use of the -te form (and slightly less often, the -i form). If a verb in the -te form isn't part of some complex form, and a mild command makes no sense, then the -te is meant to act as a conjunction (specifically "and") between this verb and whatever verb comes next. Two or more verbs may be connected in this way (keep using -te until the last one), and there may or may not be other words between them. Also, these -te verbs effectively borrow their tense/mood/etc. from the final verb in the sentence.

走って勝った = _ ran and won
落ち着いて考えれば = If _ calms down and thinks
起きて、学校に行って、帰って、眠りたいだけ = _ just wants to wake up, go to school, come home, and sleep

As a side note, a -te form by itself can sometimes be an indicator of uncertainty rather than a mild command. I believe that's a result of this conjunctive -te, but that's debatable.

The quasi-particle し can also be placed after a verb (in various forms) or an adjective to do basically the same things.

-tari Form

Spelling it is easy: it's the past form with り added. Understanding it isn't much harder. I interpret it as a series of actions taken as a single whole. It may also help to see it as a tendency or disposition to perform the action, or as an action repeated or spread out over a long period of time. Strangely, English tends to implicitly take care of this nuance for you, so translating it is simply a matter of using the generic mood. Also, this form is just as conjunctive as the -te form.

忘れたりけど、まだできる。 I may forget things, but I can still do it.

君は戦ったり勝ったり幸せになる。 You find happiness in fighting and winning.

Modal Implications of Conditional Forms

The basic idea is that after certain verb forms (usually conditionals) you can place a word meaning either "good" or "bad." Sometimes, this makes perfect sense if you understand conditionals to begin with. Other times, it seems odd because the meanings of certain popular combinations have drifted much closer to modal words like "should" or "must." The main ones to be wary of are:

Some of the conditional forms listed above will look new or strange. This is largely because [infinitive]が and [negative]と are used almost exclusively for these modal uses. That and "nakute" is a result of adjective conjugation (the next section).

The genuinely tricky part is that the word for good/bad might be implied, giving you lines like "if I don't go..." which actually mean "I have to go." This is probably the single easiest way to get a line completely wrong without even knowing you're missing something.

Adjective Conjugation

Japanese is kinda weird in that it lets adjectives have tense and mood to some degree, but it's not hard to learn since you already know verb conjugation. Yes, it technically should be called adjective declension, but it's so similar to conjugation that I prefer to call it that instead. By the way, all Japanese adjectives end in either い or な, hence "-i adjective" and "-na adjective". First, -i adjectives:

As for な adjectives (which are often just nouns with な attached), the only forms they can have are な, じゃない, だった, そう and さ. It should be obvious what those mean without a separate chart. The gobi だ can also become だった or じゃない in a verbless clause or sentence.

Now the weird part: a few verb forms are technically adjectives. Specifically, the negative (nai) form, the -i tai form, and the -te hoshii form (but definitely not the -i form) can be further conjugated this way, as well as ない and じゃない themselves. In fact, the "past negative" -nakatta and "negative conditional" -nakereba forms listed above (as well as the "negative adverb" -naku form) are merely the most common ways in which adjective conjugation affects verb forms. So expect to see lots of stuff like -i たくない and -te ほしかった.

There's also a "-garu form" where the い changes to がる, and the result is a verb meaning "to feel that _ is _". I didn't list this because it's only ever used on a small subset of adjectives that can be easily interpreted as feelings. For instance, 寂しがる means "to feel that _ is lonely" and 不思議がる means "to feel that _ is strange/mysterious", but no one would ever say 早がる.

Some miscellaneous comments:

• There are a few adjectives ending in ない despite neither being verbs nor being conjugated in any way. The most common of these is probably 危ない(あぶない). Don't get confused; it's not the negative of anything.
• A common application of the adverb form of adjectives is attaching them to the verb なる. For example, 高くなる means "to become tall." This can also happen on adjectival verb forms. For example, 行きたくなる means "to start wanting to go".
• いい becomes よい for conjugation (よかった, よくない, etc.), and its apparent form is よさそう.
• Replace any adjective's い or な with すぎ to mean "too _." いい and ない are irregular since they become よさすぎ and なさすぎ.

Spelling Conjugated Verbs

Ichidan versus Godan

一段 ichidan and 五段 godan are the two major categories the Japanese break their verbs into. Ichidan consist of about half of the "ru" type verbs, and are labeled as "1ru" in the chart below. All other verbs are godan, including the other "ru" verbs which I labeled "5ru." Thankfully, ichidan verbs always end in either "eru" or "iru," which makes their odd forms a little easier to recognize.

As for telling what's ichi and what's go, you're screwed. There's absolutely no way to tell other than memorization or experience (although edict entries will conveniently indicate them with v1 and v5).

Now that you know that, all the verb types in the following chart should make sense to you.

Conjugation Chart

Columns for the more complex forms are completely unnecessary once you know that the polite form is a "su" type verb, the negative form is an adjective, and the causative/passive/potential forms are all "1ru" type verbs. Now for another list of little details to watch out for:

• Notice the "1ru" type's -i form can end in "e" rather than "i". This isn't as annoying as it might look since these verbs are almost never used in the command form and their -i forms are very often used in compound verbs, which makes them nice and obvious. Also, the "1ru" type has an alternative command form ending in ろ (don't confuse this with the volitional form), and its passive and potential forms are identical.
• Among the irregularities not covered by this chart are: 行く's -te form is 行って, its past form is 行った, the negative of ある is ない, the negative of ます is ません. Formal verbs also have some weird behavior.
• Kanji for popular verbs often have multiple verb readings, and occasionally you might misread one as a conjugated form of another. The most annoying example I know of: 合わせる can be either potential of 合わす or causative of 合う. Thankfully both interpretations mean almost the same thing. Kanji with this nuisance include 合, 見 and 思. This is partly because, in old Japanese, the causative form was -asu instead of -aseru.
• Out of all the kanji representing multiple verbs, there's an interesting subcategory in which the kanji represents a pair of verbs where one is intransitive and the other transitive. Often, these are identical except for an "a" sound in the stem of one verb which gets replaced by an "e" sound in the other. For example, 止まる means "to stop" while 止める means "to stop (something)", and 隠れる means "to hide (oneself)" while 隠す means "to hide (something)".
• Since 見る is a 1ru type, みたい can be either the -i tai form of 見る, the -i tai form of the -te miru form, or the "seems like" word mentioned in Grammatical Vocabulary. And those all mean slightly different things. Have fun not getting confused by this.
• Finally, since this (important) detail doesn't fit anywhere, I'll just tack it on at the end. Young masculine speech often changes "ai", "oi" or "ui" sounds to "ee" for no particular reason. Among the most common results of this are ない becoming ねえ, すごい becoming すげえ and the -i たい form becoming -i てえ.

More Conjugation Examples

You know the drill by now. Expect more complex and potentially confusing conjugation this time. The translations will now use slashes and parenthesis to help clarify intent.

Next is Grammar Part 3: Clauses.