Simple hard way to conjugate Japanese verbs

10 2 3japanese verbs are awesome. you can take the dictionary form of a verb (for example, "taberu", to eat) and turn it into many forms: taberu ("eat"): tabemasu (polite "eat"), tabemashita (polite "did eat"), tabemasen (polite "not eat"), tabemasendeshita (polite "did not eat"), tabenai (casual "not eat"), tabenakatta (casual "did not eat"), tabetai ("want to eat"), tabeta (casual "did eat"), tabete ("eat and..."). nomu ("drink"): nomimasu (polite "drink"), nomimashita (polite "did drink"), nomimasen (polite "not drink"), nomimasendeshita (polite "did not drink"), nomanai (casual "not drink"), nomanakatta (casual "did not drink"), nomitai ("want to drink"), nonda (casual "did drink"), nonde ("drink and..."). the art (or science) of making these forms correctly is called conjugation. i've tried to learn Japanese verb conjugation a few times before. at first, it looks simple (you just swap suffixes!), but there's a lot of nuance that can drag you down as a learner. i found a system i prefer but let me first explain why i struggled. a common way to explain conjugation looks like this: there are two groups of verbs (often called -ru and -u verbs). for each suffix (like -masu), you have to learn how to correctly attach it to a verb of either group (using tables like these). i found this approach to teaching deeply frustrating and unsatisfying. first, calling them -ru and -u verbs is confusing because you can't always tell the group by how the word ends. sometimes it's what you expect ("taberu", to eat, is a -ru verb; "nomu", to drink, is an -u verb). okay, so if something ends with -ru then surely it's a -ru verb? actually, not necessarily! "kaeru" (to go home) is an -u verb. if groups alone weren't confusing, take this: then you have to memorize a dozen of seemingly arbitrary rules like "く (ku) becomes き (ki) before masu" for different suffixes. some textbooks further separate the -u verbs into five subcategories to teach these rules. this makes japanese verb conjugation seem hard! however, beneath these surface difficulties there is a surprisingly elegant system that's obscured by how it often gets explained. in this article, i'll explain it in a "simple hard" way. this means that instead of memorizing a bunch of individual special cases, we'll try to slowly build a coherent system from a small number of primitives. taberu ("eat"): tabemasu (polite "eat"), tabemashita (polite "did eat"), tabemasen (polite "not eat"), tabemasendeshita (polite "did not eat"), tabenai (casual "not eat"), tabenakatta (casual "did not eat"), tabetai ("want to eat"), tabeta (casual "did eat"), tabete ("eat and..."). nomu ("drink"): nomimasu (polite "drink"), nomimashita (polite "did drink"), nomimasen (polite "not drink"), nomimasendeshita (polite "did not drink"), nomanai (casual "not drink"), nomanakatta (casual "did not drink"), nomitai ("want to drink"), nonda (casual "did drink"), nonde ("drink and..."). can you spot any patterns between these two? if you focus on the first example, conjugation looks straightforward. yes, it's a lot of suffixes, but each is added by pure concatenation: we're going to call the left part — the part that is unchanging between these — the stem of our verb. taberu's stem is "tabe". so now you (almost) know how to do conjugation: To conjugate a Japanese verb, append the suffix to its stem. For example, tabe + masu = tabemasu. in a sense, this is pretty much the entire principle! but now we need to refine our understanding of both a "stem" and of "appending". in the first example, the stem was very simple: just tabe. let's now have a close look at our second example: nomu ("drink"): nomimasu (polite "drink"), nomimashita (polite "did drink"), nomimasen (polite "not drink"), nomimasendeshita (polite "did not drink"), nomanai (casual "not drink"), nomanakatta (casual "did not drink"), nomitai ("want to drink"), nonda (casual "did drink"), nonde ("drink and..."). there's a few things that come to my mind: it's not entirely clear what nomu's stem is. is it nomu? but then, we define stem as the unchanging part — whereas the last vowel seems to alternate, like nomi or noma in some cases. even if we pick nom as a stem (which is weird! you can't even write "nom" in hiragana because there's no solo "m"), that still doesn't quite work because nonda and nonde break the pattern. for now, let's ignore nonda / nonde and focus on the first issue. here, * is like a wildcard vowel that's "waiting to be filled". it could be noma, nomi, nomu, nome, or nomo depending on context. when writing the stem, i'll always write it neutrally like nom*. but how is the actual vowel determined? let's try to spot a pattern: it seems like each of the suffixes "smuggles" its preferred secret vowel that's normally not visible. we wanted to add "masu" but got "imasu". we wanted to add "nai" but we got "anai", and so on. each of these suffixes starts with a (secret vowel). it only reveals itself if there's

Simple hard way to conjugate Japanese verbs

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