A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

The problem with conventional textbooks

1. They want readers to be able to use functional and polite Japanese as quickly as possible.
2. They don't want to scare readers away with terrifying Japanese script and Chinese characters.
3. They want to teach you how to say English phrases in Japanese.

The root of this problem lies in the fact that these textbooks try to teach you Japanese with English. They want to teach you on the first page how to say, "Hi, my name is Smith," but they don't tell you about all the arbitrary decisions that were made behind your back. They probably decided to use the polite form even though learning the polite form before the dictionary form makes no sense. They also might have decided to include the subject even though it's not necessary and excluded most of the time. In fact, the most common way to say something like "My name is Smith" in Japanese is to say "am Smith". That's because most of the information is understood from the context and is therefore excluded. But does the textbook explain the way things work in Japanese fundamentally? No, because they're too busy trying to push you out the door with "useful" phrases right off the bat. The result is a confusing mess of "use this if you want to say this" type of text and the reader is left with a feeling of confusion about how things actually work.

The solution to this problem is to explain Japanese from a Japanese point of view. Take Japanese and explain how it works and forget about trying to force what you want to say in English into Japanese. To go along with this, it is also important to explain things in an order that makes sense in Japanese. If you need to know [A] in order to understand [B], don't cover [B] first just because you want to teach a certain phrase.

Essentially, what we need is a Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar.

A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar

In the beginning, the English translations for the examples will also be as literal as possible to convey the Japanese sense of the meaning. This will often result in grammatically incorrect translations in English. For example, the translations might not have a subject because Japanese does not require one. In addition, since the articles "the" and "a" do not exist in Japanese, the translations will not have them as well. And since Japanese does not distinguish between a future action and a general statement (such as "I will go to the store" vs. "I go to the store"), no distinction will necessarily be made in the translation. It is my hope that the explanation of the examples will convey an accurate sense of what the sentences actually mean in Japanese. Once the reader becomes familiar and comfortable thinking in Japanese, the translations will be less literal in order to make the sentences more readable and focused on the more advanced topics.

Be aware that there are advantages and disadvantages to systematically building a grammatical foundation from the ground up. In Japanese, the most fundamental grammatical concepts are the most difficult to grasp and the most common words have the most exceptions. This means that the hardest part of the language will come first. Textbooks usually don't take this approach; afraid that this will scare away or frustrate those interested in the language. Instead, they try to delay going deeply into the hardest conjugation rules with patchwork and gimmicks so that they can start teaching useful expressions right away. (I'm talking about the past-tense conjugation for verbs in particular) This is a fine approach for some, however; it can create more confusion and trouble along the way much like building a house on a poor foundation. The hard parts must be covered no matter what. However, if you cover them in the beginning, the easier bits will be all that easier because they'll fit nicely on top of the foundation you have built. Japanese is syntactically much more consistent than English. If you learn the hardest conjugation rules, most of remaining grammar builds upon similar or identical rules. The only difficult part from there on is sorting out and remembering all the various possible expressions and combinations in order to use them in the correct situations.

※Before you start using this guide, please note that half brackets like these: 「」 are the Japanese version of quotation marks.

What is not covered in this guide?

Suggestions

This is why I'm a firm believer of learning by example. Examples and experience will be your main tools in mastering Japanese. Therefore, even if you don't get something completely the first time right away, just move on and keep referring back as you see more examples. This will allow you to get a better sense of how it's used in many different contexts. Unfortunately, writing up examples takes time and is slow going. (I'm trying my best!) But lucky for you, Japanese is everywhere, especially on the web. I recommend practicing Japanese as much as possible and referring to this guide only when you cannot understand the grammar. The Internet alone has a rich variety of reading materials including websites, bulletin boards, and online chat. Buying Japanese books or comic books is also an excellent (and fun) way to increase vocabulary and practice reading skills. Also, I believe that it is impossible to learn correct speaking and listening skills without a model. Practicing listening and speaking skills with fluent speakers of Japanese is a must if you wish to master conversational skills. While listening materials such as tapes and T.V. can be very educational, there is nothing better than a real human with which to learn pronunciation, intonation, and natural conversation flow. If you have specific questions that are not addressed in this guide, you can discuss them at the Japanese grammar guide forum.

www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/

Don't feel discouraged by the vast amount of material that you will need to master. Remember, every new word or grammar learned is one step closer to mastering the language!

Requirements

Japanese Language Support
Translation Gateway (Considerably slower)

Also, please make sure you have a recent browser to enjoy all the benefits of stylesheets. I recommend Firefox.

Don't worry about having to manually look up all the Kanji and vocabulary. You can go to the WWWJDIC and paste all the examples there to quickly look up most of the words.

All the material presented here including examples is original except for some of the common terminology and when explicitly stated otherwise. I hope you enjoy this guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which is to say, frustrating and time-consuming yet somehow strangely mixed with an enormous feeling of satisfaction.

There are bound to be (many) small errors and typos especially since I wrote this in ed, haha, just kidding! (Sorry, nerd joke). I actually wrote this in Notepad which has no spellcheck, so please forgive the numerous typos! Please post any feedback, corrections, and/or suggestions at the Japanese Grammar Guide Forum

Well, no more chit-chat. Happy learning!

-Tae Kim

This page has last been revised on 2005/6/8
Changed feedback from email to the forum (2005/6/8)

The Japanese Writing System

Japanese (n): The devil's own tongue designed
to thwart the spread of Christianity

The Alphabets

Chinese characters, called kanji in Japanese, are also heavily used in the Japanese writing. Most of the words in the Japanese written language are written in kanji (nouns, verbs, adjectives). There exists over 40,000 kanji where about 2,000 represent over 95% of characters actually used in written text. There are no spaces in Japanese so kanji is necessary in distinguishing between separate words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for discriminating between homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.

Hiragana is used mainly for grammatical purposes. We will see this as we learn about particles. Words with extremely difficult or rare kanji, colloquial expressions, and onomatopoeias are also written in hiragana. It's also often used for beginning Japanese students and children in place of kanji they don't know.

While katakana represents the same sounds as hiragana, it is mainly used to represent newer words imported from western countries (since there are no kanji associated with words based on the roman alphabet). The next three sections will cover hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Intonation

Intonation of high and low pitches is a crucial aspect of the spoken language. For example, homophones can have different pitches of low and high resulting in a slightly differently sounding of the word even if it is written with the same sounds. The largest barrier to proper and natural sounding speech is incorrect intonation. Many students often speak without paying attention to the correct enunciation of pitches making speech sound unnatural (the classic foreigner's accent). It is not practical to memorize or attempt to logically create rules for pitches, especially since it can change depending on the context or the dialect. The only practical approach is to get the general sense of pitches by mimicking native Japanese speakers with careful listening and practice.

This page has last been revised on 2004/11/24

ひらがな

What is Hiragana?

Here is a table of hiragana and similar-sounding English consonant-vowel pronunciations. It is read up to down and right to left, which is how most Japanese books are written. In Japanese, writing the strokes in the correct order and direction is important, especially for kanji. Because handwritten letters look slightly different from typed letters (just like how 'a' looks totally different when typed) you will want to find a source such as a website or textbook that will show you how to write the characters. I must also stress the importance of correctly learning how to pronounce each sound. Since every word in Japanese is composed of these sounds, learning an incorrect pronunciation for a letter can severely damage the very foundation on which your pronunciation lies.

Hiragana is not too tough to master or teach and as a result, there are a variety of web sites and free programs that are already available on the web. I strongly urge you to go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each character. The relevant sections are 2.1 to 2.11. I also suggest recording yourself and comparing the sounds to make sure you're getting it right.

When practicing writing hiragana by hand, the important thing to remember is that the stroke order and direction of the strokes matter. There, I underlined, italicized, bolded, and highlighted it to boot. Trust me, you'll eventually find out why when you read other people's hasty notes that are nothing more than chicken scrawls. The only thing that will help you is that everybody writes in the same order and so the "flow" of the characters is fairly consistent. I strongly recommend that you pay close attention to stroke order from the beginning starting with hiragana to avoid falling into bad habits. Go to this web site to see little animated gifs of stroke order and practice from there.

※ As an aside, an old Japanese poem called 「いろは」 was often used as the base for ordering of the hiragana alphabet until recent times. The poem contains every single letter of the hiragana alphabet except for 「ん」 which probably did not exist at the time it was written. You can check out this poem for yourself in this wikipedia article. As the article mentions, this order is still sometimes used in ordering lists so you may want to spend some time checking it out.

The Muddied Sounds

All the possible combinations of muddied consonant sounds are given in the table below.

The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」

The Small 「つ」

The Long Vowel Sound

For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from 「か」, you would add 「あ」 to create 「かあ」. Other examples would include: 「き → きい」, 「く → くう」, 「け → けい」, 「こ → こう」, 「さ → さあ」 and so on. The reasoning for this is quite simple. Try saying 「か」 and 「あ」 separately. Then say them in succession as fast as you can. You'll notice that soon enough, it just sounds like you're dragging out the / ka / for a longer duration than just saying / ka / by itself. You can try this exercise with the other vowel sounds if you like. Try to remember that you are, in fact, saying two characters with blurred boundaries. In fact, you may not even have to consciously think about long vowels and simply pronounce the letters together quickly to get the correct sound.

In addition, while the / e / vowel sound followed by 「い」 is usually considered to a long vowel sound, the pronunciation is actually a slurred connection of the / e / and / i / vowel sounds. In other words, it should be pronounced like / ay / (as in "acorn") and not just a long / e /.

It's important to make sure you hold the vowel sound long enough because you can be saying things like "here" （ここ） instead of "High School" （こうこう） or "middle-aged lady" （おばさん） instead of "grandmother" （おばあさん） if you don't stretch it out correctly!

There are rare exceptions where an / e / vowel sound is extended by adding 「え」 or an / o / vowel sound is extended by 「お」. Some examples of this include 「おねえさん」、「おおい」、and 「おおきい」. Pay careful attention to these exceptions but don't worry, there aren't too many of them.

This page has last been revised on 2006/4/7
Added reference to 「いろは」 (2005/8/3)
/ei/ should be pronounced as /ay/ and not just a long /e/ (2006/4/7)

ひらがな Practice Exercises

Fill in the Hiragana Chart

Hiragana Writing Practice

Hiragana Writing Exercise 1

More Hiragana Writing Practice

Hiragana Writing Exercise 2

Hiragana Reading Practice

Hiragana Reading Exercise

This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20

アイ・ラブ・カタカナ！

What is Katakana?

Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as hiragana except, of course, all the characters are different. Since foreign words must fit into this set of [consonants+vowel] combinations, they undergo many radical changes resulting in the case where English speakers can't understand words that are supposed to have been derived from English! As a result, the use of katakana is extremely difficult for English speakers because they expect English words to sound like... well... English. Instead, it is better to completely forget the original English word, and treat the word as an entirely separate Japanese word, otherwise you can run into the habit of saying English words with English pronunciations (whereupon a Japanese person may or may not understand what you are saying).

Katakana is significantly tougher to master compared to hiragana because it is only used for certain words and you don't get nearly as much practice as you do with hiragana. To learn the proper stroke order (and yes, you need to), here is the same web site as before except it is for katakana.

Also, since Japanese doesn't have any spaces, sometimes the symbol 「・」 is used to show the spaces like 「ロック・アンド・ロール」 for "rock and roll". Using the symbol is completely optional so sometimes nothing will be used at all.

The Long Vowel Sound

The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」

Some examples of words in katakana

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/17
Added link to additional usages (2006/5/11)

カタカナ Practice Exercises

Fill in the Katakana Chart

Katakana Writing Practice

Katakana Writing Exercise 1

More Katakana Writing Practice

Katakana Writing Exercise 2

Changing English words to katakana

As you know, since Japanese sounds always consist of consonant-vowel pairs, any English words that deviate from this pattern will cause problems. The only combination that doesn't create problems is the consonant-vowel + n (using 「ン」). Here are some trends you may have noticed.

If you've seen "Lost in Translation", you know that / l / and / r / are indistinguishable.

（１）　Ready -> レディ
（２）　Lady -> レディ

If you have more than one vowel in a row or a vowel sound that ends in / r /, it usually becomes a long vowel sound.

（１）　Target -> ターゲット
（２）　Shoot -> シュート

Abrupt cut-off sounds usually denoted by a / t / or / c / employ the small 「ッ」.

（１）　Catch -> キャッチ
（２）　Cache -> キャッシュ

Any word that ends in a consonant sound requires another vowel to complete the consonant-vowel pattern. (Except for "n" and "m" for which we have 「ン」) For "t" and "d", it's usually "o". For everything else, it's usually "u".

（１）　Good -> グッド
（２）　Top -> トップ
（３）　Jack -> ジャック

English to Katakana Exercise

This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20

Now you want me to learn Chinese too??

What is Kanji?

This guide begins using kanji from the beginning to help the reader read "real" Japanese as quickly as possible. Therefore, we will go over some properties of kanji and discuss some strategies of learning it quickly and efficiently. Mastering kanji is not easy but it is by no means impossible. The biggest part of the battle is mastering the skills of learning kanji and time. In short, memorizing kanji past short-term memory must be done with a great deal of study and, most importantly, for a long time. And by this, I don't mean studying five hours a day but rather reviewing how to write a kanji once every several months until you are sure you have it down for good. This is another reason why this guide starts using kanji right away. There is no reason to dump the huge job of learning kanji at the advanced level. By studying kanji along with new vocabulary from the beginning, the immense job of learning kanji is divided into small manageable chunks and the extra time helps settle learned kanji into permanent memory. In addition, this will help you learn new vocabulary, which will often have combinations of kanji you already know. If you start learning kanji later, this benefit will be wasted or reduced.

Learning Kanji

Reading Kanji

Certain characters (especially the most common ones) can have more than one 音読み or 訓読み. For example, in the word 「怪力」, 「力」 is read here as 「りき」 and not 「りょく」. Certain compound words also have special readings that have nothing to do with the readings of the individual characters. These readings must be individually memorized. Thankfully, these readings are few and far in between.

訓読み is also used in adjectives and verbs in addition to the stand-alone characters. These words often have a string of kana (called okurigana) that come attached to the word. This is so that the reading of the Chinese character stays the same even when the word is conjugated to different forms. For example, the past form of the verb 「食べる」 is 「食べた」. Even though the verb has changed, the reading for 「食」 remain untouched. (Imagine how difficult things could get if readings for kanji changed with conjugation or even worse, if the kanji itself changed.) Okurigana also serves to distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs (more on this later).

Another concept that is difficult to grasp at first is that the actual readings of kanji can change slightly in a compound word to make the word easier to say. The more common transformations include the / h / sounds changing to either / b / or / p / sounds or 「つ」 becoming 「っ」. Examples include: 「一本」、「徹底」、and 「格好」.

Yet another fun aspect of kanji you'll run into are words that practically mean the same thing and use the same reading but have different kanji to make just a slight difference in meaning. For example 「聞く」（きく） means to listen and so does 「聴く」（きく）. The only difference is that 「聴く」 means to pay more attention to what you're listening to. For example, listening to music almost always prefers 「聴く」 over 「聞く」. 「聞く」 can also mean 'to ask', as well as, "to hear" but 「訊く」（きく） can only mean "to ask". Yet another example is the common practice of writing 「見る」 as 「観る」 when it applies to watching a show such as a movie. Yet another interesting example is 「書く」（かく） which means "to write" while 描く （かく） means "to draw". However, when you're depicting an abstract image such as a scene in a book, the reading of the same word 「描く」 becomes 「えがく」. There's also the case where the meaning and kanji stays the same but can have multiple readings such as 「今日」 which can be either 「きょう」、「こんじつ」, or 「こんにち」. In this case, it doesn't really matter which reading you choose except that some are preferred over others in certain situations.

Finally, there is one special character 々 that is really not a character. It simply indicates that the previous character is repeated. For example, 「時時」、「様様」、「色色」、「一一」 can and usually are written as 「時々」、「様々」、「色々」、「一々」.

In addition to these "features" of kanji, you will see a whole slew of delightful perks and surprises kanji has for you as you advance in Japanese. You can decide for yourself if that statement is sarcasm or not. However, don't be scared into thinking that Japanese is incredibly hard. Most of the words in the language usually only have one kanji associated with it and a majority of kanji do not have more than two types of readings.

Why Kanji?

Some people feel that Japanese should have just switched from Chinese to romaji to do away with all the complicated characters that was bewildering the foreign white devils. In fact, Korean has adopted their own alphabet to greatly simplify their written language to great success. So why didn't it work for Japanese? And I ask this in the past tense because I believe that the government did attempt to replace kanji with romaji shortly after the second world war with little success. I think anyone who has typed at any length in Japanese can easily see why this did not work. At any one time, when you convert typed hiragana into kanji, you are presented with almost always at least two choices (two homophones) and sometimes even up to ten. (Try typing kikan). The 46 or so character alphabet of set sounds in Japanese makes it hard to avoid homophones. Compare this to the Korean alphabet which has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Any of the consonants can be matched to any of the vowels giving 140 sounds. In addition, a third and sometimes even fourth consonant can be attached to create a single letter. This gives over 1960 sounds that can be created theoretically. (The sounds that are actually used is actually much less than that, though I don't know the exact number.)

Since you want to read at a much faster rate than you talk, you need some visual cues to instantly tell you what each word is. You can use the shape of words in English to blaze through text because most words have different shapes. Try this little exercise: Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?" Korean does this too because it has enough characters to make words with distinct and different shapes. However, because the visual cues are not distinct as kanji, spaces needed to be added to remove ambiguities. (This presents another problem of when and where to set spaces.)

With kanji, we don't have to worry about spaces and much of the problem of homophones is mostly resolved. Without kanji, even if spaces were to be added, the ambiguities and lack of visual cues would make Japanese text much more difficult to read.

This page has last been revised on 2006/5/12

Grammatical Foundations

Basic Grammatical Structures

Because I said so!

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」

As it stands, （１） is simply the word "fish" and doesn't mean anything beyond that. However, we'll see in the next section that with the topic particle, we can infer that something is a fish from the context without declaring anything. So the question that should be floating around in your head is, "If you can say something is [X] without using 「だ」, then what's the point of even having it around?" Well, the main difference is that a declarative statement makes the sentence sound more emphatic and forceful in order to make it more... well declarative. Therefore, it is more common to hear men use 「だ」 at the end of sentences. This is also why you cannot use 「だ」 when asking a question because then it sounds like you're making a statement and asking a question at the same time. (Unless you're declaring a question word such as 「どこだ」.)

The declarative 「だ」 is also needed in various grammatical structures where a state-of-being must be explicitly declared. There is also the case where you must not attach it. It's all quite a pain in the butt really but you don't have to worry about it yet.

Conjugating to the negative state-of-being

First, for the negative tense, you simply attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective.

Examples

Conjugating for the past state-of-being

In order to say the negative past (was not), the negative tense is conjugated to the negative past tense by simply dropping the 「い」 from 「じゃない」 and adding 「かった」.

（１）　魚だった。- Was fish.
（２）　学生じゃなかった。- Was not student.
（３）　静かじゃなかった。- Was not quiet.

To sum up

This page has last been revised on 2005/4/7
Removed reference to 「か question marker」 and changed formatting. (2005/4/7)

State-of-Being Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Conjugation Exercise 1

Sample: 人 ＝ 人だ、人じゃない、人だった、人じゃなかった

Conjugation Exercise 2

Sample: Is student. ＝ 学生だ。

Question Answer Exercise

This page has last been revised on 2005/8/2
Added tenses for the conjugation exercise (2005/8/2)

Practical Particular Particles

Defining grammatical functions with particles

The 「は」 topic particle

Example 1

Here, Bob is indicating that his question is about Alice. Notice how the 「だ」 is left out and yet the English translation has the word 'are' and 'am'. Since we know the topic is Alice, we don't need anything else to guess that Alice is a student. In fact, since Bob is asking a question, he can't attach 「だ」. That would be like trying to make a statement and asking a question at the same time.

Example 2

Since we have no context, we don't have enough information to make any sense of this conversation. It obviously makes no sense for Jim to actually be tomorrow. Given a context, as long as the sentence has something to do with Jim and tomorrow, it can mean anything. For instance, they could be talking about when an exam is being held.

Example 3

We need to realize how generic the topic can really be. A topic can be referring to any action or object from anywhere even including other sentences. For example, in the last sentence of the conversation above, even though the sentence is about when the exam is for Jim, the word "exam" doesn't appear anywhere in the sentence!

We'll see a more specific particle that ties more closely into the sentence at the end of this lesson with the identifier particle.

The 「も」 inclusive topic particle

Example 1

Notice, that Alice must be consistent with the inclusion. It would not make sense to say, "I am a student, and Tom is also not a student." Instead, Alice would use the 「は」 particle to remove the additional meaning of inclusion as seen in the next example.

Example 2

Example 3

So why would Alice, all of a sudden, talk about Tom when Bob is asking about Alice? Maybe Tom is standing right next to her and she wants to include Tom in the conversation.

The 「が」 identifier particle

This is where the 「が」 particle comes into play. It is also referred to as the subject particle but I hate that name since "subject" means something completely different in English grammar. Instead, I move to call it the identifier particle because the particle indicates that the speaker wants to identify something unspecified.

Example 1

Bob wants to identify who among all the possible candidates is a student. Alice responds that Jim is the one. Notice, Alice could also have answered with the topic particle to indicate that, speaking of Jim, she knows that he is a student (maybe not the student). You can see the difference in the next example.

Example 2

Hopefully, you can see that （１） seeks to identify a specific person for 'student' while （２） is simply talking about the student. You cannot replace 「が」 with 「は」 in （１） because "who" would become the topic and the question would become, "Is who a student?"

The two particles 「は」 and 「が」 may seem very similar only because it is impossible to translate the difference directly into English. For example, 「私は学生」 and 「私が学生」 both translate into, "I am student."* However, they only seem similar because English cannot express information about the context as succinctly as Japanese sometimes can. In the first sentence 「私は学生」, since 「私」 is the topic, the sentence means, "Speaking about me, I am a student". However, in the second sentence, 「私」 is specifying who the 「学生」 is. If we want to know who the student is, the 「が」 particle tells us its 「私」.

You can also think about the 「が」 particle as always answering a silent question. For example, if we have 「ジムが魚だ」, we are answering a question such as "Who is the fish?" or "Which person is the fish?" or maybe even "What food does Jim like?" Or given the sentence, 「これが車」, we can be answering the question, "Which is the car?" or "What is the car?" The 「は」 and 「が」 particles are actually quite different if you think of it the right way. The 「が」 particle identifies a specific property of something while the 「は」 particle is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation. This is why, in longer sentences, it is common to separate the topic with commas to remove ambiguity about which part of the sentence the topic applies to.

*Well technically, it's the most likely translation given the lack of context.

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/15

「は、も、が」 Particle Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Basic Particle Exercise with 「は」

Sample: 誰？ （Topic: アリス） ＝ アリスは誰？

Particle Exercise with 「は」 and 「も」

Fill in the blank with the correct particle, either 「は」 or 「も」

Particle Exercise with 「は」, 「も」, 「が」

Fill in the blank with the correct particle, either 「は」、 「も」、 or 「が」

This page has last been revised on 2005/6/12

Beautiful, is an Adjective

Properties of Adjectives

The na-adjective

（１）　静かな人。- Quiet person.

In addition to this direct noun modification which requires a 「な」, you can also say that a noun is an adjective by using the topic or identifier particle in a [Noun] [Particle] [Adj] sentence structure (for instance 「人は静か」）. This is essentially the same thing as the state-of-being with nouns that we've already covered in the previous two sections. However, since it doesn't make sense for an adjective to be a noun, you cannot have a [Adj] [Particle] [Noun] sentence structure （for instance 「静かが人」）. This is pretty obvious because, for instance, while a person can be quiet, it makes no sense for quiet to be a person.

（１）　友達は親切。- Friend is kind.

（２）　友達は親切な人。- Friend is kind person.

Remember how na-adjectives act almost exactly the same as nouns? Well, you can see this by the following examples.

（１）　ボブは魚が好きだ。- Bob likes fish.

（２）　ボブは魚が好きじゃない。- Bob does not like fish.

（３）　ボブは魚が好きだった。- Bob liked fish.

（４）　ボブは魚が好きじゃなかった。- Bob did not like fish.

Do the conjugations look familiar? They should, if you paid attention to the section about state-of-being conjugations for nouns. If it bothers you that "like" is an adjective and not a verb in Japanese, you can think of 「好き」 as meaning "desirable". Also, you can see a good example of the topic and identifier particle working in harmony. The sentence is about the topic "Bob" and "fish" identifies specifically what Bob likes.

You can also use the last three conjugations to directly modify the noun. (Remember to attach 「な」 for positive non-past tense.)

（１）　魚が好きなタイプ。- Type that likes fish.

（２）　魚が好きじゃないタイプ。- Type that does not like fish.

（３）　魚が好きだったタイプ。- Type that liked fish.

（４）　魚が好きじゃなかったタイプ。- Type that did not like fish.

Here, the entire clause 「魚が好き」、「魚が好きじゃない」、etc. is modifying "type" to talk about types (of people) that like or dislike fish. You can see why this type of sentence is useful because 「タイプは魚が好きだ。」 would mean "The type likes fish", which doesn't make much sense.

We can even treat the whole descriptive noun clause as we would a single noun. For instance, we can make the whole clause a topic like the following example.

（１）　魚が好きじゃないタイプは、肉が好きだ。
- Types (of people) who do not like fish like meat.

The i-adjective

Remember how the negative state-of-being for nouns also ended in 「い」 （じゃない）? Well, you can treat i-adjectives in the same fashion as the negative state-of-being for nouns. And just like the negative state-of-being for nouns, you cannot attach the declarative 「だ」 to i-adjectives like you can with nouns or na-adjectives.

Now that we got that matter cleared up, we can learn the conjugation rules for i-adjectives. There are two new rules for i-adjective conjugations. To negate or set to past tense, we first drop the 「い」, then add 「くない」 for negation or 「かった」 for past tense. Since 「くない」 ends in an 「い」, you can also treat the negative just like another i-adjective. Therefore, the rule for conjugating to negative past tense is the same as the rule for the positive past tense.

You can directly modify nouns by just attaching the noun to the adjective.

（１）　高いビル。- Tall building.

（２）　高くないビル。- Not tall building.

（３）　高かったビル。- Building that was tall.

（４）　高くなかったビル。- Building that was not tall.

You can also string multiple adjectives successively in any order in any form.

（１）　静かな高いビル。- A quiet, tall building.

（２）　高くない静かなビル。- A not tall, quiet building.

Note that you can make the same type of descriptive noun clause as we have done with na-adjectives. The only difference, of course, is that we don't need 「な」 to directly modify the noun. In the following example, the descriptive clause 「値段が高い」 is directly modifying 「レストラン」.

（１）　値段が高いレストランはあまり好きじゃない。
- Don't like high price restaurants very much.

An annoying exception

Another adjective that acts like this is 「かっこいい」 because it is an abbreviated version of two words merged together: 「格好」 and 「いい」. Since it uses the same 「いい」, you need to use the same conjugations.

Take care to make all the conjugations from 「よい」 not 「いい」.

Examples

（１）　値段があんまりよくない。
- Price isn't very good.

（２）　彼はかっこよかった！
- He looked really cool!

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/15

Adjective Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Conjugation Exercise

Sentence completion exercise

Fill in the blank with the appropriate adjective or particle

This page has last been revised on 2005/12/10

Let's do stuff with verbs!

Role of Verbs

Or to rephrase, unlike English, the only thing you need to make a grammatically complete sentence is a verb and nothing else! Understanding this fundamental property is essential to understanding Japanese. That's why even the simplest, most basic Japanese sentence cannot be translated into English! All conjugations will start from the dictionary form (as they appear in the dictionary).

A grammatically complete sentence
（１）　食べる。- Eat. (possible translations include: I eat/she eats/they eat)

Classifying verbs into ru-verbs and u-verbs

Remember, every verb has a string of kana called okurigana, which you can modify to conjugate the verb. If you convert the verb to Roman characters (called 「ローマ字」 in Japanese) and it ends in either "iru" or "eru", then it is usually a ru-verb. For example, 「食べる」 is romanized as "taberu" and since it ends in "eru", it is a ru-verb. Another example of a ru-verb is 「起きる」, which romanizes to "okiru". All other verbs that do not end in "iru" or "eru" are u-verbs.

However, there is just one snag here. Notice that all ru-verbs end with 「る」 and u-verbs always end in a / u / vowel sound. This unfortunately includes 「る」 in addition to 「つ」、「す」、「く」、「ぐ」、「む」、「ぶ」、「う」、and 「ぬ」 （「死ぬ」 is the only verb that ends in 「ぬ」）. Even if a verb ends with 「る」, if it does not end in "iru" or "eru", it is always an u-verb. However, there are a number of u-verbs that end in "iru" or "eru" and there is no way to distinguish them from regular ru-verbs apart from memorization. You can refer to the appendix at the end of this lesson for a list of such verbs. You can also refer to Jim Breen's WWWJDIC, if you have any doubts. Ru-verb are denoted as (v1) while u-verbs are denoted as (v5r).

Because of the aural consistency in the rules, with practice, u-verbs will start to "sound" like u-verbs and likewise for ru-verbs. Eventually, you'll be able to categorize new verbs just like that without giving it a second thought. Or at least, that should be the intended goal.

Examples

Appendix: iru/eru u-verbs

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/17
Added small list of exception verbs (2006/9/6)

Verb Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Practice with Verb Classification

In the chart below, you should mark whether the given verb is either an u-verb or a ru-verb. The first answer is given as an example of what you need to do. Obviously, verbs that do not end in 「る」 are always going to be u-verbs so the tricky part is figuring out the category for verbs that end in 「る」. Remember that verbs that do not end in "eru" or "iru" will always be u-verbs. While most verbs that do end in "eru" or "iru" are ru-verbs, to make things interesting, I've also included a number of u-verbs that also end in eru/iru. You might want to refer to the list of eru/iru u-verbs. Though you do not need to memorize every word in the list by any means, you should at least memorize the basic verbs.

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/6

Sometimes you have to be negative

Negating verbs

Conjugating verbs into the negative

For example, if you wanted to say that a chair is in the room, you would use the verb 「ある」. The equivalent verb for animate objects (such as people or animals) is 「いる」, which is a normal ru-verb. For example, if you wanted to say that a person is in the room, you must use the verb 「いる」 not 「ある」. These two verbs 「ある」 and 「いる」 are quite different from all other verbs because they describe existence and are not an actual action. You also have to go through the bother of picking the right one for inanimate and animate objects.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is because the negative of 「ある」 is 「ない」 (meaning that something does not exist). Remember, this is an exception so do not apply the normal rules of negation to this verb.

Here are the rules for all other verbs. To negate a ru-verb, you simply drop 「る」 and add 「ない」. For u-verbs, it may be helpful to see the romanized version of the verb. You simply drop the / u / vowel sound and add "anai". Or, more preferably, you can refer back to the hiragana table. You take the last hiragana character which will always be in the / u / row, move up two columns and replace it with the character in the / a / row. For example 「く」 changes to 「か」.

One important exception to this rule is for verbs that end in 「う」. You must substitute 「わ」 for 「う」 and not 「あ」 as the rule would suggest. You will also have to memorize the conjugations for the two exception verbs and 「ある」. The following tables show the conjugation for sample verbs and the exception verbs.

Examples

（１）　アリスは食べない。- As for Alice, does not eat.
（２）　ジムが遊ばない。- Jim is the one that does not play.
（３）　ボブもしない。- Bob also does not do.
（４）　お金がない。- There is no money. (lit: As for money, does not exist.)
（５）　私は買わない。- As for me, not buy.
（６）　猫はいない。- There is no cat. (lit: As for cat, does not exist.)

Negative Verb Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Practice with Negative Verb Conjugations

This page has last been revised on 2006/4/18

It's all in the past

Changing verbs to the past tense

Past tense for ru-verbs

Examples

（１）　ご飯は、食べた。
- As for meal, ate.

（２）　映画は、全部見た。
- As for movie, saw them all.

Past tense for u-verbs

Examples

（１）　今日は、走った。
- As for today, ran.

（２）　友達が来た。
- Friend is the one that came.

（３）　私も遊んだ。
- I also played.

（４）　勉強は、した。
- About homework, did it.

Past-negative tense for all verbs

Examples

（１）　アリスは食べなかった。
- As for Alice, did not eat.

（２）　ジムがしなかった。
- Jim is the one that did not do.

（３）　ボブも行かなかった。
- Bob also did not go.

（４）　お金がなかった。
- There was no money. (lit: As for money, did not exist.)

（５）　私は買わなかった。
- As for me, did not buy.

（６）　猫はいなかった。
- There was no cat. (lit: As for cat, did not exist.)

This page has last been revised on 2007/1/3

Past Verb Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Practice with Past Verb Conjugations

Practice with Past Negative Verb Conjugations

This page has last been revised on 2006/4/28

Particles Reloaded

Particles used with verbs

In this section, we will learn some new particles essential for using verbs. We will learn how to specify the direct object of a verb and the location where a verb takes place whether it's physical or abstract.

The direct object 「を」 particle

The first particle we will learn is the object particle because it is a very straightforward particle. The 「を」 character is attached to the end of a word to signify that that word is the direct object of the verb. This character is essentially never used anywhere else. That is why the katakana equivalent 「ヲ」 is almost never used since particles are always written in hiragana. The 「を」 character, while technically pronounced as /wo/ essentially sounds like /o/ in real speech. Here are some examples of the direct object particle in action.

Examples

（１）　魚を食べる。
- Eat fish.

Unlike the direct object we're familiar with in English, places can also be the direct object of motion verbs such as 「歩く」 and 「走る」. Since the motion verb is done to the location, the concept of direct object is the same in Japanese. However, as you can see by the next examples, it often translates to something different in English due to the slight difference of the concept of direct object.

（３）　街をぶらぶら歩く。
- Aimlessly walk through town. (Lit: Aimlessly walk town)

（４）　高速道路を走る。
- Run through expressway. (Lit: Run expressway)

When you use 「する」 with a noun, the 「を」 particle is optional and you can treat the whole [noun+する] as one verb.

（５）　毎日、日本語を勉強する。
- Study Japanese everyday.

（６）　メールアドレスを登録した。
- Registered email address.

The target 「に」 particle

The 「に」 particle can specify a target of a verb. This is different from the 「を」 particle in which the verb does something to the direct object. With the 「に」 particle, the verb does something toward the word associated with the 「に」 particle. For example, the target of any motion verb is specified by the 「に」 particle.

Examples

（１）　ボブは日本に行った。
- Bob went to Japan.

（２）　家に帰らない。
- Not go back home.

（３）　部屋にくる。
- Come to room.

As you can see in example （３）, the target particle always targets "to" rather than "from". If you wanted to say, "come from" for example, you would need to use 「から」, which means "from". If you used 「に」, it would instead mean "come to". 「から」 is also often paired with 「まで」, which means "up to".

（４）　アリスは、アメリカからきた。
- Alice came from America.

（５）　宿題を今日から明日までする。
- Will do homework from today to tomorrow.

The idea of a target in Japanese is very general and is not restricted to motion verbs. For example, the location of an object is defined as the target of the verb for existence （ある and いる）. Time is also a common target. Here are some examples of non-motion verbs and their targets

（６）　猫は部屋にいる。
- Cat is in room.

（７）　椅子が台所にあった。
- Chair was in the kitchen.

（８）　いい友達に会った。
- Met good friend.

（９）　ジムは医者になる。
- Jim will become doctor.

（１０）　先週に図書館に行った。
- Went to library last week.

Note: Don't forget to use 「ある」 for inanimate objects such as the chair and 「いる」 for animate objects such as the cat.

While the 「に」 particle is not always required to indicate time, there is a slight difference in meaning between using the target particle and not using anything at all. In the following examples, the target particle makes the date a specific target emphasizing that the friend will go to Japan at that time. Without the particle, there is no special emphasis.

（１１）　友達は、来年、日本に行く。
- Next year, friend go to Japan.

（１２）　友達は、来年に日本に行く。
- Friend go to Japan next year.

The directional 「へ」 particle

While 「へ」 is normally pronounced /he/, when it is being used as a particle, it is always pronounced /e/ （え）. The primary difference between the 「に」 and 「へ」 particle is that 「に」 goes to a target as the final, intended destination (both physical or abstract). The 「へ」 particle, on the other hand, is used to express the fact that one is setting out towards the direction of the target. As a result, it is only used with directional motion verbs. It also does not guarantee whether the target is the final intended destination, only that one is heading towards that direction. In other words, the 「に」 particle sticks to the destination while the 「へ」 particle is fuzzy about where one is ultimately headed. For example, if we choose to replace 「に」 with 「へ」 in the first three examples of the previous section, the nuance changes slightly.

Examples

（１）　ボブは日本へ行った。
- Bob headed towards Japan.

（２）　家へ帰らない。
- Not go home toward house.

（３）　部屋へくる。
- Come towards room.

Note that we cannot use the 「へ」 particle with verbs that have no physical direction. For example, the following is incorrect.

（誤）　医者へなる。
- （Grammatically incorrect version of 「医者になる」.）

This does not mean to say that 「へ」 cannot set out towards an abstract concept. In fact, because of the fuzzy directional meaning of this particle, the 「へ」 particle can also be used to talk about setting out towards certain future goals or expectations.

（４）　勝ちへ向かう。
- Go towards victory.

The contextual 「で」 particle

The 「で」 particle will allow us to specify the context in which the action is performed. For example, if a person ate a fish, where did he eat it? If a person went to school, by what means did she go? With what will you eat the soup? All of these questions can be answered with the 「で」 particle. Here are some examples.

Examples

（１）　映画館で見た。
- Saw at movie theater.

（２）　バスで帰る。
- Go home by bus.

（３）　レストランで昼ご飯を食べた。
- Ate lunch at restaurant.

It may help to think of 「で」 as meaning "by way of". This way, the same meaning will kind of translate into what the sentence means. The examples will then read: "Saw by way of movie theater", "Go home by way of bus", and "Ate lunch by way of restaurant."

Using 「で」 with 「何」

（４）　何できた？
- Came by the way of what?

（５）　バスできた。
- Came by the way of bus.

Here's the confusing part. There is a colloquial version of the word "why" that is used much more often than the less colloquial version 「どうして」 or the more forceful 「なぜ」. It is also written as 「何で」 but it is read as 「なんで」. This is a completely separate word and has nothing to do with the 「で」 particle.

] （１）　何できた？
- Why did you come?

（２）　暇だから。
- Because I am free (as in have nothing to do).

The 「から」 here meaning "because" is different from the 「から」 we just learned and will be covered later in the compound sentence section. Basically the point is that the two sentences, while written the same way, are read differently and mean completely different things. Don't worry. This causes less confusion than you think because 95% of the time, the latter is used rather than the former. And even when 「なにで」 is intended, the context will leave no mistake on which one is being used. Even in this short example snippet, you can tell which it is by looking at the answer to the question.

When location is the topic

Example 1

ボブ：　学校に行った？
- [Did you] go to school?

アリス：　行かなかった。
- Didn't go.

ボブ：　図書館には？
- What about library?

アリス：　図書館にも行かなかった。
- Also didn't go to library.

In this example, Bob brings up a new topic (library) and so the location becomes the topic. The sentence is actually an abbreviated version of 「図書館には行った？」 which you can ascertain from the context.

Example 2

ボブ：　どこで食べる？
- Eat where?

アリス：　イタリアレストランではどう？
- How about Italian restaurant?

Bob asks, "Where shall we eat?" and Alice suggests an Italian restaurant. A sentence like, "How about..." usually brings up a new topic because the person is suggesting something new. In this case, the location (restaurant) is being suggested so it becomes the topic.

When direct object is the topic

The direct object particle is different from particles related to location in that you cannot use any other particles at the same time. For example, going by the previous section, you might have guessed that you can say 「をは」 to express a direct object that is also the topic but this is not the case. A topic can be a direct object without using the 「を」 particle. In fact, putting the 「を」 particle in will make it wrong.

Examples

（１）　日本語を習う。
- Learn Japanese.

（２）　日本語は、習う。
- About Japanese, (will) learn it.

Please take care to not make this mistake.

（誤）　日本語をは、習う。
- [This is incorrect.]

This page has last been revised on 2007/3/27

Transitive, not Transvestite!

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

Since the basic meaning and the kanji is the same, you can learn two verbs for the price of just one kanji! Let's look at a sample list of intransitive and transitive verbs.

Pay attention to particles!

Examples

（１）　私が電気をつけた。- I am the one that turned on the lights.
（２）　電気がついた。- The lights turned on.
（３）　電気を消す。- Turn off the lights.
（４）　電気が消える。- Lights turn off.
（５）　誰が窓を開けた？- Who opened the window?
（６）　窓がどうして開いた？- Why has the window opened?

The important thing to remember is that intransitive verbs cannot have a direct object because there is no direct acting agent. The following sentences are grammatically incorrect.

（誤）　電気をついた。- （「を」 should be replaced with 「が」 or 「は」）
（誤）　電気を消える。- （「を」 should be replaced with 「が」 or 「は」）
（誤）　どうして窓を開いた？- （「を」 should be replaced with 「が」 or 「は」）

The only time you can use the 「を」 particle for intransitive verbs is when a location is the direct object of a motion verb as briefly described in the previous section.

（１）　部屋を出た。- I left room.

This page has last been revised on 2006/12/1

Subordinate clauses? My kitten has those.

Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives

Using state-of-being subclauses as adjectives

You can, however, have a string of nouns placed together when they're not meant to modify each other. For example, in a phrase such as "International Education Center" you can see that it is just a string of nouns without any grammatical modifications between them. It's not an "Education Center that is International" or a "Center for International Education", etc., it's just "International Education Center". In Japanese, you can express this as simply 「国際教育センタ」 (or 「センター」). You will see this chaining of nouns in many combinations. Sometimes a certain combination is so commonly used that it has almost become a separate word and is even listed as a separate entry in some dictionaries. Some examples include: 「登場人物」、「立入禁止」、or 「通勤手当」. If you have difficulties in figuring out where to separate the words, you can paste them into the WWWJDICs Translate Words in Japanese Text function and it'll parse the words for you (most of the time).

Examples

（１）　学生じゃない人は、学校に行かない。
- Person who is not student do not go to school.

（２）　子供だったアリスが立派な大人になった。
- The Alice that was a child became a fine adult.

（３）　友達じゃなかったアリスは、いい友達になった。
- Alice who was not a friend, became a good friend.

（４）　先週に医者だったボブは、仕事を辞めた。
- Bob who was a doctor last week quit his job.

Using subordinate verb clauses as adjectives

Examples

（１）　先週に映画を見た人は誰？
- Who is person who watched movie last week?

（２）　ボブは、いつも勉強する人だ。
- Bob is a person who always studies.

（３）　赤いズボンを買う友達はボブだ。
- Friend who buy red pants is Bob.

（４）　晩ご飯を食べなかった人は、映画で見た銀行に行った。
- Person who did not eat dinner went to the bank she saw at movie.

Japanese Sentence Order

The most basic sentence structure in English can be described as consisting of the following elements in this specific order: [Subject] [Verb] [Object]. A sentence is not grammatically correct if any of those elements are missing or out of order.

Japanese students will tell you that Japanese, on the other hand, while frothing at the mouth, is completely backwards!! Even some Japanese teacher might tell you that the basic Japanese sentence order is [Subject] [Object] [Verb]. This is a classic example of trying to fit Japanese into an English-based type of thinking. Of course, we all know (right?) that the real order of the fundamental Japanese sentence is: [Verb]. Anything else that comes before the verb doesn't have to come in any particular order and nothing more than the verb is required to make a complete sentence. In addition, the verb must always come at the end. That's the whole point of even having particles so that they can identify what grammatical function a word serves no matter where it is in the sentence. In fact, nothing will stop us from making a sentence with [Object] [Subject] [Verb] or just [Object] [Verb]. The following sentences are all complete and correct because the verb is at the end of the sentence.

Grammatically complete and correctly ordered sentences

So don't sweat over whether your sentence is in the correct order. Just remember the following rules.

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/19

Particles Revolution

The last three particles (Not!)

This is the last lesson that will be specifically focused on particles but that does not mean that there are no more particles to learn. We will learn many more particles along the way but they may not be labeled as such. As long as you know what they mean and how to use them, it is not too important to know whether they are particles or not.

The Inclusive 「と」 particle

（１）　スプーンとフォークで魚を食べた。- Ate fish by means of fork and spoon.
（２）　本と雑誌と葉書を買った。- Bought book, magazine, and post card.

Another similar use of the 「と」 particle is to show an action that was done together with someone or something else.
（１）　友達と話した。- Talked with friend.
（２）　先生と会った。 - Met with teacher.

The Vague Listing 「や」 and 「とか」 particles

（１）　飲み物やカップやナプキンは、いらない？- You don't need (things like) drink, cup, or napkin, etc.?
（２）　靴やシャツを買う。- Buy (things like) shoes and shirt, etc...

「とか」 also has the same meaning as 「や」 but is a slightly more colloquial expression.
（１）　飲み物とかカップとかナプキンは、いらない？- You don't need (things like) drink, cup, or napkin, etc.?
（２）　靴とかシャツを買う。- Buy (things like) shoes and shirt, etc...

The 「の」 particle

（１）　ボブの本。- Book of Bob.
（２）　本のボブ。- Bob of book.
The first sentence essentially means, "Bob's book." (not a bible chapter). The second sentence means, "Book's Bob" which is probably a mistake. I've translated （１） as "book of Bob" because the 「の」 particle doesn't always imply possession as the next example shows.

（１）　ボブは、アメリカの大学の学生だ。- Bob is student of college of America.
In normal English, this would translate to, "Bob is a student of an American college." The order of modification is backwards so Bob is a student of a college that is American. 「学生の大学のアメリカ」 means "America of college of student" which is probably an error and makes little sense. (America of student's college?)

The noun that is being modified can be omitted if the context clearly indicates what is being omitted. The following highlighted redundant words can be omitted.
（１）　そのシャツは誰のシャツ？- Whose shirt is that shirt?
（２）　ボブのシャツだ。- It is shirt of Bob.
to become:
（１）　そのシャツは誰の？- Whose shirt is that?
（２）　ボブのだ。- It is of Bob.
（「その」 is an abbreviation of 「それ+の」 so it directly modifies the noun because the 「の」 particle is intrinsically attached. Other words include 「この」 from 「これの」 and 「あの」 from 「あれの」.）

The 「の」 particle in this usage essentially replaces the noun and takes over the role as a noun itself. We can essentially treat adjectives and verbs just like nouns by adding the 「の」 particle to it. The particle then becomes a generic noun, which we can treat just like a regular noun.
（１）　白いのは、かわいい。- Thing that is white is cute.
（２）　授業に行くのを忘れた。- Forgot the event of going to class.

Now we can use the direct object, topic, and identifier particle with verbs and adjectives. We don't necessarily have to use the 「の」 particle here. We can use the noun 「物」, which is a generic object or 「こと」 for a generic event. For example, we can also say:
（１）　白い物は、かわいい。- Thing that is white is cute.
（２）　授業に行くことを忘れた。- Forgot the thing of going to class.

However, the 「の」 particle is very useful in that you don't have to specify a particular noun. In the next examples, the 「の」 particle is not replacing any particular noun, it just allows us to modify verb and adjective clauses like noun clauses. The subordinate clauses are highlighted.
（１）　毎日勉強するのは大変。 - The thing of studying every day is tough.
（２）　毎日同じ物を食べるのは、面白くない。- It's not interesting to eat same thing every day.
You might have noticed that the word 「同じ」 is directly modifying 「物」 even though it obviously isn't an i-adjective. I have no idea why this is possible. One explanation might be that it is actually an adverb, which we will soon learn doesn't require any particles.

Otherwise, even when substituting 「の」 for a noun, you still need the 「な」 to modify the noun when a na-adjective is being used.
（１）　静かな部屋が、アリスの部屋だ。- Quiet room is room of Alice.
becomes:
（１）　静かなのが、アリスの部屋だ。- Quiet one is room of Alice.

*Warning: This may make things seem like you can replace any arbitrary nouns with 「の」 but this is not so. It is important to realize that the sentence must be about the clause and not the noun that was replaced. For example, in the last section we had the sentence, 「学生じゃない人は、 学校に行かない」. You may think that you can just replace 「人」 with 「の」 to produce 「学生じゃないのは、学校に行かない」. But in fact, this makes no sense because the sentence is now about the clause "Is not student". The sentence becomes, "The thing of not being student does not go to school" which is complete gibberish because not being a student is a state and it doesn't make sense for a state to go anywhere much less school.

The 「の」 particle as explanation

The sentence would be expressed like so:
（１）　今は忙しいの。- The thing is that (I'm) busy now.

This sounds very soft and feminine. In fact, adult males will almost always add a declarative 「だ」 unless they want to sound cute for some reason.
（２）　今は忙しいのだ。- The thing is that (I'm) busy now.

However, since the declarative 「だ」 cannot be used in a question, the same 「の」 in questions do not carry a feminine tone at all and is used by both males and females.
（３）　今は忙しいの？- Is it that (you) are busy now? (gender-neutral)

To express state of being, when the 「の」 particle is used to convey this explanatory tone, we need to add 「な」 to distinguish it from the 「の」 particle that simply means "of".
（１）　ジムのだ。- It is of Jim. (It is Jim's.)
（２）　ジムなのだ。- It is Jim (with explanatory tone).
Besides this one case, everything else remains the same as before.

In actuality, while this type of explanatory tone is used all the time, 「のだ」 is usually substituted by 「んだ」. This is probably due to the fact that 「んだ」 is easier to say than 「のだ」. This grammar can have what seems like many different meaning because not only can it be used with all forms of adjectives, nouns, and verbs it itself can also be conjugated just like the state of being. A conjugation chart will show you what this means.

There's really nothing new here. The first chart is just adding 「んだ」 (or 「なんだ」) to a conjugated verb, noun, or adjective. The second chart adds 「んだ」 (or 「なんだ」) to a non-conjugated verb, noun, adjective and then conjugates the 「だ」 part of 「んだ」 just like a regular state of being for nouns and na-adjectives. Just don't forget to attach the 「な」 for nouns as well as na-adjectives.

I would say that the past and past-negative forms for noun/na-adjective in the second chart are almost never used (especially with 「の」) but they are presented for completeness.

The crucial difference between using the explanatory 「の」 and not using anything at all is that you are telling the listener, "Look, here's the reason" as opposed to simply imparting new information. For example, if someone asked you, "Are you busy now?" you can simply answer, 「今は忙しい」. However, if someone asked you, "How come you can't talk to me?" since you obviously have some explaining to do, you would answer, 「今は忙しいの」 or 「今は忙しいんだ」. This grammar is indispensable for seeking explanations in questions. For instance, if you want to ask, "Hey, isn't it late?" you can't just ask, 「遅くない？」 because that means, "It's not late?" You need to indicate that you are seeking explanation in the form of 「遅いんじゃない？」.

Let's see some examples of the types of situations where this grammar is used. The examples will have literal translation to make it easier to see how the meaning stays the same and carries over into what would be very different types of sentences in normal English. A more natural English translation is provided as well because the literal translations can get a bit convoluted.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

Example 5

Don't worry if you are thoroughly confused by now, we will see many more examples along the way. Once you get the sense of how everything works, it's better to forget the English because the double and triple negatives can get quite confusing such as Example 3. However, in Japanese it is a perfectly normal expression, as you will begin to realize once you get accustomed to Japanese.

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/21
Removed unknown reference to 「そこ」 and 「あそこ」 (2005/6/1)

Using Adverbs and Gobi

Why adverbs and gobi?

Properties of Adverbs

（１）　ボブは朝ご飯を早く食べた。- Bob quickly ate breakfast.
The adverb 「早く」 is a little different from the English word 'fast' in that it can mean quickly in terms of speed or time. In other words, Bob may have eaten his breakfast early or he may have eaten it quickly depending on the context. In other types of sentences such as 「早く走った」, it is quite obvious that it probably means quickly and not early. (Of course this also depends on the context.)

（２）　アリスは自分の部屋をきれいにした。- Alice did her own room toward clean.
The literal translation kind of gives you a sense of why the target particle is used. There is some argument against calling this an adverb at all but it is convenient for us to do so because of the grouping of i-adjectives and na-adjectives. Thinking of it as an adverb, we can interpret the sentence to mean: "Alice did her room cleanly." or less literally: "Alice cleaned her room." （「きれい」 literally means "pretty" but if it helps, you can think of it as, "Alice prettied up her own room."）

Note: Not all adverbs are derived from adjectives. Some words like 「全然」 and 「たくさん」 are adverbs in themselves without any conjugation. These words can be used without particles just like regular adverbs.
（１）　映画をたくさん見た。- Saw a lot of movies.
（２）　最近、全然食べない。- Lately, don't eat at all.

Let's look at more examples of adverb usage.
（１）　ボブの声は、結構大きい。 - Bob's voice is fairly large.
（２）　この町は、最近大きく変わった。- This town had changed greatly lately.
（３）　図書館の中では、静かにする。- Within the library, [we] do things quietly.

What's a "gobi"?

The 「ね」 gobi

Example 1

Example 2

The 「よ」 gobi

Example 1

Example 2

Combining both to get 「よね」

Example

This page has last been revised on 2005/1/8

Essential Grammar

Grammar you must know

This section starts with transforming what we have learned so far into a more unassuming and politer form. In any language, there are ways to word things differently to express a feeling of deference or politeness. Even English has differences such as saying, "May I..." vs "Can I...". You may speak one way to your professor and another way to your friends. However, Japanese is different in that not only does the type of vocabulary change, the grammatical structure for every sentence changes as well. There is a distinct and clear line differentiating polite and casual types of speech. On the one hand, the rules clearly tell you how to structure your sentences for different social contexts. On the other hand, every sentence you speak must be conjugated to the proper level of politeness. In section 3, we will cover the polite version of Japanese, which is required for speaking to people of higher social position or to people you are unfamiliar with.

This section will then continue to cover the most useful major types of grammar in Japanese. For this reason, we will learn the most common conjugations such as the te-form, potential, conditional, and volitional. The latter sections are in no particular order and neither does it need to be. The grammar that is presented here is essential which means that you have to learn it all anyway and learn them well.

May you be so pleased as to learn this section?

Not being rude in Japan

Later (probably much later), we will learn an even politer version of the language called honorific （尊敬語） and humble （謙譲語） form. It will be more useful than you may think because store clerks, receptionists, and such will speak to you in those forms. But for now, let's concentrate on just 丁寧語, which is the base for 尊敬語 and 謙譲語.

Fortunately, it is not difficult to change casual speech to polite speech. There may be some slight changes to the vocabulary (for example, "yes" and "no" become 「はい」 and 「いいえ」 respectively in polite speech), and very colloquial types of gobi obviously are not used in polite speech. (Don't worry; we haven't even gone over those yet.) Essentially, the only main difference between polite and casual speech comes at the very end of the sentence. You cannot even tell whether a person is speaking in polite or casual speech until the sentence is finished.

The stem of verbs

The stem when used by itself can be a very specialized and limited way of creating nouns from verbs. While the 「の」 particle allows you to talk about verbs as if they were nouns, the stem actually turns verbs into nouns. In fact, in very rare cases, the stem is used more often than the verb itself. For example, the stem of 「怒る」（いかる） is used more often than the verb itself. The movie, "Fists of Fury" is translated as 「怒りの鉄拳」 and not 「怒る鉄拳」. In fact, 「怒る」 will most likely be read as 「おこる」, a completely different verb with the same meaning and kanji! There are a number of specific nouns (such as 「休み」) that are really verb stems that are used like regular nouns. However, in general we cannot take any verb and make it into a noun. For example, the following sentence is wrong.

（誤）　飲みをする。- (This sentence makes sense but no one talks like this)

However, a useful grammar that works in general for stems of all verbs is using the stem as a target with a motion verb (almost always 「行く」 and 「来る」 in this case). This grammar means, "to go or to come to do [some verb]". Here's an example.

（１）　明日、映画を見に行く。- Tomorrow, go to see movie.
「見に」 is the stem of 「見る」 combined with the target particle 「に」.

The motion target particle 「へ」 sounds like you're literally going or coming to something while the 「に」 particle implies that you are going or coming for the purpose of doing something.

（１）　昨日、友達が遊びへきた。
- Yesterday, friend came to a playing activity. (Sounds a bit strange)

（２）　昨日、友達が遊びにきた。
- Yesterday, friend came to play.

The expression 「楽しみにする」 meaning "to look forward to" is formed from grammar similar to this but is a special case and should be considered a set expression.

Other verbs are also sometimes attached to the stem to create new verbs. For example, when 「出す」 is attached to the stem of 「走る」, which is 「走り」, you get 「走り出す」 meaning "to break out into a run". Other examples include 「切り替える」, which means "to switch over to something else", and 「付け加える」, which means "to add something by attaching it". You can see how the separate meanings of the two verbs are combined to create the new combined verb. For example, 「言い出す」 means "to start talking", combining the meaning, "to speak" and "to bring out". There are no general rules here, you need to just memorize these combined verbs as separate verbs in their own right.

Things that are written in a formal context such as newspaper articles also use the stem as a conjunctive verb. We will come back to this later in the Formal Expression lesson.

Using 「～ます」 to make verbs polite

To conjugate verbs into the masu-form, you attach different conjugations of 「ます」 to the stem depending on the tense. Here is a chart.

Examples

（１）　明日、大学に行きます。
- Tomorrow, go to college.

（２）　先週、ボブに会いましたよ。
- You know, met Bob last week.

（３）　晩ご飯を食べませんでしたね。
- Didn't eat dinner, huh?

（４）　面白くない映画は見ません。
- About not interesting movies, do not see (them).

Using 「です」 for everything else

※ Notice in the case of noun/na-adjective only, the past tense becomes 「でした」. A very common mistake is to do the same for i-adjectives. Remember 「かわいいでした」 is wrong!

Examples

As usual, let's see some examples.

（１）　子犬はとても好きです。
- About puppies, like very much. (The most natural translation is that someone likes puppies very much but there is not enough context to rule out that the puppies like something very much.)

（２）　昨日、時間がなかったんです。
- It was that there was no time yesterday.

（３）　その部屋はあまり静かじゃないです。
- That room is not very quiet.

（４）　先週に見た映画は、とても面白かったです。
- Movie saw last week was very interesting.

※ Reality Check

The reality of today's Japanese is that what's supposed to be the "official" conjugation sounds rather stiff and formal. In normal everyday conversations, the conjugation presented here will be used almost every time. While you should use the more formal conjugations for written works using the polite form, you'll rarely hear it in actual speech. In conclusion, I recommend studying and becoming familiar with both types of conjugations.

Examples

（１）　その部屋はあまり静かじゃないですよ。
- You know, that room is not very quiet.

（２）　その部屋はあまり静かじゃありませんよ。
- You know, that room is not very quiet.

「です」 is NOT the same as 「だ」

I'm sure most of you have learned the expression 「そう」 by now. Now, there are four ways to make a complete sentence using the state-of-being with 「そう」 to produce a sentence that says, "That is so."

Different ways to say, "That is so."

The first 「そう」 is the implied state of being and 「そうだ」 is the declarative. As I've stated before, the non-assuming soft spoken 「そう」 is often used by females while the more confident 「そうだ」 is often used by males. 「そうです」 is the polite version of 「そう」, created by attaching 「です」 to the noun. 「そうです」 is not the polite version of 「そうだ」 where the 「だ」 is replaced by 「です」 and I'll explain why.

Perhaps we wanted to make that sentence into a question instead to ask, "Is that so?" There are several ways to do this but some possibilities are given in the following. (This grammar is covered in a later section.)

Different ways to ask, "Is that so?"

As I've explained before, the 「だ」 is used to declare what one believes to be a fact. Therefore, 「そうだか？」 is not a valid way to ask a question because it is declaring a fact and asking a question at the same time. But the fact that 「そうですか」 is a valid question shows that 「です」 and 「だ」 are essentially different. 「そうです」, in showing respect and humbleness, is not as assertive and is merely the polite version of 「そう」.

Besides the difference in nuance between 「だ」 and 「です」, another key difference is that 「だ」 is used in many different types of grammar to delineate a subordinate clause. 「です」, on the other hand, is only used at the end of a sentence to designate a polite state-of-being. For instance, consider the two following sentences. (This grammar is covered in a later section.)

（正）　そうだと思います - I think that is so.
（誤）　そうですと思います - (Incorrect sentence)

「そうだと思います」 is valid while 「そうですと思います」 is not because 「です」 can only go at the end of the sentence. 「です」 can only be in a subordinate clause when it is a direct quote of what someone said such as the following.

（１）　「はい、そうです」と答えた。

This page has last been revised on 2005/5/10

I'm not talking about the postal system silly!

Addressing people properly in Japanese

Referring to yourself

Before going into this: a note about the word 「私」. The official reading of the kanji is 「わたくし」. This is the reading you is used in a formal context (for example, a speech by the president of a company). This reading will probably be accompanied with honorific and humble forms, which we will cover later. In all other situations, it is usually read as 「わたし」. This is the most generic reference to "I" in terms of politeness and gender; therefore it is usually one of the first words taught to students of Japanese.

1. 私（わたくし） - Used by both males and females for formal situations.
2. 私（わたし） - Used by both males and females for normal polite situations.
3. 僕 - Used primarily by males from fairly polite to fairly casual situations.
4. 俺 - A very rough version of "I" used almost exclusively by males in very casual situations.
5. あたし - A very feminine and casual way to refer to oneself. Many girls have decided to opt for 「わたし」 instead because 「あたし」 has a cutesy and girly sound.
6. One's own name - Also a very feminine and kind of childish way to refer to oneself.
7. わし - Usually used by older men well in their middle-ages.

Let's see how different types of sentences use the appropriate version of "I". 「わたくし」 is left out because we have yet to go over very formal grammatical expressions.

（１）　私の名前はキムです。- My name is Kim. (Neutral, polite)
（２）　僕の名前はキムです。- My name is Kim. (Masculine, polite)
（３）　僕の名前はボブだ。- My name is Bob. (Masculine, casual)
（４）　俺の名前はボブだ。- My name is Bob. (Masculine, casual)
（５）　あたしの名前はアリス。- My name is Alice. (Feminine, casual)

Referring to others by name

Referring to others with "you"

「あなた」 is also an old-fashioned way for women to refer to their husband or lover. Unless you are a middle-aged women with a Japanese husband, I doubt you will be using 「あなた」 in this fashion as well.

Here is a list of some words meaning "you" in English. You will rarely need to use any of these words, especially the ones in the second half of the list.

1. あなた - Generally only used when there is no way to physically address the person or know the person's name. For example, direct questions to the reader on a form that the reader must fill out would use 「あなた」.
2. 君 - Can be a very close and assuming way to address girls (especially by guys). Can also be kind of rude.
3. お前 - A very rough and coarse way to address someone. Usually used by guys and often changed to 「おめえ」.
4. あんた - A very assuming and familiar way to address someone. The person using this is maybe miffed off about something.
5. 手前 - Very rude. Like 「お前」, to add extra punch, people will usually say it like, 「てめ～～」. Sounds like you want to beat someone up. I've only seen this one used in movies and comic books. In fact, if you try this on your friends, they will probably laugh at you and tell you that you've probably been reading too many comic books.
6. 貴様 - Very, very rude. Sounds like you want to take someone out. I've also only seen this one used in comic books. I only go over it so you can understand and enjoy comic books yourself!

Referring to others in third person

Referring to family members

Another word for wife, 「家内」 is often considered politically incorrect because the kanji used are "house" and "inside" which implies that wives belong in the home. Amen. (Just kidding)

This page has last been revised on 2006/2/7
Cleaned up various small errors and expanded on あなた (2006/2/7)

Question Marker

Questions in polite form

Example 1

Example 2

Here the question is actually being used as an invitation just like how in English we say, "Won't you come in for a drink?" 「すみません」 is a polite way of apologizing. Slightly less formal is 「ごめんなさい」 while the casual version is simply 「ごめん」.

The question marker in casual speech

Examples

（１）　こんなのを本当に食べるか？
- Do you think [he/she] will really eat this type of thing?

（２）　そんなのは、あるかよ！
- Do I look like I would have something like that?!

（１）　こんなのを本当に食べる？
- Are you really going to eat something like this?

（２）　そんなのは、あるの？
- Do you have something like that?

「か」 used in subordinate clauses

（１）　昨日何を食べたか忘れた。- Forgot what I ate yesterday.
（２）　彼は何を言ったかわからない。- Don't understand what he said.
（３）　先生が学校に行ったか教えない？ - Won't you inform me whether teacher went to school?

In sentences like （３） where the question being considered has a yes/no answer, it is common (but not necessary) to attach 「どうか」. This is roughly equivalent to saying, "whether or not" in English. You can also include the alternative as well to mean the same thing.

（１）　先生が学校に行ったかどうか知らない。- Don't know whether or not teacher went to school.
（２）　先生が学校に行ったか行かなかったか知らない。- Don't know whether teacher went to school or didn't.

Using question words

（１）　誰かがおいしいクッキーを全部食べた。- Someone ate all the delicious cookies.
（２）　誰が盗んだのか、誰か知りませんか。- Does anybody know who stole it?
（３）　犯人をどこかで見ましたか。- Did you see the criminal somewhere?
（４）　この中からどれかを選ぶの。- (Explaining) You are to select a certain one from inside this [selection].

Question words with inclusive meaning

「誰も」 and 「何も」 are primarily used only for negative sentences. Curiously, there is no way to say "everybody", and "everything" with question words. Instead, it is conventional to use other words like 「みんな／みなさん」、 「全部」.

The remaining three words 「いつも」 (meaning "always") and 「どれも」 (meaning "any and all"), and 「どこも」 (meaning everywhere) can be used in both negative and positive sentences.

（１）　この質問の答えは、誰も知らない。- Nobody knows the answer of this question.
（２）　友達はいつも遅れる。 - Friend is always late.
（３）　ここにあるレストランはどれもおいしくない - Any and all restaurants that are here are not tasty.
（４）　今週末は、どこにも行かなかった。- Went nowhere this weekend.

(Grammatically, this 「も」 is the same as the topic particle 「も」 so the target particle 「に」 must go before the topic particle 「も」 in ordering.)

Question words to mean "any"

（１）　この質問の答えは、誰でも分かる。- Anybody understands the answer of this question.
（２）　昼ご飯は、どこでもいいです。- About lunch, anywhere is good.
（３）　あの人は、本当に何でも食べる。- That person really eats anything.

This page has last been revised on 2005/9/9
Edited exception for いつも and added どれ to question words (2005/6/12)
Corrected どこも to mean everywhere (2005/6/13)
Added more detail about using 「か」 for plain form (2005/9/9)

Intrinsically Intricate

Compound Sentences

Expressing a sequence of states

Examples

（１）　私の部屋は、きれいで、静かで、とても好き。
- My room is clean, quiet, and I like it a lot.

（２）　彼女は、学生じゃなくて、先生だ。
- She is not a student, she is a teacher.

（３）　田中さんは、お金持ちで、かっこよくて、魅力的ですね。
- Tanaka-san is rich, handsome, and charming, isn't he?

As you can see, the 「で」 attached to 「お金持ち」 obviously cannot be the context particle 「で」 here because there is no verb. It might be helpful to think of 「で」 as merely a substitution for 「だ」 that can be chained together.

Expressing a sequence of verbs with the te-form

Examples

（１）　食堂に行って、昼ご飯を食べて、昼寝をする。
- I will go to cafeteria, eat lunch, and take a nap.

（２）　食堂に行って、昼ご飯を食べて、昼寝をした。
- I went to cafeteria, ate lunch, and took a nap.

（３）　時間がありまして、映画を見ました。
- There was time and I watched a movie.

Expressing reason or causation using 「から」 and 「ので」

Examples

（１）　時間がなかったからパーティーに行きませんでした。
- There was no time so didn't go to party.

（２）　友達からプレゼントが来た。
- Present came from friend.

（３）　友達だからプレゼントが来た。
- Present came because (the person is) friend. (This sentence sounds a bit odd.)

Either the reason or the cause can be omitted if it is clear from the context. In the case of polite speech, you would treat 「から」 just like a regular noun and add 「です」. When you omit the reason, you must include the declarative 「だ」 or 「です」.

田中さん）　どうしてパーティーに行きませんでしたか。- Why didn't you go to the party?
山田さん）　時間がなかったからです。- It's because I didn't have time.

一郎）　パーティーに行かなかったの？- You didn't go to the party?
直子）　うん、時間がなかったから。- Yeah, because I didn't have time.

（１）　時間がなかった。- I didn't have time.
（２）　だからパーティーに行かなかったの？ - Is that why you didn't go to the party?

Notice that 山田さん and 直子 could have used the explanatory 「の」 to express the same thing. In other words, 山田さん could have also said, 「時間がなかったのです」 or 「時間がなかったんです」 while 直子 could have said 「時間がなかったの」 (we'll assume she wants to use the more feminine form). In fact, this is where 「ので」 possibly came from. Let's say you want to combine two sentences: 「時間がなかったのだ」 and 「パーティーに行かなかった」. Remember we can treat the 「の」 just like a noun so we can use what we just learned in the first section of this lesson.

（１）　時間がなかったのだ＋パーティーに行かなかった
becomes:
（２）　時間がなかったのでパーティーに行かなかった。

In fact, 「ので」 is almost interchangeable with 「から」 with a few subtle differences. 「から」 explicitly states that the sentence preceding is the reason for something while 「ので」 is merely putting two sentences together, the first with an explanatory tone. This is something I call causation where [X] happened, therefore [Y] happened. This is slightly different from 「から」 where [Y] happened explicitly because [X] happened. This difference tends to make 「ので」 sound softer and slightly more polite and it is favored over 「から」 when explaining a reason for doing something that is considered discourteous.

（１）　ちょっと忙しいので、そろそろ失礼します。
- Because I'm a little busy, I'll be making my leave soon.
（「失礼します」, which literally means "I'm doing a discourtesy", is commonly used as a polite way to make your leave or disturb someone's time.）

Reminder: Don't forget that the explanatory 「の」 requires a 「な」 for both non-conjugated nouns and na-adjectives. Review Particles 3 to see why.

（１）　私は学生なので、お金がないんです。
- Because I'm a student, I have no money (lit: there is no money).

（２）　ここは静かなので、とても穏やかです。
- It is very calm here because it is quiet.

（３）　なので、友達に会う時間がない。
- That's why there's no time to meet friend.

Just like how the explanatory 「の」 can be shortened to 「ん」, in speech, the 「ので」 can be changed to 「んで」 simply because it's easier to slur the sounds together rather then pronouncing the / o / syllable.

（１）　時間がなかったんでパーティーに行かなかった。
- Didn't go to the party because there was no time.

（２）　ここは静かなんで、とても穏やかです。
- It is very calm here because it is quiet.

（３）　なんで、友達に会う時間がない。
- That's why there's no time to meet friend.

Using 「のに」 to mean "despite"

Examples

（１）　毎日運動したのに、全然痩せなかった。
- Despite exercising every day, I didn't get thinner.

（２）　学生なのに、彼女は勉強しない。
- Despite being a student, she does not study.

Expressing contradiction using 「が」 and 「けど」

Examples

（１）　デパートに行きましたが、何も欲しくなかったです。
- I went to department store but there was nothing I wanted.

（２）　友達に聞いたけど、知らなかった。
- I asked (or heard from) a friend but he (or I) didn't know.

（３）　今日は暇だけど、明日は忙しい。
- I'm free today but I will be busy tomorrow.

（４）　だけど、彼がまだ好きなの。
- That may be so, but it is that I still like him. (explanation, feminine tone)

It may seem odd but 「聞く」 can either mean "to listen" or "to ask". You may think this may become confusing but the meaning is usually clear within context. In （２）、 we're assuming that the friend didn't know, so the speaker was probably asking the friend. Yet again we see the importance of context in Japanese because this sentence can also mean, "I heard from a friend but I didn't know" since there is neither subject nor topic.

Similar to the difference between 「から」 and 「ので」, 「が」 has a softer tone and is slightly more polite than 「けど」. Though this isn't a rule as such, it is generally common to see 「が」 attached to a 「～ます」 or 「～です」 ending and 「けど」 attached to a regular, plain ending. A more formal version of 「けど」 is 「けれど」 and even more formal is 「けれども」, which we may see later when we cover formal expressions.

Unlike the English word for contradiction such as "but" or "however", 「けど」 and 「が」 do not always express a direct contradiction. Often times, especially when introducing a new topic, it is used as a general connector of two separate sentences. For example, in the following sentences, there is no actual contradiction but 「が」 and 「けど」 are used simply to connect the sentences. Sometimes, the English "and" becomes a closer translation than "but".

（１）　デパートに行きましたが、いい物がたくさんありました。
- I went to the department store and there was a lot of good stuff.

（２）　マトリックスを見たけど、面白かった。
- I watched the "Matrix" and it was interesting.

Expressing multiple reasons using 「し」

（１）　どうして友達じゃないんですか？- Why isn't him/her friend (seeking explanation)?
（２）　先生だし、年上だし・・・。- Well, he's/she's the teacher, and older...

（１）　どうして彼が好きなの？- Why (do you) like him?
（２）　優しいし、かっこいいし、面白いから。- Because he's kind, attractive, and interesting (among other things).

Notice that 「優しくて、かっこよくて、面白いから。」 could also have worked but much like the difference between the 「と」 and 「や」 particle, 「し」 implies that there may be other reasons.

Expressing multiple actions or states using 「～たりする」

You can also use this with the state of being to say that you are a number of things at various random times among a larger list. Similar to regular verbs, you just take the noun or adjective for each state of being and conjugate it to the past state of being and then attach 「り」. Then finally, attach 「する」 at the end.

（１）　映画を見たり、本を読んだり、昼寝したりする。
- I do things like (among other things) watch movies, read books, and take naps.

（２）　この大学の授業は簡単だったり、難しかったりする。
- Class of this college is sometimes easy, sometimes difficult (and other times something else maybe).

As you can see, the tense and negative/positive state is controlled by the last 「する」.

（３）　映画を見たり、本を読んだりした。
- I did things like (among other things) watch movies, and read books.

（４）　映画を見たり、本を読んだりしない。
- I don't do things like (among other things) watch movies, and read books.

（５）　映画を見たり、本を読んだりしなかった。
- I didn't do things like (among other things) watch movies, and read books.

This page has last been revised on 2006/3/16
Clarified 「よくて」 exception to rules (2006/3/16)

Gosh Darn! I knew I learned this for some reason!

Other uses of the te-form

Using 「～ている」 for enduring states

This 「いる」 is the same ru-verb describing existence, first described in the negative verb section. However, in this case, you don't have to worry about whether the subject is animate or inanimate.

Examples

（１）　友達は何をしているの？- What is friend doing?
（２）　昼ご飯を食べている。- (Friend) is eating lunch.

Note that once you've changed it into a regular ru-verb, you can do all the normal conjugations. The examples show the masu-form and plain negative conjugations.

（１）　何を読んでいる？- What are you reading?
（２）　教科書を読んでいます。- I am reading textbook.

（１）　話を聞いていますか。- Are you listening to me? (lit: Are you listening to story?)
（２）　ううん、聞いていない。- No, I'm not listening.

Since people are usually too lazy to roll their tongues to properly pronounce the 「い」, in more casual situations, the 「い」 is simply dropped. This is a convenience for speaking. If you were writing an essay or paper, you should always include the 「い」. Here are the abbreviated versions of the previous examples.

（１）　友達は何をしてるの？- What is friend doing?
（２）　昼ご飯を食べてる。- (Friend) is eating lunch.

（１）　何を読んでる？- What are you reading?
（２）　教科書を読んでいます。- I am reading textbook.

（１）　話を聞いていますか。- Are you listening to me? (lit: Are you listening to story?)
（２）　ううん、聞いてない。- No, I'm not listening.

Notice how I left the 「い」 alone for the polite forms. Though people certainly omit the 「い」 even in polite form, you might want to get used to the proper way of saying things first before getting carried away with casual abbreviations. You will be amazed at the extensive types of abbreviations that exist in casual speech. (You may also be amazed at how long everything gets in super polite speech.) Basically, you will get the abbreviations if you just act lazy and slur everything together. Particles also get punted off left and right.

For example:
（１）　何をしているの？(Those particles are such a pain to say all the time...)
（２）　何しているの？ (Ugh, I hate having to spell out all the vowels.)
（３）　何してんの？ (Ah, perfect.)

Enduring state of being rather than enduring state of action

「知る」
「知る」 means "to know". English is weird in that "know" is supposed to be a verb but is actually describing a state of having knowledge. Japanese is more consistent and 「知る」 is just a regular action verb. In other words, I "knowed" (action) something and so now I know it (state). That's why the English word "to know" is really a continuing state in Japanese, namely: 「知っている」.

「知る」 vs 「分かる」
「分かる」 meaning "to understand" may seem similar to 「知る」 in some cases. However, there is a difference between "knowing" and "understanding". Try not to confuse 「知っている」 with 「分かっている」. 「分かっている」 means that you are already in a state of understanding, in other words, you already get it. If you misuse this, you may sound pompous. ("Yeah, yeah, I got it already.") On the other hand, 「知っている」 simply means you know something.

Examples

（１）　今日、知りました。- I found out about it today. (I did the action of knowing today.)
（２）　この歌を知っていますか？- Do (you) know this song?
（３）　道は分かりますか。－Do you know the way? (lit: Do (you) understand the road?)
（４）　はい、はい、分かった、分かった。 - Yes, yes, I got it, I got it.

Motion Verbs (行く、来る、etc.)
It is reasonable to assume the actions 「行っている」 and 「来ている」 would mean, "going" and "coming" respectively. But unfortunately, this is not the case. The 「～ている」 form of motion verbs is more like a sequence of actions we saw in the last section. You completed the motion, and now you exist in that state. (Remember, 「いる」 is the verb of existence of animate objects.) It might help to think of it as two separate and successive actions: 「行って」、and then 「いる」.

Examples

（１）　鈴木さんはどこですか。－Where is Suzuki-san?
（２）　もう、家に帰っている。- He is already at home (went home and is there now).

（３）　先に行っているよ。- I'll go on ahead. (I'll go and be there before you.)
（４）　美恵ちゃんは、もう来ているよ。- Mie-chan is already here, you know. (She came and is here.)

Using 「～てある」 for resultant states

Examples

Since this grammar describes the state of a completed action, it is common to see the 「は」 and 「も」 particles instead of the 「を」 particle.

（１）　準備はどうですか。- How are the preparations?
（２）　準備は、もうしてあるよ。 - The preparations are already done.

（１）　旅行の計画は終った？- Are the plans for the trip complete?
（２）　うん、切符を買ったし、ホテルの予約もしてある。- Uh huh, not only did I buy the ticket, I also took care of the hotel reservations.

Using the 「～ておく」 form as preparation for the future

Examples

（１）　晩ご飯を作っておく。- Make dinner (in advance for the future).
（２）　電池を買っておきます。- I'll buy batteries (in advance for the future).

「ておく」 is also sometimes abbreviated to 「～とく」 for convenience.
（１）　晩ご飯を作っとく。- Make dinner (in advance for the future).
（２）　電池を買っときます。- I'll buy batteries (in advance for the future).

Using motion verbs （行く、来る） with the te-form

Examples

（１）　鉛筆を持っている？- Do (you) have a pencil?
（２）　鉛筆を学校へ持っていく？- Are (you) taking pencil to school?
（３）　鉛筆を家に持ってくる？- Are (you) bringing pencil to home?

For these examples, it may make more sense to think of them as a sequence of actions: hold and go, or hold and come. Here are a couple more examples.

（１）　お父さんは、早く帰ってきました。- Father came back home early.
（２）　駅の方へ走っていった。- Ran toward the direction of station.

The motion verbs can also be used in time expressions to move forward or come up to the present.

（１）　冬に入って、コートを着ている人が増えていきます。
- Entering winter, people wearing coat will increase (toward the future).

（２）　一生懸命、頑張っていく！
- Will try my hardest (toward the future) with all my might!

（３）　色々な人と付き合ってきたけど、いい人はまだ見つからない。
- Went out (up to the present) with various types of people but have yet to find a good person.

（４）　日本語をずっと前から勉強してきて、結局はやめた。
- Studied Japanese from way back before and eventually quit.

This page has last been revised on 2006/1/4

Now you can say you can.

Expressing the ability to do something

The Potential Form