A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

Outline

The problem with conventional textbooks
A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar
What is not covered in this guide?
Suggestions
Requirements

The problem with conventional textbooks

The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals.

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

Traditionally with romance languages such as Spanish, these goals presented no problems or were nonexistent due to the similarities to English. However, because Japanese is different in just about every way down to the fundamental ways of thinking, these goals create many of the confusing textbooks you see on the market today. They are usually filled with complicated rules and countless number of grammar for specific English phrases. They also contain almost no kanji and so when you finally arrive in Japan, lo and behold, you discover you can't read menus, maps, or essentially anything at all because the book decided you weren't smart enough to memorize Chinese characters.

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

This guide is an attempt to systematically build up the grammatical structures that make up the Japanese language in a way that makes sense in Japanese. It may not be a practical tool for quickly learning immediately useful Japanese phrases (for example, common phrases for travel). However, it will logically create grammatical building blocks that will result in a solid grammatical foundation. For those of you who have learned Japanese from textbooks, you may see some big differences in how the material is ordered and presented. This is because this guide does not seek to forcibly create artificial ties between English and Japanese by presenting the material in a way that makes sense in English. Instead, examples with translations will show how ideas are expressed in Japanese resulting in simpler explanations that are easier to understand.

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?

The primary principle in deciding what to cover in this guide is by asking myself, "What cannot be looked up in a dictionary?" or "What is poorly explained in a dictionary?" In working on this guide, it soon became apparent that it was not possible to discuss the unique properties of each individual word that doesn't correspond well to English. (I tried making vocabulary lists but soon gave up.) Occasionally, there will be a description of the properties of specific words when the context is appropriate and the property is exceptional enough. However, in general, learning the nuance of each and every word is left to the reader. For example, you will not see an explanation that the word for "tall" can either mean tall or expensive, or that "dirty" can mean sneaky or unfair but cannot mean sexually perverted. The edict dictionary, which can be found here (mirrors also available) is an extensive dictionary that not only contains much more entries than conventional dictionaries in bookstores, it also often contains example sentences. It will help you learn vocabulary much better than I ever could. I also suggest not wasting any money on buying a Japanese-English, English-Japanese paper dictionary as most currently in print in the US market are woefully inadequate. (Wow, it's free and it's better! Remind anyone of open-source?)

Suggestions

My advice to you when practicing Japanese: if you find yourself trying to figure out how to say an English thought in Japanese, save yourself the trouble and quit because you won't get it right almost 100% of the time. You should always keep this in mind: If you don't know how to say it already, then you don't know how to say it. Instead, if you can, ask someone right away how to say it in Japanese including a full explanation of its use and start your practice from Japanese. Language is not a math problem; you don't have to figure out the answer. If you practice from the answer, you will develop good habits that will help you formulate correct and natural Japanese sentences.

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

Since Japanese is written in Japanese in this guide (as it should be and NOT in romaji) your browser must be able to display Japanese fonts. If 「こんにちは」 does not look like

(minus differences in fonts), then you need to install Japanese language support or use some kind of gateway to convert the characters. Links to instructions and a translation gateway are below.

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

Japanese consists of two alphabets (or kana) called hiragana and katakana, which are two versions of the same set of sounds in the language. Hiragana and katakana consist of a little less than 50 "letters", which are actually simplified Chinese characters adopted to form a phonetic alphabet.

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

As you will find out in the next section, every character in hiragana (and the katakana equivalent) corresponds to a [vowel] or [consonant + vowel] syllable sound with the single exception of the 「ん」 and 「ン」 character (more on this later). This system of letter for each syllable sound makes pronunciation absolutely clear with no ambiguities. However, the simplicity of this system does not mean that pronunciation in Japanese is simple. In fact, the rigid structure of the fixed syllable sound in Japanese creates the problem of intonation in place of the difficulties that exist in separate consonant and vowel alphabets such as the English alphabet.

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.

Lessons covered in this section

Hiragana - The main Japanese phonetic alphabet. It is used mostly for grammatical purposes. It can also be used to show the reading for rare or obsolete kanji or as a substitute altogether. This lesson will go over all the letters in hiragana.
Katakana - An alphabet used generally to distinguish non-native words that does not have any kanji associated with it. This lesson will go over all the letters in katakana.
Kanji - An adoption of the Chinese writing system for Japanese. This lesson describes some general properties of kanji as well as some strategies for learning kanji (correctly).

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

ひらがな

Outline

What is Hiragana?
The Muddied Sounds
The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」
The Small 「つ」
The Long Vowel Sound

What is Hiragana?

Hiragana is the basic Japanese phonetic alphabet. It represents every sound in the Japanese language. Therefore, you can theoretically write everything in hiragana. However, because Japanese is written with no spaces, this will create nearly indecipherable text.

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 Table 1
n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ん	わ	ら	や	ま	は	な	た	さ	か	あ	a
	ゐ*	り		み	ひ	に	ち (chi)	し (shi)	き	い	i
		る	ゆ	む	ふ (fu)	ぬ	つ (tsu)	す	く	う	u
	ゑ*	れ		め	へ	ね	て	せ	け	え	e
	を	ろ	よ	も	ほ	の	と	そ	こ	お	o

* = obsolete (ie no longer used)

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.

Notes

Except for 「し」、「ち」、「つ」、and 「ん」、you can get a sense of how each letter is pronounced by matching the consonant on the top row to the vowel. For example, 「き」 would become / ki / and 「ゆ」 would become / yu / and so on.
Go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each hiragana character. The relevant sections are from 2.1 to 2.11.
As you can see, not all sounds match the way our consonant system works. As written in the table, 「ち」 is pronounced "chi" and 「つ」 is pronounced "tsu".
The / r / or / l / sound in Japanese is quite different from any sound in English. It involves more of a roll and a clip by hitting the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Pay careful attention to that whole column.
Pay careful attention to the difference between / tsu / and / su /.
The 「ん」 character is a special character because it is rarely used by itself and does not have a vowel sound. It is attached to another character to add a / n / sound. For example, 「かん」 becomes 'kan' instead of 'ka', 「まん」 becomes 'man' instead of 'ma', and so on and so forth.
You must learn the correct stroke order and direction! Go to this web site to learn.

The Muddied Sounds

Once you memorize all the characters in the hiragana alphabet you're done learning the alphabet but not all the sounds. There are five more possible consonant sounds that are possible by either affixing two tiny lines similar to a double quotation mark called dakuten （濁点） or a tiny circle called handakuten （半濁点）. This essentially creates a "muddy" or less clipped version of the consonant (technically called a voiced consonant or 「濁り」, which literally means to become muddy).

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

Muddied Consonant Sounds
p	b	d	z	g
ぱ	ば	だ	ざ	が	a
ぴ	び	ぢ (ji)	じ (ji)	ぎ	i
ぷ	ぶ	づ (dzu)	ず	ぐ	u
ぺ	べ	で	ぜ	げ	e
ぽ	ぼ	ど	ぞ	ご	o

Notes

Go to this web site again to hear the pronunciations of these new sounds. The relevant parts are at the end of sections 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and 2.6.
Notice that 「ぢ」 sounds essentially identical to 「じ」 and both are pronounced as / ji /, while 「づ」 is pronounced like / dzu /.

The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」

You can also combine a consonant with a / ya / yu / yo / sound by attaching a small 「や」、「ゆ」、or 「よ」 to the / i / vowel character of each consonant.

All possible small や、ゆ、and よ combinations
p	b	j	g	r	m	h	n	c	s	k
ぴゃ	びゃ	じゃ	ぎゃ	りゃ	みゃ	ひゃ	にゃ	ちゃ	しゃ	きゃ	ya
ぴゅ	びゅ	じゅ	ぎゅ	りゅ	みゅ	ひゅ	にゅ	ちゅ	しゅ	きゅ	yu
ぴょ	びょ	じょ	ぎょ	りょ	みょ	ひょ	にょ	ちょ	しょ	きょ	yo

Notes

The above table is the same as before. Match the top consonants to the vowel sound on the right. Ex: きゃ = kya.
Go to this web site again to hear the pronunciations of these new sounds. The author has decided to include 「ぢゃ」、「ぢゅ」、and 「ぢょ」 but these combinations are actually never used in favor of 「じゃ」、「じゅ」、and 「じょ」.
Also note that since 「じ」 is pronounced / ji /, all the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」 sounds are also based off of that, namely; / jya / jyu / jyo /.
The same thing also applies to 「ち」 which becomes / cha / chu / cho / and 「し」 which becomes / sha / shu / sho /. (Though arguably, you can still think of it as / sya / syu / syo /.)

The Small 「つ」

A small 「つ」 is inserted between two characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first. For example, if you inserted a small 「つ」 between 「び」 and 「く」 to make 「びっく」, the / k / consonant sound is carried back to the end of the first character to produce "bikku". Similarly, 「はっぱ」 becomes "happa", 「ろっく」 becomes "rokku" and so on and so forth. I have provided my own simple mp3 file to illustrate the sound difference between 「もと」 and 「もっと」. And in case you're wondering, both are actual words and yes, both mean different things.

Notes

A small 「つ」 is used to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first. Ex: 「がっき」 = "gakki".
Download this mp3 file to hear the difference between 「もと」 and 「もっと」.
The addition of another consonant almost always creates the characteristic clipping sound. But make sure you're clipping with the right consonant (the consonant of the second character).

The Long Vowel Sound

Whew! You're almost done. In this last portion, we will go over the long vowel sound which is simply extending the duration of a vowel sound. You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding either 「あ」、「い」、or 「う」 depending on the vowel in accordance to the following chart.

Extending Vowel Sounds
Vowel Sound	Extended by
/ a /	あ
/ i / e /	い
/ u / o /	う

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

Outline

Fill in the Hiragana Chart
Hiragana Writing Practice
More Hiragana Writing Practice
Hiragana Reading Practice

PDF Printout

Fill in the Hiragana Chart

Though I already mentioned that there are many sites and helper programs for learning hiragana, I figured I should put in some exercises of my own in the interest of completeness. I've removed the obsolete characters since you won't need to know them. I suggest playing around with this chart and a scrap piece of paper to test your knowledge of hiragana.

Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.

Hiragana Table

n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ん flip	わ flip	ら flip	や flip	ま flip	は flip	な flip	た flip	さ flip	か flip	あ flip	a
		り flip		み flip	ひ flip	に flip	ち flip	し flip	き flip	い flip	i
		る flip	ゆ flip	む flip	ふ flip	ぬ flip	つ flip	す flip	く flip	う flip	u
		れ flip		め flip	へ flip	ね flip	て flip	せ flip	け flip	え flip	e
	を flip	ろ flip	よ flip	も flip	ほ flip	の flip	と flip	そ flip	こ flip	お flip	o

Show all answers | Hide all answers

Hiragana Writing Practice

In this section, we will practice writing some words in hiragana. This is the only part of this guide where we will be using the English alphabet to represent Japanese sounds. I've added bars between each letter to prevent the ambiguities that is caused by romaji such as "un | yo" vs "u | nyo". Don't get too caught up in the romaji spellings. Remember, the whole point is to test your aural memory with hiragana. I hope to replace this with sound in the future to remove the use of romaji altogether.

Hiragana Writing Exercise 1

Sample: ta | be | mo | no ＝たべもの

1. ku \| ru \| ma	＝	くるま
2. a \| shi \| ta	＝	あした
3. ko \| ku \| se \| ki	＝	こくせき
4. o \| su \| shi	＝	おすし
5. ta \| be \| ru	＝	たべる
6. wa \| ka \| ra \| na \| i	＝	わからない
7. sa \| zu \| ke \| ru	＝	さずける
8. ri \| ku \| tsu	＝	りくつ
9. ta \| chi \| yo \| mi	＝	たちよみ
10. mo \| no \| ma \| ne	＝	ものまね
11. hi \| ga \| e \| ri	＝	ひがえり
12. pon \| zu	＝	ぽんず
13. hi \| ru \| me \| shi	＝	ひるめし
14. re \| ki \| shi	＝	れきし
15. fu \| yu \| ka \| i	＝	ふゆかい

Show all answers | Hide all answers

More Hiragana Writing Practice

Now we're going to move on to practice writing hiragana with the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」、and the long vowel sound.　For the purpose of this exercise, I will denote the long vowel sound as "－" and leave you to figure out with hiragana to use based on the letter preceding it.

Hiragana Writing Exercise 2

Sample: jyu | gyo－＝じゅぎょう

1. nu \| ru \| i \| o \| cha	＝	ぬるいおちゃ
2. kyu－ \| kyo \| ku	＝	きゅうきょく
3. un \| yo－\| jo－ \| ho－	＝	うんようじょうほう
4. byo－ \| do－	＝	びょうどう
5. jyo－ \| to－ \| shu \| dan	＝	じょうとうしゅだん
6. gyu－ \| nyu－	＝	ぎゅうにゅう
7. sho－ \| rya \| ku	＝	しょうりゃく
8. hya \| ku \| nen \| ha \| ya \| i	＝	ひゃくねんはやい
9. so \| tsu \| gyo－ \| shi \| ki	＝	そつぎょうしき
10. to－ \| nyo－ \| byo－	＝	とうにょうびょう
11. mu \| ryo－	＝	むりょう
12. myo－ \| ji	＝	みょうじ
13. o \| ka－ \| san	＝	おかあさん
14. ro－ \| nin	＝	ろうにん
15. ryu－ \| ga \| ku \| se \| i	＝	りゅうがくせい

Show all answers | Hide all answers

Hiragana Reading Practice

Now let's practice reading some hiragana. I want to particularly focus on correctly reading the small 「つ」 (by correctly carrying over the previous consonant). Remember to not get too caught up in the unavoidable inconsistencies of romaji. The point is to check whether you can figure out how it's supposed to sound in your mind.

Hiragana Reading Exercise

Sample: とった＝ totta

1. きゃっかんてき	＝	kyakkanteki
2. はっぴょうけっか	＝	happyoukekka
3. ちょっかん	＝	chokkan
4. ひっし	＝	hisshi
5. ぜったい	＝	zettai
6. けっちゃく	＝	kecchaku
7. しっぱい	＝	shippai
8. ちゅうとはんぱ	＝	chuutohanpa
9. やっかい	＝	yakkai
10. しょっちゅう	＝	shocchuu

Show all answers | Hide all answers

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

アイ・ラブ・カタカナ！

Outline

What is Katakana?
The Long Vowel Sound
The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」
Some examples of words in katakana

What is Katakana?

As mentioned before, katakana is mainly used for words imported from foreign languages. It can also be used to emphasize certain words similar to the function of italics. For a more complete list of usages, refer to the Wikipedia entry on 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 Table
n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ン	ワ	ラ	ヤ	マ	ハ	ナ	タ	サ	カ	ア	a
	ヰ*	リ		ミ	ヒ	ニ	チ	シ	キ	イ	i
		ル	ユ	ム	フ	ヌ	ツ	ス	ク	ウ	u
	ヱ*	レ		メ	ヘ	ネ	テ	セ	ケ	エ	e
	ヲ*	ロ	ヨ	モ	ホ	ノ	ト	ソ	コ	オ	o

* = obsolete or rarely used

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.

Notes

All the sounds are identical to what they were for hiragana.
As you will find out later, since 「を」 is only ever used as a particle and all particles are in hiragana, you will almost never need to use 「ヲ」 and therefore it can be safely ignored. (Unless you are reading very old telegrams or something.)
The four characters 「シ」、「ン」、「ツ」、and 「ソ」 are fiendishly similar to each other. Basically, the difference is that the first two are more "horizontal" than the second two. The little lines are slanted more horizontally and the long line is drawn in a curve from bottom to top. The second two have almost vertical little lines and the long line doesn't curve as much as it is drawn from top to bottom. It is almost like a slash while the former is more like an arc. These characters are hard to sort out and require some patience and practice.
The characters 「ノ」、「メ」、and 「ヌ」 are also something to pay careful attention to, as well as, 「フ」、「ワ」、 and 「ウ」. Yes, they all look very similar. No, I can't do anything about it.
You must learn the correct stroke order and direction! Go to this web site to learn.
Sometimes 「・」 is used to denote what would be spaces in English.

The Long Vowel Sound

Everything else works exactly the same way as hiragana, you just need to substitute the equivalent katakana characters. However, one thing that is different is that long vowels have been radically simplified in katakana. Instead of having to muck around thinking about vowel sounds, all long vowel sounds are denoted by a simple dash like so: ー.

Summary

All long vowel sounds in katakana are denoted by a dash. For example, "cute" would be written in katakana like so: 「キュート」.

The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」

Due to the limitations of the sound set in hiragana, some new combinations have been devised over the years to account for sounds that were not originally in Japanese. Most notable is the lack of the / ti / di / and / tu / du / sounds (because of the / chi / tsu / sounds), and the lack of the / f / consonant sound except for 「ふ」. The / sh / j / ch / consonants are also missing for the / e / vowel sound. The decision to resolve these deficiencies was to add small versions of the five vowel sounds. This has also been done for the / w / consonant sound to replace the obsolete characters. In addition, the convention of using the little double slashes on the 「ウ」 vowel （ヴ） with the small 「ア、イ、エ、オ」 to designate the / v / consonant has also been established but it's not often used probably due to the fact that Japanese people still have difficulty pronouncing / v /. For instance, while you may guess that "volume" would be pronounced with a / v / sound, the Japanese have opted for the easier to pronounce "bolume" （ボリューム）. In the same way, vodka is written as "wokka" （ウォッカ） and not 「ヴォッカ」. You can write "violin" as either 「バイオリン」 or 「ヴァイオリン」. It really doesn't matter however because almost all Japanese people will pronounce it with a / b / sound anyway. The following table shows the added sounds that were lacking with a highlight. Other sounds that already existed are reused as appropriate.

Additional sounds
v	w	f	ch	d	t	j	sh
ヴァ	ワ	ファ	チャ	ダ	タ	ジャ	シャ	a
ヴィ	ウィ	フィ	チ	ディ	ティ	ジ	シ	i
ヴ	ウ	フ	チュ	ドゥ	トゥ	ジュ	シュ	u
ヴェ	ウェ	フェ	チェ	デ	テ	ジェ	シェ	e
ヴォ	ウォ	フォ	チョ	ド	ト	ジョ	ショ	o

Notes

Notice that there is no / wu / sound. For example, the katakana for "woman" is written as "u-man" （ウーマン）.
While the / tu / sound (as in "too") can technically be produced given the rules as 「トゥ」, foreign words that have become popular before these sounds were available simply used / tsu / to make do. For instance, "tool" is still 「ツール」 and "tour" is similarly still 「ツアー」.
Back in the old days, without these new sounds, there was no choice but to just take characters off the regular table without regard for actual pronunciation. On old buildings, you may still see 「ビルヂング」 instead of the modern spelling 「ビルディング」. Incidentally, this is the case for the old Shin-Maru building across from Tokyo Station where I work. It is, however, soon slated for a complete rebuild and we will be moving out shortly. Ironically, Shin-Maru （新丸） has the character for "new" in it (the original one was rebuilt and is now newer).

Some examples of words in katakana

Translating English words into Japanese is a knack that requires quite a bit of practice and luck. To give you a sense of how English words become 'Japanified', here are a few examples of words in katakana. Sometimes the words in katakana may not even be correct English or have a different meaning from the English word it's supposed to represent. Of course, not all katakana words are derived from English.

Sample Katakana Words
English	Japanese
America	アメリカ
Russia	ロシア
cheating	カンニング (cunning)
tour	ツアー
company employee	サラリーマン (salary man)
Mozart	モーツァルト
car horn	クラクション (klaxon)
sofa	ソファ or ソファー
Halloween	ハロウィーン
French fries	フライドポテト (fried potato)

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

カタカナ Practice Exercises

Outline

Fill in the Katakana Chart
Katakana Writing Practice
More Katakana Writing Practice
Changing English words to katakana

PDF Printout

Fill in the Katakana Chart

Here is the katakana chart you can use to help test your memory. The 「ヲ」 has been removed since you'll never need it.

Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.

Katakana Table

n	w	r	y	m	h	n	t	s	k
ン flip	ワ flip	ラ flip	ヤ flip	マ flip	ハ flip	ナ flip	タ flip	サ flip	カ flip	ア flip	a
		リ flip		ミ flip	ヒ flip	ニ flip	チ flip	シ flip	キ flip	イ flip	i
		ル flip	ユ flip	ム flip	フ flip	ヌ flip	ツ flip	ス flip	ク flip	ウ flip	u
		レ flip		メ flip	ヘ flip	ネ flip	テ flip	セ flip	ケ flip	エ flip	e
		ロ flip	ヨ flip	モ flip	ホ flip	ノ flip	ト flip	ソ flip	コ flip	オ flip	o

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Katakana Writing Practice

Here, we will practice writing some katakana words in katakana (obviously). Plus, you'll get a little taste of what foreign words sound like in Japanese.

Katakana Writing Exercise 1

Sample: ta | be | mo | no ＝タベモノ

1. pan	＝	パン
2. kon \| pyu－ \| ta	＝	コンピュータ
3. myu－ \| ji \| ka \| ru	＝	ミュージカル
4. u－ \| man	＝	ウーマン
5 he \| a \| pi－ \| su	＝	ヘアピース
6. nu－ \| do	＝	ヌード
7. me \| nyu－	＝	メニュー
8. ro－ \| te－ \| shon	＝	ローテーション
9. ha \| i \| kin \| gu	＝	ハイキング
10. kyan \| se \| ru	＝	キャンセル
11. ha \| ne \| mu－n \|	＝	ハネムーン
12. ku \| ri \| su \| ma \| su \| tsu \| ri－	＝	クリスマスツリー
13. ra \| i \| to	＝	ライト
14. na \| i \| to \| ge－ \| mu	＝	ナイトゲーム

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More Katakana Writing Practice

Now let's practice writing some more katakana. This time, we're going to include all the irregular sounds that don't exist in hiragana.

Katakana Writing Exercise 2

Sample: bi－ | chi ＝ビーチ

1. e \| i \| zu \| wi \| ru \| su	＝	エイズウイルス
2. no－ \| su \| sa \| i \| do	＝	ノースサイド
3. in \| fo \| me－ \| shon	＝	インフォメーション
4. pu \| ro \| je \| ku \| to	＝	プロジェクト
5. fa \| su \| to \| fu－ \| do	＝	ファストフード
6. she \| ru \| su \| ku \| ri \| pu \| to	＝	シェルスクリプト
7. we－ \| to \| re \| su	＝	ウェートレス
8. ma \| i \| ho－ \| mu	＝	マイホーム
9. chi－ \| mu \| wa－ \| ku	＝	チームワーク
10. mi \| ni \| su \| ka－ \| to	＝	ミニスカート
11. re－ \| za－ \| di \| su \| ku	＝	レーザーディスク
12. chen \| ji	＝	チェンジ
13. re \| gyu \| ra－	＝	レギュラー
14. we \| i \| to \| ri \| fu \| tin \| gu	＝	ウエイトリフティング

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Changing English words to katakana

Just for fun, let's try figuring out the katakana for some English words. I've listed some common patterns below but they are only guidelines and may not apply for some words.

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

Sample: Europe ＝ヨーロッパ

1. check	＝	チェック
2. violin	＝	バイオリン
3. jet coaster (roller coaster)	＝	ジェットコースター
4. window shopping	＝	ウィンドーショッピング
5. salsa	＝	サルサ
6. hotdog	＝	ホットドッグ
7. suitcase	＝	スーツケース
8. kitchen	＝	キッチン
9. restaurant	＝	レストラン
10. New York	＝	ニューヨーク

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

Now you want me to learn Chinese too??

Outline

What is Kanji?
Learning Kanji
Reading Kanji
Why Kanji?

What is Kanji?

In Japanese, nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs are almost all written in Chinese characters called kanji. Adverbs are also fairly frequently written in kanji as well. This means that you will need to learn Chinese characters to be able to read essentially almost all the words in the language. Not all words are written in kanji however. For example, while the verb 'to do' technically has a kanji associated with it, it is always written in hiragana. Individual discretion and a sense of how things are normally written is needed to decide whether words should be written in hiragana or kanji. However, a majority of the words in Japanese will be written in kanji almost always. (Children's books or any other material where the audience is not expected to know a lot kanji is an exception to this.)

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

All the resources you need to begin learning kanji are on the web for free at Jim Breen's WWWJDIC. In addition to its huge dictionaries, it has stroke order diagrams for the 1,945 jouyo kanji (essentially almost all the kanji you will need to know). Especially for those who are just starting to learn, you will want to repeatedly write out each kanji to memorize the stroke order. Another important skill is learning how to balance the character so that certain parts are not too big or small. So make sure to copy the characters as close to the original as possible. Eventually, you will naturally develop a sense of the stroke order for certain types of characters allowing you to bypass the drilling stage. All the kanji used in this guide can be easily looked up by copying and pasting to the WWWJDIC.

Reading Kanji

Almost every character has two different readings called 音読み（おんよみ） and 訓読み（くんよみ）. 音読み is the original Chinese reading while 訓読み is the Japanese reading. Kanji that appear in a compound or 熟語 is usually read with 音読み while one kanji by itself is usually read with 訓読み. For example, 「力」（ちから） is read with the 訓読み while the same character in a compound word such as 「能力」 is read with the 音読み（which is 「りょく」 in this case）.

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 the system of using separate, discrete symbols instead of a sensible alphabet is out-dated and overly complicated. In fact, it might not have been a good idea to adopt Chinese into Japanese since both languages are fundamentally different in structure. But the purpose of this guide is not to debate over the decisions made thousands of years ago but to explain why you must learn kanji in order to learn Japanese. And by this, I mean more than just saying, "That's how it's done so get over it!".

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

Now that we have learned how to write Japanese, we can begin going over the basic grammatical structure of the language. This section primarily covers all the parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. It will also describe how to integrate the various parts of speech into a coherent sentence by using particles. By the end of this section, you should have a basic understanding of how Japanese works and how thoughts are expressed in Japanese.

Lessons covered in this section

Expressing State of Being - We will learn how to express the English verb "to be" in Japanese.
Introduction to Particles - This lesson describes how to create relationships between things by designating a topic or identifier using 「は」、「も」、and 「が」 particles.
Adjectives - Covers the main properties of adjectives. We will learn how to describe nouns by directly modifying the noun or by using particles.
Verb Basics - Covers the basic properties of verbs. This lesson will describe how verbs are categorized so that we can easily generalize conjugation rules.
Negative Verbs - Goes over the conjugation rules for negating verbs. We will learn how to transform the sentence, "He will go." into "He will not go."
Past Tense - Goes over the rules for conjugating verbs to the past tense. We will learn how to transform the sentence, "He will go." into "He went."
Particles used with Verbs - This lesson covers particles most often associated with verbs. We will learn the direct object particle （を）, target particle （に）, motion target particle （へ）, and the context particle （で）.
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs - We will learn about transitive and intransitive verbs and how our usage of particles changes as a result.
Descriptive Subordinate Clauses - We will learn how to modify nouns with verb and conjugated noun clauses to create more complicated sentences.
Noun-related Particles - We will learn particles associated with nouns （と、や、とか、の）. Generic noun substitution will also be covered allowing us to essentially set just about anything as the topic or identifier. Its use as an implied explanation is also covered.
Adverbs and Gobi - A short and simple section to finish off this section. It describes how to change adjectives into adverbs. It also introduces two very common and useful sentence endings.

Because I said so!

Outline

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」
Conjugating for the negative state-of-being
Conjugating for the past state-of-being
To sum up

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」

One of the trickiest part of Japanese is that there is no verb for the state-of-being like the verb "to be" in English. What Japanese has instead, is a way to declare that something is the way it is by attaching the hiragana character 「だ」 to a noun or na-adjective only. You'll see what this means when we learn about nouns and adjectives.

Declaring that something is so using 「だ」

Attach 「だ」 to the noun or na-adjective
（１）　魚。 - Fish.
（２）　魚だ。 - Is fish.

Seems easy enough. Here's the real kicker though.

A state-of-being can be implied without 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

In Japanese, negative and past tense are all expressed by conjugation. We can conjugate a noun or adjective to either its negative or past tense to say that something is not [X] or that something was [X]. This may be a bit hard to grasp at first but none of these state-of-being conjugations make anything declarative like 「だ」 does. We'll learn, in a later lesson, how to make these tenses declarative by attaching 「だ」 to the end of the sentence .

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

Conjugation rules for the negative state-of-being

Attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective
（例）友達　→　友達じゃない (is not friend)

Examples

（１）　じゃない。- Is not fish.
（２）　じゃない。- Is not student.
（３）　じゃない。- Is not quiet.

Conjugating for the past state-of-being

We will now learn the past tense of the state-of-being. To say something was something, 「だった」 is attached to the noun or na-adjective.

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」.

Conjugation rules for the past state-of-being

Past state-of-being: Attach 「だった」 to the noun or na-adjective
（例）友達　→　友達だった (was friend)
Negative past state-of-being: Conjugate the noun or na-adjective to the negative tense first and then replace 「い」 of 「じゃない」 with 「かった」
（例）友達　→　友達じゃない →　友達じゃなかった (was not friend)

（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

We've now learned how to express state-of-being in all four tenses. Next we will learn some particles, which will allow us assign roles to words. Here is a summary chart of the conjugations we learned in this section.

Summary of state-of-being
	Positive		Negative
Non-Past	魚（だ）	Is fish	魚じゃない	Is not fish
Past	魚だった	Was fish	魚じゃなかった	Was not fish

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

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Conjugation Exercise 1
Conjugation Exercise 2
Question Answer Exercise

Vocabulary used in this section

In the following exercises, we will practice the state-of-being conjugations we just covered. But first, you might want to learn or review the following useful nouns that will be used in the exercises.

Kanji
To start with, I have listed the kanji you will need for the vocabulary for your convenience. The link will take you to a diagram of the stroke order. However, it doesn't clearly show the direction (though you can kind of tell by the animation) so you should check with a kanji dictionary if you're not sure. I recommend practicing the kanji in the context of real words (such as the ones below).

人 - person
子 - child
小 - small
中 - middle
大 - big
友 - friend
生 - life
先 - ahead
学 - study
校 - school
高 - high
車 - car
供 - accompanying
達 - reach

Vocabulary
Here is the list of some simple nouns that might be used in the exercises.

うん - casual word for "yes" (yeah, uh-huh)
ううん - casual word for "no" (nah, uh-uh)
これ - this
それ - that
あれ - that over there
こう - (things are) this way
そう - (things are) that way
人【ひと】 - person
大人【おとな】 - adult
子供【こども】 - child
友達【ともだち】 - friend
車【くるま】 - car
学生【がくせい】 - student
先生【せんせい】 - teacher
学校【がっこう】 - school
小学校【しょうがっこう】 - elementary school
中学校【ちゅうがっこう】 - middle school
高校【こうこう】 - high school
大学【だいがく】 - college

Conjugation Exercise 1

We are now going to practice the state-of-being conjugations in order. Take each noun and conjugate it to the following forms: the declarative, negative state-of-being, past state-of-being, and negative past state-of-being.

Sample: 人＝人だ、人じゃない、人だった、人じゃなかった

1. これ
declarative	=	これだ
negative	=	これじゃない
past	=	これだった
negative-past	=	これじゃなかった

2. 大人
declarative	=	大人だ
negative	=	大人じゃない
past	=	大人だった
negative-past	=	大人じゃなかった

3. 学校
declarative	=	学校だ
negative	=	学校じゃない
past	=	学校だった
negative-past	=	学校じゃなかった

4. 友達
declarative	=	友達だ
negative	=	友達じゃない
past	=	友達だった
negative-past	=	友達じゃなかった

5. 学生
declarative	=	学生だ
negative	=	学生じゃない
past	=	学生だった
negative-past	=	学生じゃなかった

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Conjugation Exercise 2

In this second exercise, we are really going to test your conjugation knowledge as well as the vocabulary by translating some simple English sentences. Please note that while the positive, non-past state-of-being can be implied, for the purpose of this exercise, we will assume it's always declaratory. Don't forget that this creates a very firm and declaratory tone.

Sample: Is student. ＝学生だ。

1. Is college.	＝	大学だ。
2. Is not high school.	＝	高校じゃない。
3. Was teacher.	＝	先生だった。
4. Is adult.	＝	大人だ。
5. Was not child.	＝	子供じゃなかった。
6. This was the way it was.	＝	こうだった。
7. Wasn't that over there.	＝	あれじゃなかった。
8. Is not middle school.	＝	中学校じゃない。
9. Is friend.	＝	友達だ。
10. Was not car.	＝	車じゃなかった。
11. Was this.	＝	これだった。
12. That's not the way it is.	＝	そうじゃない。

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Question Answer Exercise

In this last exercise, we'll practice answering very simple questions using the state-of-being. The yes or no answer （うん or ううん） will be given and it is your job to complete the sentence. In deciding whether to use the declaratory 「だ」, I've decided to be sexist here and assume all males use the declaratory 「だ」 and all females use the implicit state-of-being (not the case in the real world).

Sample:
Ｑ）　学生？
Ａ）　ううん、学生じゃない。

Ｑ１）　友達？

Ａ１）　うん、。 (female)

Ｑ２）　学校？

Ａ２）　ううん、。

Ｑ３）　それだった？

Ａ３）　ううん、。

Ｑ４）　そう？ (Is that so?)

Ａ４）　うん、。 (male)

Ｑ５）　これ？

Ａ５）　ううん、。(object is away from the speaker)

Ｑ６）　先生だった？

Ａ６）　うん、。

Ｑ７）　小学校だった？

Ａ７）　ううん、。

Ｑ８）　子供？

Ａ８）　うん、。 (female)

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

Practical Particular Particles

Outline

Defining grammatical functions with particles
The 「は」 topic particle
The 「も」 inclusive topic particle
The 「が」 identifier particle

Defining grammatical functions with particles

We want to now make good use of what we learned in the last lesson by associating a noun with another noun. This is done with something called particles. Particles are one or two hiragana characters that attach to the end of a word to define what grammatical function that word is serving in the sentence. Using the correct particles is very important because the meaning of a sentence can completely change just by changing the particles. For example, the sentence "Eat fish." can become "The fish eats." simply by changing one particle.

The 「は」 topic particle

The first particle we will learn is the topic particle. The topic particle essentially identifies what it is that you're talking about, basically the topic of your sentence. Let's say a person says, "Not student." This is a perfectly valid sentence in Japanese but it doesn't tell us much without knowing what the sentence is talking about. The topic particle will allow us to express what our sentences are about. The topic particle is the character 「は」. Now, while this character is normally pronounced /ha/, it is pronounced /wa/ only when it is being used as the topic particle.

Example 1

ボブ：　アリスは？- Are you (Alice) student?
アリス：　、。- Yeah, I am.

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

ボブ）　ジムは？- Jim is tomorrow?
アリス）　じゃない。- Not tomorrow.

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

アリス）　はだ。- Today is exam.
ボブ）　ジムは？ - What about Jim?
アリス）　ジムは。 - Jim is tomorrow. (As for Jim, the exam is tomorrow.)

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

Another particle that is very similar to the topic particle is the inclusive topic particle. It is essentially the topic particle with the additional meaning of "also". Basically, it can introduce another topic in addition to the current topic. The inclusive topic particle is the 「も」 character and its use is best explained by an example.

Example 1

ボブ：　アリスは？- Are you (Alice) student?
アリス：　うん、トムも。- Yes, and Tom is also student.

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

ボブ：　アリスは？- Are you (Alice) student?
アリス：　うん、でもトムはじゃない。- Yes, but Tom is not student.

Example 3

This is also another possibility.
ボブ：　アリスは？- Are you (Alice) student?
アリス：　ううん、トムもじゃない。- No, and Tom is also not student.

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

Ok, so we can make a topic using the 「は」 and 「も」 particle. But what if we don’t know what the topic is? What if I wanted to ask, “Who is the student?” What I need is some kind of identifier because I don’t know who the student is. If I used the topic particle, the question would become, “Is who the student?” and that doesn’t make any sense because “who” is not an actual person.

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

ボブ：　が？- Who is the one that is student?
アリス：　ジムが。- Jim is the one who is student.

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

（１）　が？ - Who is the one that is student?
（２）　は？- (The) student is who?

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

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Basic Particle Exercise
Conjugation Exercise 2
Question Answer Exercise

Vocabulary used in this section

何 - what
映 - projection
画 - picture
彼 - he
女 - female
昨 - previous
日 - day
今 - now
明 - bright
知 - know
合 - match
鉛 - lead
筆 - brush
入 - enter
口 - mouth
出 - exit
図 - plan
書 - write
館 - building

Vocabulary
Here is the list of some simple nouns that might be used in the exercises.

どこ - where
いつ - when
どうして - why
どう - how
どれ - which
ミーティング - meeting
ボールペン - ball-point pen
何【なに】 - what
誰【だれ】 - who
映画【えいが】 - movie
彼【かれ】 - he; boyfriend
彼女【かのじょ】 - she; girlfriend
雨【あめ】 - rain
昨日【きのう】 - yesterday
今日【きょう】 - today
明日【あした】 - tomorrow
知り合い【しりあい】 - acquaintance
鉛筆【えんぴつ】 - pencil
仕事【しごと】 - work
入口【いりぐち】 - entrance
出口【でぐち】 - exit
図書館【としょかん】 - library

Basic Particle Exercise with 「は」

Let's first get used to the basic concept of particles by making some very simple sentences with them. In this first exercise, we are going to use the topic particle to explain the current topic of conversation. Remember, the topic particle 「は」 is always pronounced as /wa/.

Sample: 誰？（Topic: アリス）＝アリスは誰？

１．どこ？（Topic: 学校）	＝	学校はどこ？	(Where is school?)
２．どうして？（Topic: それ）	＝	それはどうして？	(Why is that?)
３．いつ？（Topic: ミーティング）	＝	ミーティングはいつ？	(When is meeting?)
４．何？（Topic: これ）	＝	これは何？	(What is this?)
５．どう？（Topic: 映画）	＝	映画はどう？	(How is movie?)
６．中学生だ。（Topic: 彼）	＝	彼は中学生だ。	(He is middle school student.)
７．先生だ。（Topic: 彼女）	＝	彼女は先生だ。	(She is teacher.)
８．雨。（Topic: 今日）	＝	今日は雨。	(Today is rain.)
９．友達。（Topic: ボブ）	＝	ボブは友達。	(Bob is friend.)
１０．知り合い？（Topic: 彼）	＝	彼は知り合い？	(Is he an acquaintance?)

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Particle Exercise with 「は」 and 「も」

Now we are going to practice getting used to the differences between the 「は」 and 「も」 particles. The sentences are actually pretty lame but this was the only way I could think of to make obvious which particle should be used. Remember, the point is to get a sense of when and when not to use the inclusive particle instead of the topic particle.

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

Sample: これは鉛筆だ。それも鉛筆だ。

１．今日は雨だ。昨日雨だった。

２．ジムは大学生だ。でも、私大学生じゃない。

３．これは水。これそう。

４．これはボールペンだ。でも、それボールペンじゃない。

５．仕事は明日。今日仕事じゃなかった。

６．ここは入口。出口ここだ。

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Particle Exercise with 「は」, 「も」, 「が」

In this last exercise, we will practice all three particles by identifying which one should be used for different types of situations. Remember that the 「が」 particle is only used when you want to identify something out of many other possibilities. While there are some cases where both 「は」 and 「が」 makes sense grammatically, because they mean different things, the correct one all depends on what you want to say.

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

ジム）　アリス誰？

ボブ）　友達だ。彼女アリスだ

アリス）　これ何？

ボブ）　それ鉛筆。

アリス）　あれ鉛筆？

ボブ）　あれペンだ。

アリス）　図書館どこ？

ボブ）　ここ図書館だ。

アリス）　そこ図書館じゃない？

ボブ）　そこじゃない。図書館ここだ。

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

Beautiful, is an Adjective

Outline

Properties of Adjectives
The na-adjective
The i-adjective
An annoying exception

Properties of Adjectives

Now that we can connect two nouns together in various ways using particles, we want to describe our nouns with adjectives. An adjective can directly modify a noun that immediately follows it. It can also be connected in the same way we did with nouns using particles. All adjectives fall under two categories: na-adjectives and i-adjectives. We will see how they are different and how to use them in sentences.

The na-adjective

The na-adjective is very simple to learn because it acts essentially like a noun. In fact, they are so similar; you can assume that they behave the same way unless I specifically point out differences. One main difference is that a na-adjective can directly modify a noun following it by sticking 「な」 between the adjective and noun. (Hence the name, 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

The i-adjective is called that because it always ends in the hiragana character 「い」. This is the okurigana and it is the part that will change as you conjugate the adjective. But you may know some na-adjectives that also end in 「い」 such as 「（な）」. So how can you tell the difference? The bad news is there really is no way to tell for sure. However, the really good news is that I can only think of two examples of na-adjectives that end with 「い」 that is usually written in hiragana: 「」 and 「」. All other na-adjectives I can think of that end in 「い」 are usually written in kanji and so you can easily tell that it's not an i-adjective. For instance, in the case of 「」, which is 「」 or 「」 in kanji, since the 「い」 part of 「麗」 is encased in kanji, you know that it can't be an i-adjective. That's because the whole point of the 「い」 in i-adjectives is to allow conjugation without having it affect the kanji. In fact, 「」 is the only na-adjective I can think of that ends in hiragana 「い」 without a kanji. This has to do with the fact that 「」 is actually derived from the verb 「」

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.

Do NOT attach 「だ」 to i-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.

Conjugation rules for i-adjectives

Negative: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective and then attach 「くない」
例）　高い → 高くない
Past-tense: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective or negative i-adjective and then attach 「かった」
例）　高い → 高かった
例）　高くない → 高くなかった

Summary of i-adjectives
	Positive	Negative
Non-Past	高い	高くない
Past	高かった	高くなかった

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

There is one i-adjective meaning "good" that acts slightly differently from all other i-adjectives. This is a classic case of how learning Japanese is harder for beginners because the most common and useful words also have the most exceptions. The word for "good" was originally 「よい（）」. However, with time, it soon became 「」. When it is written in kanji, it is usually read as 「」 so 「」 is almost always hiragana. That's all fine and good. Unfortunately, all the conjugations are still derived from 「」 and not 「」. This is shown in the next table.

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.

Conjugation for 「いい」
	Positive	Negative
Non-Past	いい	よくない
Past	よかった	よくなかった

Conjugation for 「かっこいい」
	Positive	Negative
Non-Past	かっこいい	かっこよくない
Past	かっこよかった	かっこよくなかった

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

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Conjugation Exercise
Sentence completion exercise

Vocabulary used in this section

In the following exercises, we will practice the conjugations for adjectives. But first, you might want to learn or review the following useful adjectives that will be used in the exercises.

Kanji
I have listed the kanji you will need for the vocabulary for your convenience. The link will take you to a diagram of the stroke order. However, it doesn't clearly show the direction (though you can kind of tell by the animation) so you should check with a kanji dictionary if you're not sure. I recommend practicing the kanji in the context of real words (such as the ones below).

面 - mask; face
白 - white
有 - exist
名 - name
嫌 - hate
好 - like
静 - quiet
楽 - music; comfort
切 - cut
辛 - spicy; bitter
料 - materials
理 - reason

Vocabulary
Here is a list of some simple adjectives (and one noun) that might be used in the exercises.

きれい - pretty; neat
いい - good
かっこいい - cool; good-looking
面白い【おもしろい】 - interesting
有名【ゆうめい】 - famous
嫌い【きらい】 - dislike; hate
好き【すき】 - like
大きい【おおきい】 - big
小さい【ちいさい】 - small
静か【しずか】 - quiet
高い【たかい】 - high; expensive
楽しい【たのしい】 - fun
大切【たいせつ】 - important
辛い【からい】 - spicy
料理【りょうり】 - cuisine

Conjugation Exercise

We are now going to practice the adjectives conjugations in order. Take each adjective and conjugate it to the following forms: the declarative (when applicable), negative, past, and negative past. In order to emphasize the fact that you can't use the declarative 「だ」 with i-adjectives, you should just write "n/a" (or just leave it blank) when a conjugation does not apply.

plain	declarative	negative	past	negative-past
面白い	n/a	面白くない	面白かった	面白くなかった
有名	有名だ	有名じゃない	有名だった	有名じゃなかった
嫌い	嫌いだ	嫌いじゃない	嫌いだった	嫌いじゃなかった
好き	好きだ	好きじゃない	好きだった	好きじゃなかった
大きい	n/a	大きくない	大きかった	大きくなかった
きれい	きれいだ	きれいじゃない	きれいだった	きれいじゃなかった
小さい	n/a	小さくない	小さかった	小さくなかった
いい	n/a	よくない	よかった	よくなかった
静か	静かだ	静かじゃない	静かだった	静かじゃなかった
高い	n/a	高くない	高かった	高くなかった
かっこいい	n/a	かっこよくない	かっこよかった	かっこよくなかった
楽しい	n/a	楽しくない	楽しかった	楽しくなかった
大切	大切だ	大切じゃない	大切だった	大切じゃなかった

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Sentence completion exercise

Now that we've practiced the basic conjugations for adjectives, we are going to practice using them in actual sentences using the particles covered in the last section.

Fill in the blank with the appropriate adjective or particle

Sample:
Ｑ）　学生？
Ａ）　ううん、学生じゃない。

ジム）　アリス、今忙しい？

アリス）　ううん、。

アリス）　何楽しい？

ボブ）　ゲーム楽しい。

アリス）　人は誰？

ボブ）　ジム大切だ。

アリス）　料理は、好き？

ボブ）　ううん、辛くない料理好きだ。

アリス）　ジム、かっこいい人？

ボブ）　ううん、。

アリス）　ボブは、人？

ボブ）　ううん、有名じゃない。

アリス）　昨日のテストは、よかった？

ボブ）　ううん、。

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

Let's do stuff with verbs!

Outline

Role of Verbs
Classifying verbs into ru-verbs and u-verbs
Appendix: iru/eru u-verbs

Role of Verbs

We've now learned how to describe nouns in various ways with other nouns and adjectives. This gives us quite a bit of expressive power. However, we still cannot express actions. This is where verbs come in. Verbs, in Japanese, always come at the end of clauses. Since we have not yet learned how to create more than one clause, for now it means that any sentence with a verb must end with the verb. We will now learn the two main categories of verbs, which will allow us to accurately define rules for conjugation. Before learning about verbs, there is one important thing to keep in mind.

A grammatically complete sentence requires a verb only (including state of being).

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

Almost all verbs in Japanese can be classified into two categories: ru-verb （） and u-verbs （）. The only two verbs that are not considered to be in either category are 「」 meaning "to do" and 「」 meaning "to come". Otherwise, the rules for conjugation are almost all the same depending on what class the verb is in. The way to distinguish between these verbs is fairly straightforward.

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.

How to classify ru-verbs and u-verbs

Does not end in iru/eru → u-verb
Ends in iru/eru → ru-verb with some exceptions

Sample ru-verbs
Verb	ローマ字
食べる	taberu
着る	kiru
信じる	shinjiru
寝る	neru
起きる	okiru
出る	deru
掛ける	kakeru
捨てる	suteru
調べる	shiraberu

Sample u-verbs
Verb	ローマ字
話す	hanasu
聞く	kiku
泳ぐ	oyogu
遊ぶ	asobu
待つ	matu
飲む	nomu
直る	naoru
死ぬ	shinu
買う	kau

Neither ru-verb nor u-verb
Verb	ローマ字
する	suru
くる	kuru

Examples

Here are some example sentences using ru-verbs, u-verbs, and exception verbs.
（１）　アリスは食べる。- As for Alice, eat.
（２）　ジムが遊ぶ。- Jim is the one that plays.
（３）　ボブもする。- Bob also do.
（４）　がある。- There is money. (lit: As for money, it exists.)
（５）　は買う。- As for me, buy.
（６）　はいる。- There is cat. (lit: As for cat, it exists.)

Appendix: iru/eru u-verbs

Here is a list of commonly used u-verbs that end in "iru" or "eru". This list is categorized roughly into three levels to help you focus on the verbs you need to learn. This list is not intended to include every verb under the sun.

iru/eru u-verbs grouped (roughly) by level
Basic	Intermediate	Advanced
要る	焦る	嘲る
帰る	限る	覆る
切る	蹴る	遮る
しゃべる	滑る	罵る
知る	握る	捻る
入る	練る	翻る
走る	参る	滅入る
減る	交じる	蘇る

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

Verb Practice Exercises

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Practice with Verb Classification

Vocabulary used in this section

Here is a list of a few verbs and the accompanying kanji that you will find useful.

見 - see
来 - come; next
行 - go; conduct
帰 - go home
食 - eat; food
飲 - drink
買 - buy
売 - sell
持 - hold
待 - wait
読 - read
歩 - walk
走 - run
遊 - play

Vocabulary
Here is a list of some common verbs you will definitely want to learn at some point.

する - to do
しゃべる - to talk; to chat
見る【みる】 - to see
来る【くる】 - to come
行く【いく】 - to go
帰る【かえる】 - to go home
食べる【たべる】 - to eat
飲む【のむ】 - to drink
買う【かう】 - to buy
売る【うる】 - to sell
切る【きる】 - to cut
入る【はいる】 - to enter
出る【でる】 - to come out
持つ【もつ】 - to hold
待つ【まつ】 - to wait
書く【かく】 - to write
読む【よむ】 - to read
歩く【あるく】 - to walk
走る【はしる】 - to run
遊ぶ【あそぶ】 - to play

Practice with Verb Classification

There's really not much to do at this point except to practice classifying verbs as either a ru-verb or an u-verb. You can also take this opportunity to learn some useful verbs if you do not know them already. We'll learn how to conjugate these verbs according to their category in the next few sections.

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.

verb	ru-verb	u-verb	exception verb
行く		●
出る	●
する			●
買う		●
売る		●
食べる	●
入る		●
来る			●
飲む		●
しゃべる		●
見る	●
切る		●
帰る		●
書く		●

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

Sometimes you have to be negative

Outline

Negating verbs
Conjugating verbs into the negative

Negating verbs

Now that we've seen how to declare things and perform actions with verbs, we want to be able to say the negative. In other words, we want to say that such-and-such action was not performed. Verbs are negated by conjugating to their negative form just like the state-of-being for nouns and adjectives. However, the rules are a tad more complicated.

Conjugating verbs into the negative

We will now make use of the verb classifications we learned in the last section to define the rules for conjugation. But before we get into that, we need to cover one very important exception to the negative conjugation rules, the verb 「」. 「」 is an u-verb used to express existence of inanimate objects.

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.

The negative of 「ある」 is 「ない」.

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.

How to conjugate verbs to the negative form

ru-verbs: To conjugate ru-verbs to their negative, drop the last 「る」 and attach 「ない」 to the result.
例）　見る → 見ない
例）　出る → 出ない

u-verbs: To conjugate u-verbs to their negative, first replace the last / u / character with the / a / sound equivalent and attach 「ない」 to the result.
例）　飲む → 飲ま → 飲まない
例）　待つ → 待た → 待たない

※ One important exception is verbs that end in 「う」. For these, you must replace 「う」 with 「わ」（not 「あ」） and attach 「ない」 to the result.
例）　拾う → 拾わ → 拾わない

Sample ru-verbs
Positive	Negative
食べる	食べない
着る	着ない
信じる	信じない
寝る	寝ない
起きる	起きない
出る	出ない
掛ける	掛けない
捨てる	捨てない
調べる	調べない

Sample u-verbs
Positive	Negative	ローマ字	ローマ字 (Neg)
話す	話さない	hanasu	hanasanai
聞く	聞かない	kiku	kikanai
泳ぐ	泳がない	oyogu	oyoganai
遊ぶ	遊ばない	asobu	asobanai
待つ	待たない	matu	matanai
飲む	飲まない	nomu	nomanai
直る	直らない	naoru	naoranai
死ぬ	死なない	shinu	shinanai
＊買う	買わない	kau	kawanai

Exception Verbs
Positive	Negative
する	しない
くる	こない
＊ある	ない

＊ = exceptions particular to this conjugation

Examples

Here are some example sentences using the negative form. To look these words up, use the link labeled "Translate Words in Japanese Text" from the WWWJDIC or just click here. It will reverse the conjugation and give you the dictionary form. (And even what conjugations were used to boot!) Here are the example sentences from the last section conjugated to the negative.

（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

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Practice with Negative Verb Conjugations

Vocabulary used in this section

This is the same list of verbs from the previous practice exercise. We will use the same verbs from the last exercise to practice conjugating to the negative tense.

見 - see
来 - come; next
行 - go; conduct
帰 - go home
食 - eat; food
飲 - drink
買 - buy
売 - sell
持 - hold
待 - wait
読 - read
歩 - walk
走 - run
遊 - play

Vocabulary
Here is a list of some common verbs you will definitely want to learn at some point.

する - to do
しゃべる - to talk; to chat
見る【みる】 - to see
来る【くる】 - to come
行く【いく】 - to go
帰る【かえる】 - to go home
食べる【たべる】 - to eat
飲む【のむ】 - to drink
買う【かう】 - to buy
売る【うる】 - to sell
切る【きる】 - to cut
入る【はいる】 - to enter
出る【でる】 - to come out
持つ【もつ】 - to hold
待つ【まつ】 - to wait
書く【かく】 - to write
読む【よむ】 - to read
歩く【あるく】 - to walk
走る【はしる】 - to run
遊ぶ【あそぶ】 - to play

Practice with Negative Verb Conjugations

We learned how to classify the following verbs in the previous practice exercise. Now, we are going to put that knowledge to use by conjugating the same verbs into the negative tense depending on which type of verb it is. The first answer has been given as an example.

verb	negative tense
行く	行かない
出る	出ない
する	しない
買う	買わない
売る	売らない
食べる	食べない
入る	入らない
来る	こない
飲む	飲まない
しゃべる	しゃべらない
見る	見ない
切る	切らない
帰る	帰らない
書く	書かない

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

It's all in the past

Outline

Changing verbs to the past tense
Past tense for ru-verbs
Past tense for u-verbs
Past-negative tense for all verbs

Changing verbs to the past tense

We will finish defining all the basic properties of verbs by learning how to express the past and past-negative tense of actions. I will warn you in advance that the conjugation rules in this section will be the most complex rules you will learn in all of Japanese. On the one hand, once you have this section nailed, all other rules of conjugation will seem simple. On the other hand, you might need to refer back to this section many times before you finally get all the rules. You will probably need a great deal of practice until you can become familiar with all the different conjugations.

Past tense for ru-verbs

We will start off with the easy ru-verb category. To change a ru-verb from the dictionary form into the past tense, you simply drop the 「る」 and add 「た」.

To change ru-verbs into the past tense

Drop the 「る」 part of the ru-verb and add 「た」
例）出る → 出た
例）捨てる → 捨てた

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

Changing a u-verb from dictionary form to the past tense is difficult because we must break up u-verbs into four additional categories. These four categories depend on the last character of the verb. The table below illustrates the different sub-categories. In addition, there is one exception to the rules, which is the verb 「」. I've bundled it with the regular exception verbs 「」 and 「」 even though 「」 is a regular u-verb in all other conjugations.

Past tense conjugations for u-verbs
Ending	Non-Past	changes to...	Past
す	話す	す→した	話した
くぐ	書く泳ぐ	く→いたぐ→いだ	書いた泳いだ
むぶぬ	噛む遊ぶ死ぬ	む→んだぶ→んだぬ→んだ	噛んだ遊んだ死んだ
るうつ	切る買う持つ	る→ったう→ったつ→った	切った買った持った

Exceptions
Non-Past	Past
する	した
くる	きた
行く	行った*

* exceptions particular to this conjugation

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

The conjugation rules for the past-negative tense are the same for all verbs. You might have noticed that the negative tense of just about everything always end in 「ない」. The conjugation rule for the past-negative tense of verbs is pretty much the same as all the other negative tenses that end in 「ない」. You simply take the negative tense of any verb, remove the 「い」 from the 「ない」 ending, and replace it with 「かった」.

To change verbs into the past-negative tense

Change the first verb to the negative tense and replace the 「い」 with 「かった」
例）捨てる → 捨てない → 捨てなかった
例）行く → 行かない → 行かなかった

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

Outline

Vocabulary used in this section
Practice with Past Verb Conjugations
Practice with Past Negative Verb Conjugations

Vocabulary used in this section

This is the same list of verbs from the previous practice exercise with a couple additions. We will use mostly the same verbs from the last exercise to practice conjugating to the past and the past negative tense.

話 - story
見 - see
来 - come; next
行 - go; conduct
帰 - go home
食 - eat; food
飲 - drink
買 - buy
売 - sell
持 - hold
待 - wait
読 - read
歩 - walk
走 - run
遊 - play
泳 - swim
死 - death

Vocabulary
Here is a list of some common verbs you will definitely want to learn at some point.

する - to do
しゃべる - to talk; to chat
話す【はなす】 - to talk
見る【みる】 - to see
来る【くる】 - to come
行く【いく】 - to go
帰る【かえる】 - to go home
食べる【たべる】 - to eat
飲む【のむ】 - to drink
買う【かう】 - to buy
売る【うる】 - to sell
切る【きる】 - to cut
入る【はいる】 - to enter
出る【でる】 - to come out
持つ【もつ】 - to hold
待つ【まつ】 - to wait
書く【かく】 - to write
読む【よむ】 - to read
歩く【あるく】 - to walk
走る【はしる】 - to run
遊ぶ【あそぶ】 - to play
泳ぐ【およぐ】 - to swim
死ぬ【しぬ】 - to die

Practice with Past Verb Conjugations

We learned how to classify the following verbs in the first verb practice exercise. Now, we are going to put that knowledge to use by conjugating the same verbs into the past tense depending on which type of verb it is. The first answer has been given as an example.

verb	past tense
出る	出た
行く	行った
する	した
買う	買った
売る	売った
食べる	食べた
入る	入った
来る	きた
飲む	飲んだ
しゃべる	しゃべった
見る	見た
切る	切った
帰る	帰った
書く	書いた
待つ	待った
話す	話した
泳ぐ	泳いだ
死ぬ	死んだ

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Practice with Past Negative Verb Conjugations

Now, we are going to do the same thing for the past negative verb conjugations.

verb	past negative tense
出る	出なかった
行く	行かなかった
する	しなかった
買う	買わなかった
売る	売らなかった
食べる	食べなかった
入る	入らなかった
来る	こなかった
飲む	飲まなかった
しゃべる	しゃべらなかった
見る	見なかった
切る	切らなかった
帰る	帰らなかった
書く	書かなかった
待つ	待たなかった
話す	話さなかった
泳ぐ	泳がなかった
死ぬ	死ななかった

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

Particles Reloaded

Outline

Particles used with verbs
The direct object 「を」 particle
The target 「に」 particle
The directional 「へ」 particle
The contextual 「で」 particle
When location is the topic
When direct object is the topic

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.

（２）　を。
- Drank juice.

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」

The word for "what" （） is quite annoying because while it's usually read as 「なに」, sometimes it is read as 「なん」 depending on how it's used. And since it's always written in Kanji, you can't tell which it is. I would suggest sticking with 「なに」 until someone corrects you for when it should be 「なん」. With the 「で」 particle, it is read as 「なに」 as well. (Hold the mouse cursor over the word to check the reading.)

（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

There are times when the location of an action is also the topic of a sentence. You can attach the topic particle （「は」 and 「も」） to the three particles that indicate location （「に」、「へ」、「で」） when the location is the topic. We'll see how location might become the topic in the following examples.

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!

Outline

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
Pay attention to particles!

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

In Japanese, sometimes there are two types of the same verb often referred to as transitive and intransitive verbs. The difference between the two is that one verb is an action done by an active agent while the other is something that occurs without a direct agent. In English, this is sometimes expressed with the same verb, such as: "The ball dropped" vs "I dropped the ball" but in Japanese it becomes 「が」 vs 「を」. Sometimes, the verbs changes when translated into English such as "To put it in the box" (に） vs "To enter the box" （に） but this is only from the differences in the languages. If you think in Japanese, intransitive and transitive verbs have the same meaning except that one indicates that someone had a direct hand in the action (direct object) while the other does not. While knowing the terminology is not important, it is important to know which is which in order to use the correct particle for the correct verb.

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.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
Transitive		Intransitive
落とす	to drop	落ちる	to fall
出す	to take out	出る	to come out; to leave
入れる	to insert	入る	to enter
開ける	to open	開く	to be opened
閉める	to close	閉まる	to be closed
つける	to attach	つく	to be attached
消す	to erase	消える	to disappear
抜く	to extract	抜ける	to be extracted

Pay attention to particles!

The important lesson to take away here is to learn how to use the correct particle for the correct type of verb. It might be difficult at first to grasp which is which when learning new verbs or whether there even is a transitive/intransitive distinction. The good news is that the WWWJDIC now indicates whether a verb is transitive (vt) or intransitive (vi) when the distinction applies. However, I have not tested how extensive the coverage is so I recommend looking at examples sentences from either the WWWJDIC or Yahoo!辞書. For example, looking at example sentences for 「」 from the WWWJDIC or Yahoo!辞書, you can see that it is a transitive verb from the use of the 「を」 particle.

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.

Outline

Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives
Using state-of-being subclauses as adjectives
Using subordinate verb clauses as adjectives
Japanese Sentence Order

Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives

Have you noticed how, many forms of verbs and the state-of-being conjugate in a similar manner to i-adjectives? Well, that is because, in a sense, they are adjectives. For example, consider the sentence: "The person who did not eat went to bank." The "did not eat" describes the person and in Japanese, you can directly modify the noun 'person' with the clause 'did not eat' just like a regular adjective. This very simple realization will allow us to modify a noun with any arbitrary verb phrase!

Using state-of-being subclauses as adjectives

The negative, past, and negative past conjugations of nouns can be used just like adjectives to directly modify nouns. However, we cannot do this with the plain non-past state-of-being using 「だ」. (I told you this was a pain in the butt.) The language has particles for this purpose, which will be covered in the next section.

You cannot use 「だ」 to directly modify a noun with a noun
like you can with 「だった」、「じゃない」、and 「じゃなかった」.

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

Here are some examples of direct noun modifications with a conjugated noun clause. The noun clause has been highlighted.

（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

Verbs clauses can also be used just like adjectives to modify nouns. The following examples show us how this will allow us to make quite detailed and complicated sentences. The verb clause is highlighted.

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

Now that we've learned the concept of subordinate clauses and how they are used as building blocks to make sentences, I can go over how Japanese sentence ordering works. There's this myth that keeps floating around about Japanese sentence order that continues to plague many hapless beginners to Japanese. Here's how it goes.

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

（１）　はでを食べた。
（２）　ではを食べた。
（３）　をはで食べた。
（４）　を食べた。
（５）　食べた。

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

Japanese sentence order

A complete sentence requires a main verb that must come at the end. This also includes the implied state-of-being.
例）食べた
例）学生（だ）
Complete sentences (subordinate clauses) can be used to modify nouns to make sentences with nested subordinate clauses. (Except for one exception, see above)
例） お弁当を食べた学生が公園に行った。

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

Particles Revolution

Outline

The last three particles (Not!)
The Inclusive 「と」 particle
The Vague Listing 「や」 and 「とか」 particles
The 「の」 particle
The 「の」 particle as explanation

The last three particles (Not!)

We have already gone over very powerful constructs that can express almost anything we want. We will see the 「の」 particle will give us even more power by allowing us to define a generic, abstract noun. We will also learn how to modify nouns directly with nouns. The three particles we will cover can group nouns together in different ways.

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

The 「と」 particle is similar to the 「も」 particle in that it contains a meaning of inclusion. It can combine two or more nouns together to mean "and".

（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

The 「や」 particle, just like the 「と」 particle, is used to list one or more nouns except that it is much more vague than the 「と」 particle. It implies that there may be other things that are unlisted and that not all items in the list may apply. In English, you might think of this as an "and/or, etc." type of listing.

（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

The 「の」 particle has many uses and it is a very powerful particle. It is introduced here because like the 「と」 and 「や」 particle, it can be used to connect one or more nouns. Let's look at a few examples.

（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 「の」 particle attached at the end of the last clause of a sentence can also convey an explanatory tone to your sentence. For example, if someone asked you if you have time, you might respond, "The thing is I'm kind of busy right now." The abstract generic noun of "the thing is..." can also be expressed with the 「の」 particle. This type of sentence has an embedded meaning that explains the reason(s) for something else.

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.

「んだ」 attached to different conjugations
(You may substitute 「の」 or 「のだ」 for 「んだ」)
	Noun/Na-Adj	Verb/I-Adj
Plain	学生なんだ	飲むんだ
Negative	学生じゃないんだ	飲まないんだ
Past	学生だったんだ	飲んだんだ
Past-Neg	学生じゃなかったんだ	飲まなかったんだ

「んだ」 itself is conjugated
(You may substitute 「の」 for 「ん」 and 「の」 or 「のだ」 for 「んだ」)
	Noun/Na-Adj	Verb/I-Adj
Plain	学生なんだ	飲むんだ
Negative	学生なんじゃない	飲むんじゃない
Past	学生なんだった	飲むんだった
Past-Neg	学生なんじゃなかった	飲むんじゃなかった

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

アリス：　にの？- Where is it that (you) are going?
ボブ：　にんだ。- It is that (I) go to class.
Alice: Where are you going? (Seeking explanation)
Bob: I'm going to class. (Explanatory)

Example 2

アリス：　、がんじゃない？- Isn't it that there is class now?
ボブ：　は、んだ。- Now it is that there is no class.
Alice: Don't you have class now? (Expecting that there is class)
Bob: No, there is no class now. (Explanatory)

Example 3

アリス：　、がんじゃない？- Isn't it that there isn't class now?
ボブ：　、。- No, there is.
Alice: Don't you not have class now? (Expecting that there is no class)
Bob: No, I do have class.

Example 4

アリス：　がんじゃなかったの？- Wasn't it that that person was the one to buy?
ボブ：　、がんだ。- No, it is that teacher is the one to buy.
Alice: Wasn't that person going to buy? (Expecting that the person would buy)
Bob: No, the teacher is going to. (Explanatory)

Example 5

アリス：　をんじゃなかった。 - It is that breakfast wasn't to eat.
ボブ：　？ - Why?
Alice: Should not have eaten breakfast, you know. (Explaining that breakfast wasn't to be eaten)
Bob: How come?

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

Outline

Why adverbs and gobi?
Properties of Adverbs
What's a "gobi"?
The 「ね」 gobi
The 「よ」 gobi
Combining both to get 「よね」

Why adverbs and gobi?

Well, the two are not related to each other but I have decided to group them in one lesson because we will be covering only the two most common gobi for now and it is too short to be a separate lesson in itself.

Properties of Adverbs

Unlike English, changing adjectives to adverbs is a very simple and straightforward process. In addition, since the system of particles make sentence ordering flexible, adverbs can be placed anywhere in the clause that it applies to long as it comes before the verb that it refers to. As usual, we have two separate rules: one for i-adjectives, and one for na-adjectives.

How to change an adjective to an adverb

i-adjectives: Substitute the 「い」 with 「く」.
例）早い → 早く
na-adjectives: Attach the target particle 「に」.
例）きれい → きれいに

（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"?

In this section, we will cover the two most commonly used gobi. 「語尾」 literally means "language tail" and it simply refers to anything that comes at the end of a sentence or a word. In this guide, I will use it to describe the one or two hiragana characters that always come at the end of sentences due to the lack of better terminology. These endings are often very hard to explain because many do not actually have a specific meaning. But they can change the 'sound' or 'feel' of a sentence and add some zest and pep to the sentence. The two we will cover here do have meanings and they are used quite often.

The 「ね」 gobi

People usually add 「ね」 to the end of their sentence when they are looking for (and expecting) agreement to what they are saying. This is equivalent to saying, "right?" or "isn't it?" in English.

Example 1

ボブ：　だね。- Good weather, huh?
アリス：　ね。- That is so, isn't it?
The literal translation of 「ね」 sounds a bit odd but it basically means something like, "Sure is". Males would probably say, 「だね」.

Example 2

アリス：　だったね。- That was interesting movie, wasn't it?
ボブ：　え？。- Huh? No, it wasn't interesting at all.
Since Alice is expecting agreement that the movie was interesting Bob is surprised because he didn't find the movie interesting at all. (「え」 is a sound of surprise and confusion.)

The 「よ」 gobi

When 「よ」 is attached to the end of a sentence, it means that the speaker is informing the listener of something new. In English, we might say this with a, "You know..." such as the sentence, "You know, I'm actually a genius."

Example 1

アリス：　がよ。- You know, there is no time.
ボブ：　よ。- It's ok, you know.

Example 2

アリス：　はだね。- Good weather today, huh?
ボブ：　。、がよ。- Yeah. But it will rain tomorrow, you know.

Combining both to get 「よね」

You can also combine the two gobi we just learned to create 「よね」. This is essentially used when you want to inform the listener of some new point you're trying to make and when you're seeking agreement on it at the same time. When combining the two, the order must always be 「よね」. You cannot reverse the order.

Example

アリス：　ボブは、がなんだよね。- You know, you like fish, dontcha?
ボブ：　だね。- That is so, huh?

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

Essential Grammar

Grammar you must know

We have learned the basic foundation of the Japanese language. Now that we have a general knowledge of how Japanese works, we can now extend that by learning specific grammar for various situations. This section will go over what is considered to be essential grammar for basic practical Japanese. You will begin to see fewer literal translations in order to emphasize the new grammar now that you (should) have a good understanding of the basic fundamental grammar. For example, in sentences where the subject has not been specified, I might simply specify the subject in the translation as 'he' even though it may very well be "we" or "them" depending on the context.

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.

Lessons covered in this section

Polite Form - Covers the fundamental difference between polite and casual types of speech. Goes over rules of conjugation for the polite form.
Addressing People - Covers how to address people by properly according to their title or station. Also covers the various types of pronouns and their appropriate uses.
Question Marker - Covers how to clearly indicate a question in polite form. Also discusses the use of the question marker in other contexts.
Compound Sentences - Learn how to chain several sentences into one. Introduces the ever useful te-form.
Enduring States - Learn how to express a continuing action or state using the te-form.
Potential Form - Goes over how to express the ability to do something.
Using する and なる with the に particle - Goes over some useful expressions with 「する」 and 「なる」.
Conditionals - Explains how to express things and events that occur on a given condition. Comp sci majors, you'll want to read this section!
Expressing "must" or "have to" - How to say that you must or must not do something. Also covers how you say you don't have to do something.
Desire and Suggestions - Goes over how to express desire and make suggestions. A must-read for getting dates in Japan!
Using quoted subordinate clauses and expressing hearsay - Learn how to express your thoughts and quote others using quoted subordinate clauses.
Defining and Describing - Learn to use 「という」 to define, describe, or generally talk about something.
Trying something out or attempting to do something - Try out things or make an attempt to do something using this grammar.
Giving and Receiving - Learn how to give and receive using 「あげる」、「やる」、「くれる」、and 「もらう」.
Making requests - Learn how to make requests using 「～ください」、「～なさい」、「～ちょうだい」、and the command (imperative) form.
Numbers and Counting - Explains numbers and various counters for counting.
Wrapping up and more Gobi - Wrap up what we've learned in this section and finish up with gobi.

May you be so pleased as to learn this section?

Outline

Not being rude in Japan
The stem of verbs
Using 「～ます」 to make verbs polite
Using 「です」 for everything else
「です」 is NOT the same as 「だ」

Not being rude in Japan

The Japanese we have learned so far is all well and good if you're 5-years old. Unfortunately, adults are expected to use a politer version of the language (called ) when addressing certain people. People you will probably use with are: 1) people of higher social rank, and 2) people you are not familiar with. Deciding when to use which language is pretty much a matter of 'feel'. However, it is a good idea to stick with one form for each person.

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

In order to conjugate all u-verbs and ru-verbs into their respective polite forms, we will first learn about the stem of verbs. This is often called the masu-stem in Japanese textbooks but we will call it just the stem because it is used in many more conjugations than just its masu-form. The stem is really great because it's very easy to produce and is useful in many different types of grammar.

Rules for extracting the stem of verbs

ru-verbs - Remove the 「る」
例) 食べる → 食べ
u-verbs - The last vowel sound changes from an / u / vowel sound to an / i / vowel sound.
例) 泳ぐ → 泳ぎ
Exceptions - 「する」 becomes 「し」 and 「くる」 becomes 「き」.

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

Of course, the reason I introduced the verb stem is to learn how to conjugate verbs into their polite form... the masu-form! The masu-form must always come at the end of a complete sentence and never inside a modifying subordinate clause. When we learn compound sentences, we will see that each sub-sentence of the compound sentence can end in masu-form as well.

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.

A conjugation chart with sample stem 「遊び」
	ます conjugations	Stem+ます
Plain	ます	遊びます
Negative	ません	遊びません
Past	ました	遊びました
Past-Neg	ませんでした	遊びませんでした

Examples

As usual, let's see some 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

For any sentence that does not end in a ru-verb or u-verb, the only thing that needs to be done is to add 「です」 or 「でした」. You can also do this for substituted nouns (both 「の」 and 「ん」) by just treating them like regular nouns (refer to: Particle 3). Another important thing to remember is that if there is a declarative 「だ」, it must be removed. In being polite, I guess you can't be so bold as to forwardly declare things the way 「だ」 does. Just like the masu-form, this must also go at the end of a complete sentence. Here is a chart illustrating the conjugations.

i-adjective (だ cannot be used)
	Casual	Polite
Plain	かわいい	かわいいです
Negative	かわいくない	かわいくないです
Past	かわいかった	かわいかったです
Past-Neg	かわいくなかった	かわいくなかったです

na-adjective/noun (might have to remove だ)
	Casual	Polite
Plain	静か（だ）	静かです
Negative	静かじゃない	静かじゃないです
Past	静かだった	※静かでした
Past-Neg	静かじゃなかった	静かじゃなかったです

※ 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

I have heard on a number of occasions that the negative non-past conjugation as given here is not an "officially" correct conjugation. Instead, what's considered to be a more "correct" conjugation is to actually replace the 「ないです」 part with 「」. The reasoning is that the polite negative form of the verb 「」 is not 「ないです」 but 「」. Therefore, 「」 actually becomes 「」 and 「」 becomes 「」.

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.

A more formal negative conjugation
	Casual	Polite
Negative	かわいくない	かわいくありません
Past-Neg	かわいくなかった	かわいくありませんでした
Negative	静かじゃない	静かじゃありません
Past-Neg	静かじゃなかった	静かじゃありませんでした

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」

Many of you who have taken Japanese classes have probably been taught that 「です」 is the polite version of 「だ」. However, I want to point some several key differences here and the reasons why they are in fact completely different things. It is impossible to fully explain the reasons why they are fundamentally different without discussing grammar that have yet to be covered so I would like to target this toward those who have already started learning Japanese and have been incorrectly misinformed that 「だ」 is the casual version of 「です」. For the rest of you new to this, you can easily skip this part.

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."

（１）　。
（２）　だ。
（３）　です。
（４）　でございます。

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?"

（１）　？
（２）　か？
（３）　ですか？

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。

In conclusion, replacing 「です」 with 「だ」, thinking one is the polite equivalent of the other or vice-versa will potentially result in grammatically incorrect sentences. It is best to think of them as totally separate things (because they are).

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

I'm not talking about the postal system silly!

Outline

Addressing people properly in Japanese
Referring to yourself
Referring to others by name
Referring to others with "you"
Referring to others in third person
Referring to family members

Addressing people properly in Japanese

Not only is it important to use the right type of language with the right people, it is also important to address them by the right name. It is also important to address yourself with the proper level of politeness. Japanese is special in that there are so many ways of saying the simple words, "I" and "you". We will go over some of ways to refer to yourself and others.

Referring to yourself

There are many ways to say "I" in Japanese. Some of these words are not as common and others are hopelessly outdated. We will go over the most common ones that are in use today. The usages of all the different words for "I" is separated into two categories: gender and politeness. In other words, there are words that are usually used by males and words that are usually only used by females and they all depend on the social context.

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.

Here is a list of the most common words for "I" and how they are used:

私（わたくし） - Used by both males and females for formal situations.
私（わたし） - Used by both males and females for normal polite situations.
僕 - Used primarily by males from fairly polite to fairly casual situations.
俺 - A very rough version of "I" used almost exclusively by males in very casual situations.
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.
One's own name - Also a very feminine and kind of childish way to refer to oneself.
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

Japanese does not require the use of "you" nearly as much as English does. I hope that the examples with Bob, Alice, and Jim have shown that people refer to other people by their names even when they are directly addressing that person. Another common way to address people is by their title such as 「」、「」、「」, etc. The word 「」 is used to generally mean any person who has significant knowledge and expertise in something. For example, people usually use 「」 when directly addressing doctors or teachers (obviously). You can also include the person's last name such as 「田中」 (teacher Tanaka). In the case where your relationship with the person doesn't involve any title, you can use their name (usually their last name) attached with 「さん」 to show politeness. If calling them by their last name seems a little too polite and distant, the practice of attaching 「さん」 to their first name also exists. More endearing and colloquial versions of 「さん」 include 「くん」 and 「ちゃん」. 「くん」 is usually attached to the name of males who are of equal or lower social position. (For example, my boss sometimes calls me 「キムくん」). 「ちゃん」 is a very endearing way to refer to usually females of equal or lower social position.

Referring to others with "you"

Please do not use 「」 just like you would use the word "you" in English. In directly addressing people, there are three levels of politeness: 1) Using the person's name with the appropriate suffix, 2) Not using anything at all, 3) Using 「」. In fact, by the time you get to three, you're dangerously in the area of being rude. Most of the time, you do not need to use anything at all because you are directly addressing the person. Constantly pounding the listener with "you" every sentence sounds like you are accusing the person of something.

「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.

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」.
君 - Can be a very close and assuming way to address girls (especially by guys). Can also be kind of rude.
お前 - A very rough and coarse way to address someone. Usually used by guys and often changed to 「おめえ」.
あんた - A very assuming and familiar way to address someone. The person using this is maybe miffed off about something.
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.
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

You can use 「」 and 「」 for "he" and "she" respectively. Notice that 「」 and 「」 can also mean "boyfriend" and "girlfriend". So how can you tell which meaning is being used? Context, of course. For example, if someone asks, 「ですか？」 the person is obviously asking if she is you're girlfriend because the question, "Is she she?" doesn't make any sense. Another less commonly used alternative is to say 「」 and 「」 for, well, I'm sure you can guess what they mean.

Referring to family members

Referring to family members is a little more complicated than English. (It could be worse, try learning Korean!) For the purpose of brevity, (since this is a grammar guide and not a vocabulary guide) we will only go over the immediate family. In Japanese, you refer to members of other people's family more politely than your own. This is only when you are talking about members of your own family to others outside the family. For example, you would refer to your own mother as 「」 to people outside your family but you might very well call her 「」 at home within your own family. There is also a distinction between older and younger siblings. The following chart list some of the most common terms for family members. There may also be other possibilities not covered in this chart.

Family member chart
	One's own family	Someone else's family
Parents	両親	ご両親
Mother	母	お母さん
Father	父	お父さん
Wife	妻	奥さん
Husband	夫	ご主人
Older Sister	姉	お姉さん
Older Brother	兄	お兄さん
Younger Sister	妹	妹さん
Younger Brother	弟	弟さん
Son	息子	息子さん
Daughter	娘	娘さん

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

Outline

Questions in polite form
The question marker in casual speech
「か」 used in subordinate clauses
Using question words

Questions in polite form

The question marker is covered here because it is primarily used to clearly indicate a question in polite sentences. While it is entirely possible to express a question even in polite form using just intonation, the question marker is often attached to the very end of the sentence to indicate a question. The question marker is simply the hiragana character 「か」 and you don't need to add a question mark. For previously explained reasons, you must not use the declarative 「だ」 with the question marker.

Example 1

さん：　はですか。- Where is (your) mother?
さん：　はに。- (My) mother went shopping.

Example 2

キムさん：　をにか。 - Go to eat Italian food?
鈴木さん：　。、がです。- Sorry. (My) stomach is a little full.

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

It makes sense to conclude that the question marker would work in exactly the same way in casual speech as it does in polite speech. However, this is not the case. The question marker 「か」 is usually not used with casual speech to make actual questions. It is often used to consider whether something is true or not. Depending on the context and intonation, it can also be used to make rhetorical questions or to express sarcasm. It can sound quite rough so you might want to be careful about using 「か」 for questions in the plain casual form.

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?!

Instead of 「か」, real questions in casual speech are usually asked with the explanatory の particle or nothing at all except for a rise in intonation, as we have already seen in previous sections.

（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

Another use of the question marker is simply grammatical and has nothing to do with the politeness. A question marker attached to the end of a subordinate clause makes a mini-question inside a larger sentence. This allows the speaker to talk about the question. For example, you can talk about the question, "What did I eat today?" In the following examples, the question that is being considered is in red.

（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

While we're on the topic of questions, this is a good time to go over question words (where, who, what, etc.) and what they mean in various contexts. Take a look at what adding the question marker does to the meaning of the words.

Question Words
Word+Question Marker	Meaning
誰か	Someone
何か	Something
いつか	Sometime
どこか	Somewhere
どれか	A certain one from many

As you can see by the following examples, you can treat these words just like any regular nouns.

（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

The same question words in the chart above can be combined with 「も」 in a negative sentence to mean "nobody" （）, "nothing" （）, "nowhere" （）, etc.

「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.

Inclusive Words
Word+も	Meaning
誰も	Nobody (negative only)
何も	Nothing (negative only)
いつも	Always
どこも	Everywhere
どれも	Any and all

（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"

The same question words combined with 「でも」 can be used to mean "any". One thing to be careful about is that 「」 is read as 「なんでも」 and not 「なにでも」

Words for "Any"
Word+でも	Meaning
誰でも	Anybody
何でも	Anything
いつでも	Anytime
どこでも	Anywhere
どれでも	Whichever

（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

Outline

Compound Sentences
Expressing a sequence of states
Expressing a sequence of verbs with the te-form
Expressing reason or causation using 「から」 and 「ので」
Using 「のに」 to mean "despite"
Expressing contradiction using 「が」 and 「けど」
Expressing multiple reasons using 「し」
Expressing multiple actions or states using 「～たりする」

Compound Sentences

In this section, we will learn various ways to combine multiple simple sentences into one complex sentence. For example, we will learn how to chain separate sentences together to express multiple actions or states. In other words, if we have two simple sentences with the same subject, "I ran" and "I ate", we will learn how to group them together to mean, "I ran and ate." We will also learn how to do this with adjectives and nouns. (Ex: He is rich, handsome, and charming.)

Expressing a sequence of states

It is very easy to combine a chain of nouns and adjectives to describe a person or object. For example, in English if we wanted to say, "He is X. He is Y. He is Z." since all three sentences have the same noun, we would usually say, "He is X, Y, and Z." In Japanese, we can do the same thing by conjugating the noun or adjective. The last noun or adjective remains the same as before.

How to chain nouns and adjectives together

Nouns and na-adjectives: Attach 「で」 to the noun or na-adjective.
例）　一般的 → 一般的で
例）　静か → 静かで
I-adjectives and negative noun/adjective: Replace the 「い」 with 「くて」.
※For 「いい」 and 「かっこいい」, the 「い→よ」 exception applies here as well.
例）　狭い → 狭くて
例）　彼女じゃない → 彼女じゃなくて
例）　いい → よくて

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

In a similar fashion, you can express multiple actions. It is usually interpreted as a sequence of event. (I did [X], then I did [Y], then I finally did [Z].) There are two forms: positive and negative. The tense of all the actions is determined by the tense of the last verb.

How to chain verbs together

Positive: Conjugate the verb to its past tense and replace 「た」 with 「て」 or 「だ」 with 「で」. This is often called the te-form even though it could sometimes be 'de' .
Negative: Same as i-adjectives, replace 「い」 with 「くて」.

This rule also works for the polite 「です」 and 「ます」 endings.
例）　学生です → 学生でした → 学生でして
例）　買います → 買いました → 買いまして

Sample conjugations

Past Tense	Te-form
食べた	食べて
行った	行って
した	して
遊んだ	遊んで
飲んだ	飲んで

Negative	Te-form
食べない	食べなくて
行かない	行かなくて
しない	しなくて
遊ばない	遊ばなくて
飲まない	飲まなくて

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」

You can connect two complete sentences using 「から」 to indicate a reason for something. The two sentences are always ordered [reason] から [result]. When the reason is a non-conjugated noun or na-adjective, you must add 「だ」 to explicitly declare the reason in the form of 「(noun/na-adjective)だから」. If you forget to add the declarative 「だ」 to 「から」, it will end up sounding like the 「から」 meaning "from" which was first introduced in Particles 2.

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 slighter 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"

Grammatically, 「のに」 is used exactly the same way as 「ので」. When used to combine two simple sentences together, it means "[Sentence 1] despite the fact that [Sentence 2]." However the order is reversed: [Sentence 2]のに[Sentence 1].

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」

Used in the same manner as 「から」 and 「ので」, 「が」 and 「けど」 also connect two sentences together but this time to express a contradiction. Just like 「から」 the declarative 「だ」 is required for nouns and na-adjectives. And just like 「から」 and 「ので」, the reason or cause can be left out.

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 slighter 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」

When you want to list reasons for multiple states or actions you can do so by adding 「し」 to the end of each subordinate clause. It is very similar to the 「や」 particle except that it lists reasons for verbs and state of being. Again, for states of being, 「だ」 must be used to explicitly declare the state of being for any non-conjugated noun or na-adjective. Let's look at some examples.

（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」

This is the verb version of the 「や」 particle. You can make an example list of verbs among a possible larger list by conjugating each verb into the past tense and adding 「り」. At the end, you need to attach the verb 「」. Just like the 「や」 particle, the tense is determined by the last verb, which in this case will always be 「」 (since you have to attach it at the end).

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.

Rules for stating a list of verbs among a larger list using 「～たりする」

Verbs - Conjugate each verb to the past tense and add 「り」. Finally, add 「する」 at the very end.
例) 食べる、飲む → 食べた、飲んだ → 食べたり、飲んだり → 食べたり、飲んだりする
State of being - Conjugate the noun or adjective for each state of being and add 「り」. Finally, add 「する」 at the very end.
例) 簡単、難しい → 簡単だった、難しかった → 簡単だったり、難しかったり → 簡単だったり、難しかったりする

（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!

Outline

Other uses of the te-form
Using 「～ている」 for enduring states
Enduring state of being rather than enduring state of action
Using 「～てある」 for resultant states
Using the 「～ておく」 form as preparation for the future
Using motion verbs （行く、来る） with the te-form

Other uses of the te-form

The te-form is incredibly useful as it is used widely in many different types of grammatical expressions. We will learn about enduring states with the 「～ている」 and 「～てある」 form. Even though we have learned various conjugations for verbs, they have all been one-time actions. We will now go over how one would say, for example, "I am running." We will also learn how to perform an action for the future using the 「～ておく」 expression and to express directions of actions using 「～ていく」 and 「～てくる」.

Using 「～ている」 for enduring states

We already know how to express a state of being using 「です」, 「だ」, etc. However, it only indicates a one-time thing; you are something or not. This grammar, however, describes a continuing state of an action verb. This usually translates to the gerund in English except for a few exceptions, which we will examine later. We can make good use of the te-form we learned in the last section because the only thing to do left to do is add 「」! You can then treat the result as a regular ru-verb.

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.

Using 「～ている」 for enduring states

To describe a continuing action, first conjugate the verb to the te-form and then attach the verb 「いる」. The entire result conjugates as a ru-verb.
例）　食べる → 食べて → 食べている
例）　読む → 読んで → 読んでいる

The result conjugates as a ru-verb regardless of what the original verb is
	Positive		Negative
Non-Past	読んでいる	reading	読んでいない	is not reading
Past	読んでいた	was reading	読んでいなかった	was not reading

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

There are certain cases where an enduring state doesn't translate into the gerund form. In fact, there is a ambiguity in whether one is in a state of doing an action versus being in a state that resulted from some action. This is usually decided by context and common practices. For example, although 「」 can technically mean someone is in a chapel currently getting married, it is usually used to refer to someone who is already married and is currently in that married state. We'll now discuss some common verbs that often cause this type of confusion for learners of Japanese.

「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

Appropriately enough, just like there is an 「」 to go with 「」, there is a 「～てある」 form that also has a special meaning. By replacing 「」 with 「」, instead of a continuing action, it becomes a resultant state after the action has already taken place. Usually, this expression is used to explain that something is in a state of completion. The completed action also carries a nuance of being completed in preparation for something else.

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

While 「～てある」 carries a nuance of a completed action in preparation for something else, 「～ておく」 explicitly states that the action is done (or will be done) with the future in mind. Imagine this: you have made a delicious pie and you're going to place it on the window sill for it to cool so that you can eat it later. This image might help explain why the verb 「」（）, meaning "to place", can be used to describe a preparation for the future. (It's just too bad that pies on window sills always seem to go through some kind of mishap especially in cartoons.) While 「」 by itself is written in kanji, it is customary to use hiragana when it comes attached to a conjugated verb (such as the te-form).

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

You can also use the motion verb "to go" （）and "to come" with the te-form, to show that an action is oriented toward or from someplace. The most common and useful example of this the verb 「」 (to hold). While 「」 means you are in a state of holding something (in possession of), when the 「」 is replaced with 「」 or 「」, it means you are taking or bringing something. Of course, the conjugation is the same as the regular 「」 and 「」.

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.

Outline

Expressing the ability to do something
The Potential Form
Potential forms do not have direct objects
Are 「見える」 and 「聞こえる」 exceptions?
「ある」, yet another exception

Expressing the ability to do something

In Japanese, the ability to do a certain action is expressed by conjugating the verb rather than adding a word such as the words "can" or "able to" in the case of English. All verbs conjugated into the potential form become a ru-verb.

The Potential Form

Once again, the conjugation rules can be split into three major groups: ru-verbs, u-verbs, and exception verbs. However, the potential form of the verb 「」 (meaning "to do") is a special exception because it becomes a completely different verb: 「」（）

Rules for creating potential form

ru-verbs - Replace the 「る」with 「られる」.
（例）　見る → 見られる
u-verbs - Change the last character from a / u / vowel sound to the equivalent / e / vowel sound and add 「る」.
（例）　遊ぶ → 遊べ → 遊べる
Exceptions - 「する」 becomes 「できる」 and 「くる」 becomes 「こられる」.

※Remember that all potential verbs become ru-verbs.

Sample ru-verbs
Plain	Potential
食べる	食べられる
着る	着られる
信じる	信じられる
寝る	寝られる
起きる	起きられる
出る	出られる
掛ける	掛けられる
調べる	調べられる

Sample u-verbs
Plain	Potential	ローマ字	ローマ字 (Pot.)
話す	話せる	hanasu	hanaseru
書く	書ける	kaku	kakeru
遊ぶ	遊べる	asobu	asoberu
待つ	待てる	matu	materu
飲む	飲める	nomu	nomeru
取る	取れる	toru	toreru
死ぬ	死ねる	shinu	shineru
買う	買える	kau	kaeru

Exception Verbs
Plain	Potential
する	できる
くる	こられる

It is also possible to just add 「れる」 instead of the full 「られる」 for ru-verbs. For example, 「食べる」 becomes 「食べれる」 instead of 「食べられる」. I suggest learning the official 「られる」 conjugation first because laziness can be a hard habit to break and the shorter version, though common, is considered to be slang.

Examples

（１）　漢字は書けますか？
- Can you write kanji?

（２）　残念だが、今週末は行けない。
- It's unfortunate, but can't go this weekend.

（３）　もう信じられない。
- I can't believe it already.

Potential forms do not have direct objects

The potential form indicates that something is possible but no actual action is actually taken. While the potential form remains a verb, since it is describing the state of something you must not use the direct object 「を」 as you have done with regular verbs. For example the following sentences are incorrect.

（誤）　富士山を登れた。
（誤）　重い荷物を持てます。

Here are the corrected versions:
（正）　富士山が登れた。- Was able to climb Fuji-san.
（正）　重い荷物が持てます。- Am able to hold heavy baggage.
Of course, the 「は」 or 「も」 particle is also possible depending on what you want to say.

Are 「見える」 and 「聞こえる」 exceptions?

There are two verbs 「」 and 「」 that mean that something is visible and audible, respectively. When you want to say that you can see or hear something, you'll want to use these verbs. If however, you wanted to say that you were given the opportunity to see or hear something, you would use the regular potential form. However, in this case, it is more common to use the type of expression as seen in example （３）.

Examples

（１）　今日は晴れて、富士山が見える。
- It cleared up today and Fuji-san is visible.

（２）　友達のおかげで、映画はただで見られた。
- Thanks to [my] friend, [I] was able to watch the movie for free.

（３）　友達のおかげで、映画をただで見ることができた。
- Thanks to [my] friend, [I] was able to watch the movie for free.

You can see that （３） uses the generic noun for an event to say literally, "The event of seeing movie was able to be done." which essentially means the same thing as 「見られる」. As already explained in Particles 3, you can also just use generic noun substitution to substitute for 「こと」.

（１）　友達のおかげで、映画を見るのができた。

Here's some more examples using 「聞く」, can you tell the difference? Notice that 「聞こえる」 always means "audible" and never "able to ask".

（１）　久しぶりに彼の声が聞けた。
- I was able to hear his voice for the first time in a long time.

（２）　周りがうるさくて、彼が言っていることがあんまり聞こえなかった
- The surroundings were noisy and I couldn't hear what he was saying very well。

「ある」, yet another exception

You can say that something has a possibility of existing by combining 「」 and the verb 「」 to produce 「」. This essentially means 「が」 except that nobody actually says that, they just use 「」. This verb is very curious in that it can be read as either 「」 or 「」, however; all the other conjugations such as 「」、「」、and 「」 only have one possible reading using 「え」.

Examples

（１）　そんなことはありうる。
- That kind of situation/event is possible (lit: can exist).

（２）　そんなことはありえる。
- That kind of situation/event is possible (lit: can exist).

（３）　そんなことはありえない。
- That kind of situation/event is not possible (lit: cannot exist).

（４）　彼が寝坊したこともありうるね。
- It's also possible that he overslept. (lit: The event that he overslept also possibly exists.)

（５）　それは、ありえない話だよ。
- That's an impossible story/scenario. (lit: That story/scenario cannot exist.)

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/6
Revised examples and translations (2006/9/6)

This lesson is very becoming for doing

Outline

Using 「する」 and 「なる」 with the 「に」 particle
Using 「なる」 and 「する」 for nouns and na-adjectives
Using 「なる」 with i-adjectives
Using 「なる」 and 「する」 with verbs

Using 「する」 and 「なる」 with the 「に」 particle

We can use the verbs 「」 and 「」 in conjunction with the 「に」 particle to make various useful expressions. We are used to using the object particle with 「」 because something is usually done to something else. We will see how the meaning changes when we change the particle to 「に」. As for 「」, it is always used with the 「に」 particle because "becoming" is not an action done to something else but rather a target of change. The only grammatical point of interest here is using 「」 with i-adjectives and verbs.

Using 「なる」 and 「する」 for nouns and na-adjectives

As already explained, using 「」 with nouns and na-adjectives presents nothing new and acts pretty much the way you'd expect.

（１）　彼の日本語が上手になった。
- His Japanese has become skillful.

（２）　私は医者になった。
- I became a doctor.

（３）　私は有名な人になる。
- I will become a famous person.

For adjectives, using the verb 「する」 with the 「に」 particle is just a review back to the lesson on adverbs. However, for nouns, when you use the verb 「する」 with the 「に」 particle, it means that you are going to do things toward something. This changes the meaning of 「する」 to mean, "to decide on [X]". This is a common expression to use, for instance, when you are ordering items on a menu.

（１）　私は、ハンバーガーとサラダにします。
- I'll have the hamburger and salad. (lit: I'll do toward hamburger and salad.)

（２）　他にいいものがたくさんあるけど、やっぱりこれにする。
- There are a lot of other good things, but as I thought, I'll go with this one.

If you think this expression is strange, think about the English expression, "I'll go with the hamburger." Exactly where are you going with the hamburger?

Using 「なる」 with i-adjectives

Because the 「に」 particle is a target particle that is used for nouns and by extension na-adjectives, we need to use something else to show that something is becoming an i-adjective. Since "becoming" expresses a change in state, it makes sense to describe this process using an adverb. In fact, you'll notice that we were already using adverbs (of a sort) in the previous section by using 「に」 with na-adjectives.

（１）　去年から背が高くなったね。
- Your height has gotten taller from last year, huh?

（２）　運動しているから、強くなる。
- I will become stronger because I am exercising.

（３）　勉強をたくさんしたから、頭がよくなった。
- Since I studied a lot, I became smarter. (lit: head became better)

Using 「なる」 and 「する」 with verbs

You may be wondering how to use 「」 and 「」 with verbs since there's no way to directly modify a verb with another verb. The simple solution is to add a generic noun such as a generic event: （） or an appearance/manner: （）. These nouns don't refer to anything specific and are used to describe something else. In this case, they allow us to describe verbs in the same manner as nouns. Here are some examples of how to use these generic nouns with 「」 and 「」.

（１）　海外に行くことになった。
- It's been decided that I will go abroad. (lit: It became the event of going abroad.)

（２）　毎日、肉を食べるようになった。
- It seems like I started eating meat everyday. (lit: It became the appearance of eating meat everyday.)

（３）　海外に行くことにした。
- I decided I will go abroad. (lit: I did toward the event of going abroad.)

（４）　毎日、肉を食べるようにする。
- I will try to eat meat everyday. (lit: I will do toward the manner of eating meat everyday.)

You can modify a verb with 「なる」 or 「する」 by first making it into a noun clause and then treating it just like a regular noun. Pretty clever, huh? I hope the literal translations give you a sense of why the example sentences mean what they do. For example, in （４）「～ようにする」 translates into "to make an effort toward..." but in Japanese, it's really only a target towards acting in a certain manner.

Since potential verbs describe a state of feasibility rather than an action (remember, that's why the 「を」 particle couldn't be used), it is often used in conjunction with 「～ようになる」 to describe a change in manner to a state of feasibility. Let's take this opportunity to get some potential conjugation practice in.

（１）　日本に来て、寿司が食べられるようになった。
- After coming to Japan, I became able to eat sushi.

（２）　一年間練習したから、ピアノが弾けるようになった。
- Because I practiced for one year, I became able to play the piano.

（３）　地下に入って、富士山が見えなくなった。
- After going underground, Fuji-san became not visible.

Conditionals

Outline

How to say "if" in Japanese
Expressing natural consequence using 「と」
Contextual conditionals using 「なら（ば）」
General conditionals using 「ば」
Past conditional using 「たら（ば）」
How does 「もし」 fit into all of this?

How to say "if" in Japanese

This whole section is dedicated to learning how to say "if" in Japanese. Oh, if only it was as simple as English. In Japanese, there's four (count them, four) ways to say "if"! Thankfully, the conjugations are sparse and easy especially since you don't have to deal with tenses.

Expressing natural consequence using 「と」

We'll first cover the simplest type of "if" which is the natural consequence conditional. This means that if [X] happens, [Y] will happen as a natural consequence. No question about it. If I drop a ball, it will fall to the ground. If I turn off the lights at night, it will get dark. We can express this type of condition in the following format.

Rules for using the conditional 「と」

Attach 「と」 to the condition followed by the result that would occur should the condition be satisfied
= [Condition] + と + [Result]
State of being must be made explicit
= [State of Being] + だと + [Result]

Examples

（１）　ボールを落すと落ちる。
- If you drop the ball, it will fall.

（２）　電気を消すと暗くなる。
- If you turn off the lights, it will get dark.

These examples are designed to show how 「と」 is used to express natural consequence. However, even if the statement isn't a natural consequence in itself, the 「と」 will tell the audience that it is nevertheless expected to be a natural consequence.

（１）　学校に行かないと友達と会えないよ。
- If you don't go to school, you can't meet your friends.

（２）　たくさん食べると太るよ。
- If you eat a lot, you will get fat, for sure.

（３）　先生だと、きっと年上なんじゃないですか？
- If he's a teacher, he must be older for sure, right?

The "for sure" part is the implied meaning supplied by the 「と」. The speaker is saying that the following condition will occur in that situation, no matter what. As you can see from the last example, if the condition is a state-of-being, it must be expressed so explicitly using 「だ」. This applies to all non-conjugated nouns and na-adjectives as I'm sure you're used to by now. This will also help prevent confusion with other types of 「と」.

Contextual conditionals using 「なら（ば）」

Another relatively easy to understand type of "if" is the contextual conditional. You can use this particle to express what will happen given a certain context. For example, if you wanted to say, "Well, if everybody's going, I'm going too" you would use the 「なら」 conditional because you are saying that you will go in the context of everybody else going. The contextual conditional always requires a context in which the conditional occurs. For instance, you would use it for saying things like, "If that's what you are talking about..." or "If that's the case, then..."

In a sense, you are explaining what would occur if you assume a certain condition is satisfied. In other words, you are saying "if given a certain context, here is what will happen." You will see this reflected in the English translations as the phrase "if given" in the examples.

The 「なら」 is attached to the context in which the conditional occurs. The format is the same as the 「と」 conditional, however, you must not attach the declarative 「だ」.

Rules for using the contextual conditional 「なら」

Attach 「なら」 to the context in which the conditional would occur
= [Assumed Context] + なら + [Result]
You must not attach the declarative 「だ」.

Examples

（１）　みんなが行くなら私も行く。
- If given that everybody is going, then I'll go too.

（２）　アリスさんが言うなら問題ないよ。
- If given that Alice-san says so, there's no problem.

Example Dialogue

アリス）　図書館はどこですか。
- Where is the library?

ボブ）　図書館なら、あそこです。
- If given that you're talking about the library, then it's over there.

The following is incorrect.
（誤）　図書館だならあそこです。

You can also decide to use 「ならば」 instead of just 「なら」. This means exactly the same thing except that it has a more formal nuance.

General conditionals using 「ば」

The next type of conditional just expresses a regular "if" condition without any assumptions or embedded meanings. However, it cannot be used with nouns and na-adjectives. Conjugation-wise, the 「ば」 conditional is fairly easy. For verbs, like the potential form, you change the last / u / vowel sound to an / e / vowel sound but instead of attaching 「る」, you attach 「ば」. This rule also applies to ru-verbs. For i-adjectives and negatives ending in 「ない」, you take off the last 「い」 and add 「ければ」.

Conjugation Rules for 「ば」

For verbs, just like the potential form, change the last / u / vowel sound to the equivalent / e / vowel sound and attach 「ば」
（例）食べる　→　食べれ → 食べれば
（例）待つ　→　待て → 待てば
For i-adjectives or negatives ending in 「ない」, drop the last 「い」 and attach 「ければ」.
（例）おかしい　→　おかしければ
（例）ない　→　なければ

Examples

（１）　友達に会えれば、買い物に行きます。
- If I can meet with my friend, we will go shopping.

（２）　お金があればいいね。
- If I had money, it would be good, huh?

（３）　楽しければ、私も行く。
- If it's fun, I'll go too.

（４）　楽しくなければ、私も行かない。
- If it's not fun, I'll also not go.

（５）　食べなければ病気になるよ。
- If you don't eat, you will become sick.

Past conditional using 「たら（ば）」

I call this next conditional the past conditional because it is produced by taking the past tense and just adding 「ら」. It is commonly called the 「たら」 conditional because all past-tense ends with 「た」 and so it always becomes 「たら」. Like the 「ば」 conditional, it is also a general conditional except it can also be used with nouns and na-adjectives.

Conjugation Rule for 「たら（ば）」

First change the noun, adjective, or verb to its past tense and attach 「ら」
（例）自動　→　自動だった → 自動だったら
（例）待つ　→　待った → 待ったら
（例）忙しい　→　忙しかった → 忙しかったら

Examples

（１）　暇だったら、遊びに行くよ。
- If I am free, I will go play.

（２）　学生だったら、学生割引で買えます。
- If you're a student, you can buy with a student discount.

For i-adjectives and verbs, it is very difficult to differentiate between the two types of conditionals, and you can make life easier for yourself by considering them to be the same. However, if you must insist, I searched around the web for an explanation of the difference that I can agree with. Here is the original text. Basically, the 「たら」 conditional focuses on what happens after the condition. This is another reason why I call this the past conditional because the condition is "in the past" (not literally) and we're interested in the result not the condition. The 「ば」 conditional, on the other hand, focuses on the conditional part.

Let's compare the difference in nuance.
（A）　友達に会えれば、買い物に行きます。- We will go shopping, if I can meet with my friend.
（B）　友達に会えたら、買い物に行きます。- If I can meet with my friend, we will go shopping.

（A）　お金があればいいね。- It would be good, if I had money, huh?
（B）　お金があったらいいね。- If I had money, it would be good, huh?

Going by the context, the 「～たら」 form sounds more natural for both examples because it doesn't seem like we're really focusing on the condition itself. We're probably more interested in what's going to happen once we meet the friend or how nice it would be if we had money.

The past conditional is the only type of conditional where the result can be in the past. It may seem strange to have an "if" when the result has already taken place. Indeed, in this usage, there really is no "if", it's just a way of expressing surprise at the result of the condition. This has little to do with conditionals but it is explained here because the grammatical structure is the same.

（１）　家に帰ったら、誰もいなかった。
- When I went home, there was no one there. (unexpected result)

（２）　アメリカに行ったら、たくさん太りました。
- As a result of going to America, I got really fat. (unexpected result)

You can also use 「たらば」 instead of 「たら」. Similar to 「ならば」, this means exactly the same thing except that it has a more formal nuance.

How does 「もし」 fit into all of this?

Some of you may be aware of the word 「」 which means "if" and may be wondering how it fits into all of this. Well, if you want to say a conditional, you need to use one of the conditionals discussed above. 「」 is really a supplement to add a sense of uncertainty on whether the condition is true. For instance, you might use it when you want to make an invitation and you don't want to presume like the following example.

（１）　もしよかったら、映画を観に行きますか？
- If by any chance it's ok with you, go to watch movie?

（２）　もし時間がないなら、明日でもいいよ。
- If given that there's no time, tomorrow is fine as well. (Not certain whether there is no time)

This page has last been revised on 2006/9/14

Things that must be done (or not)

Outline

When there's something that must or must not be done
Using 「だめ」, 「いけない」, and 「ならない」 for things that must not be done
Expressing things that must be done
Various short-cuts for the lazy
Saying something is ok to do or not do

When there's something that must or must not be done

In life, there are things that we must or must not do whether it's taking out the trash or doing our homework. We will cover how to say this in Japanese because it is a useful expression and it also ties in well with the previous section. We will also learn how to the say the expression, "You don't have to..." to finish off this section.

Using 「だめ」, 「いけない」, and 「ならない」 for things that must not be done

If you don't know what 「」（） means, I suggest looking it up in WWWJDIC and clicking on the [Ex] link to see the example sentences. It essentially means "no good" but carefully check out the example sentences because it can be used in many different ways. The other two key words in this section are 「」 and 「ならない」 and they have essentially the same basic meaning as 「」. However, while 「」 can be used by itself, 「ならない」 must only be used in the grammar presented here. In addition, while 「」 and 「ならない」 conjugate like i-adjectives they are not actual adjectives. Let's learn how to use these words to express things that must not be done.

How to say: Must not [verb]

Take the te-form of the verb, add the 「は」 (wa) particle and finally attach either 「だめ」、「いけない」、or 「ならない」.
例）入る → 入って + は + だめ／いけない／ならない = 入ってはだめ／入ってはいけない／入ってはならない

（１）　ここに入ってはいけません。
- You must not enter here.

（２）　それを食べてはだめ！
- You can't (must not) eat that!

（３）　夜、遅くまで電話してはならない。
- You must not use the phone until late at night.

（４）　早く寝てはなりませんでした。
- Wasn't allowed to sleep early.

The difference between 「だめ」、「いけない」、and 「ならない」 is that, first of all, 「だめ」 is casual. While 「いけない」 and 「ならない」 are basically identical, 「ならない」 is generally more for things that apply to more than one person like rules and policies.

Expressing things that must be done

You may have predicted that the opposite of "You must not do" would use 「」 or 「」 because they look like the positive version of 「」 and 「ならない」. But I already pointed out that 「」 and 「ならない」 must always be negative, so this is not correct. In actuality, we still use the same 「／／ならない」 but instead we take the opposite of the verb that goes in front of it. This double negative can be kind of confusing at first but you will get used to it with practice. There are three ways to conjugate the verb before adding 「／／ならない」 and two of them involve conditionals so aren't you glad that you just learned conditionals in the previous section?

How to say: Must [verb]

Negative te-form + 「は」 (wa) particle + だめ／いけない／ならない
Negative verb + 「と」 conditional + だめ／いけない／ならない
Negative verb + 「ば」 conditional + だめ／いけない／ならない

●The first method is the same as the "must not do" grammar form except that we simply negated the verb.

（１）　毎日学校に行かなくてはなりません。- Must go to school everyday.

（２）　宿題をしなくてはいけなかった。- Had to do homework.

●The second method uses the natural conditional that we learned in the last lesson. Literally, it means if you don't do something, then it automatically leads to the fact that it is no good. (In other words, you must do it.) However, people tend to use it for situations beyond the natural consequence characterization that we learned from the last section because it's shorter and easier to use than the other two types of grammar.

（１）　毎日学校に行かないとだめです。- Must go to school everyday.

（２）　宿題をしないといけない。- Have to do homework.

●The third method is similar to the second except that it uses a different type of conditional as explained in the last lesson. With the 「ば」 conditional, it can be used for a wider range of situations. Note that since the verb is always negative, for the 「ば」 conditional, we will always be removing the last 「い」 and adding 「ければ」.

（１）　毎日学校に行かなければいけません。 - Must go to school everyday.

（２）　宿題をしなければだめだった。- Had to do homework.

It may seem like I just breezed through a whole lot of material because there are three grammar forms and 「だめ／いけない／ならない」 adding up to nine possible combinations (3x3). However, some combinations are more common than others but I did not explicitly point out which were more common because any combination is technically correct and going over style would merely confuse at this point. Also, keep in mind that there is nothing essentially new in terms of conjugation rules. We already covered conditionals in the last lesson and adding the wa particle to the te-form in the beginning of this section.

※ Reality Check

Although we spent the last section explaining 「～なければ」 and 「～なくては」, the reality is that because they are so long, they are practically never used in real conversations. While they are often used in a written conetext, in actual speech, people usually use the 「と」 conditional or the various shortcuts described below. In casual speech, the 「と」 conditional is the most prevalent type of conditional. Though I explained in depth the meaning associated with the 「と」 conditional, you have to take it with a grain of salt here because people are inherently lazy.

Various short-cuts for the lazy

You may have been grumbling and complaining about how long most of the expressions are just to say you must do something. You can end up with up to eight additional syllables just to say "I have to..."!

Well, others have thought the same before and people usually use short abbreviated versions of 「なくては」 and 「なければ」 in casual speech. Teachers are often reluctant to teach these overly familiar expressions because they are so much easier to use which is bad for times when they might not be appropriate. But, on the other hand, if you don't learn casual expressions, it makes it difficult to understand your friends (or would-be friends if you only knew how to speak less stiffly!). So here they are but take care to properly practice the longer forms so that you will be able to use them for the appropriate occasions.

Casual abbreviations for things that must be done

Simply replace 「なくて」 with 「なくちゃ」
Simply replace 「なければ」 with 「なきゃ」

Right now, you may be saying, "What the?" because the "abbreviations" are about the same length as what we've already covered. The secret here is that, unlike the expressions we learned so far, you can just leave the 「だめ／いけない／ならない」 part out altogether!

（１）　勉強しなくちゃ。 - Gotta study.
（２）　ご飯を食べなきゃ。 - Gotta eat.

The 「と」 conditional is also used by itself to imply 「だめ／いけない／ならない」.
（１）　学校に行かないと。－Gotta go to school.

There is another 「ちゃ」 abbr

A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

The problem with conventional textbooks

A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar

What is not covered in this guide?

Suggestions

Requirements

The Japanese Writing System

The Alphabets

Intonation

ひらがな

What is Hiragana?

The Muddied Sounds

The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」

The Small 「つ」

The Long Vowel Sound

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

アイ・ラブ・カタカナ！

What is Katakana?

The Long Vowel Sound

The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」

Some examples of words in katakana

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

English to Katakana Exercise

Now you want me to learn Chinese too??

What is Kanji?

Learning Kanji

Reading Kanji

Why Kanji?

Grammatical Foundations

Basic Grammatical Structures

Because I said so!

Declaring something is so and so using 「だ」

Conjugating to the negative state-of-being

Examples

Conjugating for the past state-of-being

To sum up

State-of-Being Practice Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Conjugation Exercise 1

Conjugation Exercise 2

Question Answer Exercise

Practical Particular Particles

Defining grammatical functions with particles

The 「は」 topic particle

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

The 「も」 inclusive topic particle

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

The 「が」 identifier particle

Example 1

Example 2

「は、も、が」 Particle Exercises

Vocabulary used in this section

Basic Particle Exercise with 「は」

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」

Beautiful, is an Adjective

Properties of Adjectives

The na-adjective

The i-adjective

An annoying exception

Examples

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