Japanese verbs are easy. You see, there are five vowels in Japanese, A, I, U, E, O, and all verbs end on the U row kana. In order to conjugate any of these verbs, you simply shift the U into a different row. For example, 飲, meaning drink, can be 飲, 飲, 飲, or 飲.
However, Unlike English conjugations that directly change the verb's meaning, the main purpose of conjugations in Japanese is to allow you to attach helper verbs and helper adjectives. For example, shifting the verb 飲 into its i stem, 飲, allows you to attach the helper verb ます to make the word formal, or the helper adjective たい to imply desire. This means that the entirety of 飲ます should not be seen as a single conjugation.
Instead, 飲 is the conjugation, or ます, is simply another helper verb. This means that in reality, Japanese only has five conjugations, four of which we'll cover in this video. And before we progress any further, if anyone has any doubts about this being the way verbs work in Japanese, a simple Google search of 国語動詞活用 will show you plenty of examples of how Japanese people really learn about verb conjugations. To start us off, let's take a look at the most important conjugation, the E-stem. As with every other stem, there are a handful of helper verbs and adjectives that only the E-stem can take.
However, unlike every other stem, the E-stem can also attach to basically every other word. This power of the E-stem is also why it's known as the 電用形 in Japanese, the connective use form. And this is the most important stem because we see it so often in daily life. For example, if I wanted to say that I want to do something, I would use the helper adjective, tai. Since tai can only attach to the e-stem, every single godan verb would follow the exact same rule.
飲む to To drink would become 飲 plus たい. 使う to use would become 使い plus たい. 話す to speak becomes 話 plus たい.
Okay, but with the verb 食べる, why do we say 食べたい not 食べりたい? Well, that's because 食べる is an 一段 verb, not a 五段 verb. If you don't know how to tell the difference yet, click on this video to learn how now.
The e-stem can also attach to regular 文字. words that aren't helper verbs and adjectives. For example, 飲みもの, the e-stem of 飲む, while もの is the noun meaning thing.
So drink thing, in other words, a beverage. 使え方, the e-stem of 使う, use. 方, a noun meaning way.
Altogether, it's the way of using something. 話し合う, the e-stem of 話す, と. While 会う is another verb that means to meet.
So to talk and meet together means to discuss. There is one final use of the e-stem and that is 飲み物. is to nominalize a word. In other words, to turn a verb into a noun.
For example, the verb 休む meaning the action to rest. Changing it into its e-stem gives us 休み which means a rest. And if you've ever watched any school-related anime, you would have surely heard the term 夏休み meaning summer break or summer vacation.
As you can see, it is through and through. A noun. Oh, and by the way, the tool that I'm using here automatically underlines all the words that I don't know, which in this case is just 2%. I can batch create Anki cards with all these words, including the definition, reading, pitch, sentence and audio, and screenshot.
All within a few minutes just by using the sponsor of this video, Migaku. Click this video up here to learn how to use Migaku or scan this QR code to get your second month off Migaku for free. Next, let's take a look at the A-STEM. Fortunately, it's a lot easier because it only takes a handful of helper adjectives and verbs. Starting with anything negative, you can simply attach ない, ず, or ぬ.
For example, 知る means to know. If I wanted to say, I do not know, I would change 知る into its A-stem 知ら, then add ない, 知らない. And to say without knowing, I would add ず, so 知らず.
And a very old-fashioned way of saying 知らない is 知らぬ, that's the same thing. The aforementioned 飲む becomes 飲まない, don't drink. drink, 飲まず without drinking, or 飲まぬ same as 飲まない.
Ichidan verbs like 食べる do what they always do, simply drop the る so you would get 食べない, 食べず or 食べぬ. Oh, one more thing, if the verb ends on an う, you do not change it into a あ, you change it into a は. The reason it's like this is just because it's an ancient relic of old Japanese. This by the way is the one and single only exception in this entire system.
Onto the あ, you can also attach the receptive helper verb 出るだれる. as well as the helper causative verb, するさせる Both of these deserve a video of their own, which I'll link up here once it's done. But the main gist of it is that the receptive れるだれる indicates that the subject is receiving a certain action.
For example, to say that the dog drank water, where the dog is the subject, we can say 犬が水を飲んだ 飲んだ being the past tense of 飲む However, we can also say the water got drunk by the dog. In this case, Water is the subject and it is getting drunk. So because it is receiving an action We have to use the receptive れる, られる.
水が犬に飲まれ た In this case, 水 is the subject because it is marked by が, and the main engine of the sentence is the verb れた, which is the past tense of れた. Because it is a verb-ending sentence, this is an A does B sentence, where the water does get. What does it get?
It gets drunk by the dog. For Ichiran verbs, instead of attaching れた, we will attach られた. So to say that you got eaten, you would not say 食べれた.
You would say 食べられた. The causative せるさせる is also very similar. The short of it is, if I want to say that I make someone do something, or let someone do something, or in any way allow or cause someone to do something, I will use せるさせる. For example, 薬を飲む simply means to drink medicine, but 薬を飲ませる means to make someone drink medicine. Obviously, for Ichidan verbs, you would use させる instead of せる, so たべさせる instead of たべせる.
If that's still a bit confusing, don't worry about it for now. This video is a wide overview of all the tools in the workshop, not necessarily how to use each tool in detail. Next, let's take a look at the 得 stem.
The first use of the 得 stem is to turn something into a command. So for example, if we turn 飲む into 飲め, 飲め is the command to drink. Similarly, turning 使う, use into 使え, you are commanding someone to use something.
And in anime, you hear this a lot, 死ぬ. die turns into 死ね go die or the command to die. For Ichiran verbs, it's a little bit different. You can't just leave it blank. You either have to attach 夜 or more commonly 夜.
So for example, 起きる becomes 起きろ as in the command to tell someone to wake up. The ASTEM has one more use and that is to turn the verb into a hypothetical. There are two ways to do this and the first way is to use the particle 場. This creates a conditional statement.
So for example, if I say 飲めば, I'm saying if drink. 使えば if use. 話 せば if speak.
一段 verbs are again a little bit different. You have to use れば instead of just は. So 食べれば is if eat.
起きれば is if wake up. The second way to create a hypothetical is to use the helper verb る. Yes, the single kana る is in fact a verb as can be backed up with the Japanese dictionary.
When you attach a る to the end of an え stem, it becomes the potential form, basically saying that you can do something. For example, 一段 verbs being a little bit special as always, do not take る, it takes られる, which, if you've been paying attention, causes a problem because that's exactly the same as the receptive られる. This means that taberareru can either mean the receptive got eaten or the potential can eat or is edible.
This is not really as confusing as it sounds because it's similar in English You don't really get confused between to to and to furthermore There has been a recent phenomenon that affects only Ichidan verbs called da nuki or da removal This is particularly common with young people and it basically removes the da from the potential form So now instead of taberareru having two meanings this now strictly means the receptive form while taberareru is now strictly the potential form and finally we get to the last stem the all STEM. Fortunately, the O stem is very easy as it only takes the helper verb う. Yes, う by itself is also a verb.
Doing this turns the verb into its volitional form. In other words, when you want to say, Let's do something. For example, let's drink is 飲もう.
Let's use is 使おう. Let's talk is 話そう. Ichidan verbs want to take 用 instead of just う. So, let's eat is not 食べう, it's 食べよう. Okay, so now that we've gone over every single step, I feel that it is imperative to explain why I said we should not treat this entire thing as one single conjugation But instead learn that this is the conjugation and this is a separate verb or adjective And there are two reasons for this the first being when we start to combine different forms together This makes a lot more sense.
For example, if I wanted to say that I was Not made to drink something. I would first have to start with the verb 飲む, then change it into causative because I was made to do something, then change it into receptive because I'm the one receiving that order, then change it into negative because it was not made to do something, then change it into past tense because that's the tense I chose. Now, it sounds like a mouthful, but it can actually be accomplished pretty easily.
So first, we start off with the plain form. Next, we need to attach the causative sitter. And how do we do this? That's right, we have to turn this into its AC. stem.
So we can simply change this into ma, then add sitter. This gives us nomasitter. But how do we turn this into receptive? Well, if we treat sitter as an individual verb, which it is by the way, according to the Japanese dictionaries, then we can also understand that sitter is an ichidan verb because it ends on iru. As such, to turn sitter into receptive, we simply cut off the iru.
So this gives us da, iru. Because remember, Ichidan verbs don't just take 出る, it has to take 出る. Okay, so now that we have another verb here, 出る, how do we turn this into negative? Well look again, how does this end? 出る, meaning this is also an Ichidan verb.
We can simply cut off the る and add ない to turn it into negative. And finally, to turn the adjective ない into past tense, it's something that I haven't covered in this video, but basically we just turn this into なかった. As you can see, we can simply break this down into one, two, three, four, and five steps.
It is 100% logical and shows the Lego-like structure of the Japanese language. The second reason relates to this ancient video that I made in the past explaining how Japanese only has two types of sentences, and how the end of a sentence changes what type of sentence it is. So if we take a look at these two sentences, we can discover an oddity here.
You see in the first sentence, it ends on the verb 飲む. Therefore, it is an A does B sentence. And the O particle is the direct object of the verb 飲む.
So A does B, subject does verb. What is the subject? Subject here is marked as zero ga, so it is it.
It does drink. What does it drink? It drinks beer. However, in the second sentence, it ends on the adjective 体, meaning it is an A is B sentence.
And so in this scenario, the O particle makes no sense because there is no verb to attach to. That is unless you understand that the 飲 and the 体 are separated. In this way, the O particle can attach to the 飲 while the 体 stays as the engine of the sentence.
Which means that ビールを飲みたい is an entirely valid grammatically correct sentence. and is not an exception to any of the core rules. It is simply said less commonly than ビールが飲みたい To learn more about the O particle, the adjective 体, and subjectivity in Japanese, click on this video up here.
Finally, if you've been doing your own research, you would have also found this chart that Japanese people use. This system wants to call both the O stem and the A stem as 未然形 So if you ask someone, where do I put ない? and they tell you 未然形 they are basically saying that you can say normal 9, but you cannot.
In other words, this system is flawed and we should stop using it. To put everything you've learned into practice, click on the video on the left to find out how to use this website called Don's Japanese Conjugation Drill, and if you want to learn about the 5th stem, the te form, click on the video on the right.