600 Basic Japanese Verbs Pdf Free Download
Kou Quintana
There are 898 Pokmon species combined. If you think about it, 100 basic Japanese verbs (otherwise known as どうしor 動詞) is less than one-tenth of them. How many of them do you know, and how often will you use them in daily Japanese conversations (the verbs, not the Pokmon)?
Want to learn Japanese from anywhere in the world? We have self-study courses (including a free 30-day hiragana challenge) made by our professional instructors, and you can browse them all here.
Japanese speakers like to keep things short and concise. Unlike English, the Japanese language only needs at least one verb to make a complete sentence. If both the subject and object are obvious, omitting them is valid.
There are hundreds of different verbs that are used in language, but this is a basic list that can help you get started understanding how to conjugate Japanese verbs. The more you study, the more verbs you can add to your vocabulary.
In Japanese, there are only three verb groups and 14 different conjugation forms, which can make the learning process a little more straightforward. There are also two different ways to conjugate Japanese verbs, either formally (masu-form) or casually (plain form).
To conjugate Ru-verbs in the present polite form, you will need to drop the る and add ます. Therefore, if you want to say someone eats, you will change the characters 食べる (taberu) to 食べます (tabemasu). Present tense plain form remains as it is in the dictionary.
To conjugate Ru-verbs in the past polite form, you will need to drop the る and add ました. Therefore, if you want to say someone ate, you will change the characters 食べる (taberu) to 食べました (tabemashita).
Without a doubt, the key to becoming fluent in Japanese in no time is to grasp a really good understanding of Japanese verb conjugation early on. Verbs are the very foundation of the language. In fact, a sentence requires only a verb to be grammatically correct!
Learners often apprehend diving into Japanese grammar, anticipating that verbs will be somewhat challenging. But the truth is, Japanese verb conjugation is actually quite straightforward with hardly any exceptions. The few irregular verbs are even actually regular in their irregularities.
However, because Japanese verbs do conjugate based on their group, tenses and formality, you have to memorize their inflections. Luckily, the Japanese language has only 3 verb groups and 14 conjugation forms to have fun with.
If the preceding hiragana vowel was /e/ like 答こたえる or /i/ like できる, the verb is most likely a ru-verb. As you keep on learning, you will encounter a few deceiving verbs, but their number is very limited.
Most methods of Japanese (including LingoDeer) teach beginners the masu form early on, because of how easy it is to memorize, but also so they can speak politely in their first encounters with Japanese people.
The negative form is ません (masen), and like for the affirmative form, it can express both the present and the future. The conjugation is simple after you know how to conjugate the ます-form.
The imperative & volitional conjugation forms also have a formal inflection. But to keep this introduction to Japanese verb conjugation clear, their formal forms will be introduced later on, with their plain counterparts.
The plain form is colloquial, which means you should use this form only when interacting with familiar people such as family members, friends or a very close colleague. Also, you usually write in plain form unless it is written to a specific reader, like an email. Newspaper articles, academic papers, documents that give information and are not directly addressing the reader, are written in plain Japanese.
The construction of the ta form is a little bit tricky when it comes to u-verbs depending on their last hiragana character, but the good news is that these exceptions are limited to a few verbs only!
Pillar of Japanese grammar, the te-form is the cement that helps connect clauses together to build more complex sentences. For example, you use the te-form to list success actions or to show causality between several events:
In principle, a sentence with a te-form inflected verb is a subordinate clause that requires the main clause to be grammatically complete. However, when casually speaking, native speakers sometimes stop at a te-form verb clause, leaving the rest of the sentence implied.
Set a rule for yourself to avoid as much as possible using the imperative form, whether casually or formally. Considered quite rude by Japanese people, the form is mostly used by authority figures, such as the police or parents with their children, and on public road signs 止とまれ (Stop!).
Along with the passive form, the causative form can feel challenging to learn. This particular conjugation is used to express that you make someone do an action, let someone do an action or, on the contrary, you prevent someone from doing an action. In other words, you are the original cause for an action to take place or not and you speak from this very perspective.
This ultimate form consists of adding the passive form to the causative form of a verb, making it extra long for sure, but not hard to conjugate. The newly created verb belongs to the ru-verb group and can be conjugated with all the other conjugation forms (as long as it sounds logical).
While knowing all 14 Japanese conjugation forms is critical to reaching fluency, take your studies one day at a time and focus first on mastering the masu form, following up with the basic plain forms. As you progress in Japanese, the rest will naturally come in place.
Every time you feel overwhelmed by your Japanese studies, remember that learning a language is like having fun with a very big puzzle. Piece by piece, the puzzle will become clearer and easier to solve. This is what language learning with LingoDeer feels like, fun, easy, and effective.
You did a great job trying to explain Japanese as clearly as possible. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try to simplify it for everyone, most people will never be able to wrap their heads around these rules. Simply because these rules are inconsistent. For starters, traditional rules state that there are only 2 irregular verbs; when, in fact, there are a lot more. Let me give a few examples: IKU, DESU, all honorific verbs are irregular (gozaru, ossharu, irassharu, etc). The only way to explain Japanese verb conjugations in a truly easy to understand fashion is by breaking the mold and forgetting traditional rules all together.
Hi Jeremy, Thanks for you comment. Actually, what you mentioned is called Hepburn romanization, which is a very popular type of romaji, especially among Japanese learners. However, the other one we used in the article, Nihon-shiki romanization, is the most regular one and still widely used today. If you are learning Japanese, our suggestion is to learn kana and not rely too much on romaji, especially when it comes to pronunciation. Learn more about why from our previous article: -is-romaji/
Since the site is entirely in Japanese, you'll need to be roughly intermediate level to get the most out of it, though everything is designed well enough that I think most learners would be able to parse most of it. The site was recently expanded to cover even more verbs, though it's not quite clear what makes the cut or not. Of course, it's far from every verb on here, but what's offered should help add a ton of depth to your understanding of "basic" Japanese verbs.
The list doesn't include basic Japanese verb conjugation or the negative form of the verb. It does, however, include both regular and irregular verbs and shows you the dictionary form of the verb and how to use Japanese verbs in context with useful examples.
Whether you knew some of these Japanese verbs or none at all, adding new Japanese vocabulary to your repertoire is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal when you consider language learning and improving your foreign language knowledge.
Now you have a grasp on some Japanese verbs; your next step will be to learn some Japanese verb conjugation. Verb conjugation in the Japanese language is not a bit tricky (as you might think). Once you know the verb, you know it! There aren't different conjugation forms by subject.
Last time, you learned how to use Japanese adjectives. By utilizing the particle が, which expresses subjects of predicates, you can describe what nouns are like. Now, you will learn how to allow nouns to take an action by using Japanese verbs. In this article, you will learn basic knowledge of Japanese verbs.
This is how verb conjugations work. There are other forms such as potential form, causative form, etc. However, the basic rule is same. All what you need to do is just to attach a suffix with a stem. You will learn all of the forms one by one with us.
As you can see, the stems vary depending on the form. You have to memorize the irregularity. In Japanese, する is a very helpful verb because you can oftentimes (though not always) make a noun into a verb by connecting with する. For example, you can say 勉べん強きょうする: to study, 用よう意いする: to prepare, 予よ約やくする: to reserve, etc. and they conjugate just like する (to do):
As you learned it with state-of-being and adjectives, you can express the verb negative form in polite tone by attaching です with ない. Although they are mostly used in conversations, you should be familiar with them: 見みないです, 書かかないです, 来こないです, しないです, and ないです.
Japanese, a language rich in nuances and distinct grammatical structures, presents a unique challenge in verb conjugation. Our Japanese verb conjugation tool is specifically designed to demystify this aspect of the language. It covers a wide range of tenses essential to Japanese, such as the present, past, negative, and polite forms, among others.
c80f0f1006