Lesson 6: What is a verb? Nothing but a miserable pile of conjugations!

Unlike english, japanese has several categories of regular verbs. In other words, unlike english, japanese says that all of its verb categories are regular. Even though you might say that "ashen" and "eaten" are irregular in english, japanese doesn't follow the same logic.

Right now, japanese has two categories of regular verbs. It used to have categories of categories, but there's only two categories right now. The two categories are one-form verbs and five-form verbs, which conjugate differently.

Here's an example, using a ます form that we'll learn properly in Lesson 12. Don't bother memorizing this table.

見る／見ます, "one-form" verb.

切る／切ります, "five-form" verb, ending in る.

買う／買います, "five-form" verb, ending in う.

死ぬ／死にます, "five form" verb, ending in ぬ.

One-form verbs always end in る, and just drop the る when they conjugate. The stuff leading up to that る is the verb's basic identity, and isn't changed. The verb itself, aside from conjugation, has only "one form".

Five form verbs can end in one of several syllables. In the present tense, this syllable always ends in a "u" vowel, and different conjugations can change it to any of the other four vowels in japanese, or slur it. This means that it can have any of five different vowels at the end. In other words, five forms.

Five-form verbs in the dictionary form can end in one of several different syllables, but it always ends in the vowel "u".

切る　殺す　死ぬ　選ぶ　読む　問う　動く　急ぐ　持つ

One-form verbs in the dictionary form always end in る. But the part before the る always ends in a phonetic "e" or "i". The dictionary form just attaches る to the one-form verb's one and only base, the part of the one-form verb that never changes. Japanese verb conjugation likes to pile words together, and you end up with things like 見られたくなかった. Over the next few lessons, we start learning the logic behind these long piles of conjugations. This makes them easier to break down.

This lesson is just establishing the basics needed to understand what we're going to look at.