Do these look right?

Coffeesan · 15 Sep 2011

The Ultra Handy Japanese Verb Conjugator

Are these right and do I need to learn them all? Basically I used the word for eat/eating/ate what ever... Anyway I dont really understand what all the different conjugators mean.

Present indicative is essentially ''present tense'' isnt it? So the the positive would be ''eat'' and the negative would have the literal meaning of ''not eat'' ?

I did english linguistics at college before uni and I swear I've never heard of causative, provisional, passive and potential :s

I was trying to use this engine to find out all the verb forms for different words like..

Eat
Eating
Ate
Not eat
Will eat

Etc... But I'm confuzled

Glenn · 15 Sep 2011

No, they're not right.

eat -- taberu/tabemasu
eating -- tabeteiru/tabeteimasu
ate -- tabeta/tabemashita
not eat -- tabenai/tabemasen
will eat -- taberu/tabemasu or tabeyou/tabemashou

Notice that "eat" and "will eat" can be be the same forms. This is because Japanese verbs don't have a future tense (English verbs don't either, really. This is made up for with the modal verb "will").

Also, the verb taberu is transitive and requires an object, even if it's not explicitly stated, so it's not the same as English "eat", which can be either transitive or intrasitive. And I assume you know that the first in each pair is plain form and the second is polite form, but I figured I'd state it for the sake of thoroughness.

[Edit] Now I see what happened and why they were all jacked up -- you have to enter the verb in its dictionary form, in this case taberu. The auto-conjugator assumed that tabemasu was the plain form and conjugated it accordingly, which led to the mess that I saw.

Toritoribe · 15 Sep 2011

Yeah, the conjugator interpreted "tabemasu" as, for instance, 食べ増す, and dutifully returned the "correct" conjugation forms for it. Good work.

Coffeesan said:
Are these right and do I need to learn them all?

You don't need to remember all those conjugation forms. For instance, the conjugation of the suffix "-masu" is quite the same in all verbs. Thus, you just remember that the -masu stem of "taberu" is "tabe". Similarly, the present progressive is "-te form + iru", the -tara conditional is "past + ra", the causative is "-nai stem + seru/saseru", etc, etc. Verbs conjugate relatively regularly.

Japanese verb conjugation - Wikipedia

Coffeesan said:
I did english linguistics at college before uni and I swear I've never heard of causative, provisional, passive and potential :s

In Japan, students learn those grammatical concepts and the proper terms (e.g. passive（受身）, potential（可能）or causative（使役）) in junior high school. And those terms/concepts are also used to learn English grammar just like "'to be' verb + past participle = passive voice (be動詞＋過去分詞＝受動態)".

Coffeesan · 16 Sep 2011

Glenn said:
No, they're not right.
eat -- taberu/tabemasu
eating -- tabeteiru/tabeteimasu
ate -- tabeta/tabemashita
not eat -- tabenai/tabemasen
will eat -- taberu/tabemasu or tabeyou/tabemashou
Notice that "eat" and "will eat" can be be the same forms. This is because Japanese verbs don't have a future tense (English verbs don't either, really. This is made up for with the modal verb "will").
Also, the verb taberu is transitive and requires an object, even if it's not explicitly stated, so it's not the same as English "eat", which can be either transitive or intrasitive. And I assume you know that the first in each pair is plain form and the second is polite form, but I figured I'd state it for the sake of thoroughness.
[Edit] Now I see what happened and why they were all jacked up -- you have to enter the verb in its dictionary form, in this case taberu. The auto-conjugator assumed that tabemasu was the plain form and conjugated it accordingly, which led to the mess that I saw.

Can I apply these rules to all verbs e.g.

Walk/Sing/Talk
Walking/Singing/Talking- Add teiru
Walked/Sang/Talked - Add ta
Not walk/Not sing/Not talk - Add nai
Will walk/Will sing/Will talk - Add ru

See what I mean? If I just learn the above suffixes (sure this is only plain form) can I just memorize them and use them as the base for forming my verbs and tenses etc?

Glenn · 16 Sep 2011

Yes, but they behave differently depending on their endings and whenter they're Godan or Ichidan. See for example this page on Japanese verbs.

Coffeesan · 16 Sep 2011

Glenn said:
Yes, but they behave differently depending on their endings and whenter they're Godan or Ichidan. See for example this page on Japanese verbs.

That page actually makes a lot of sense! Damn my books and webpages are useless lol.

Mike Cash · 16 Sep 2011

One of the few bright spots in learning Japanese is that verb conjugation is extraordinarily regular and that once you learn a couple of key points you may with almost total confidence proceed to apply any newly learned tense to just about any and every verb you already know or ever will know.

Coffeesan · 16 Sep 2011

Mike Cash said:
One of the few bright spots in learning Japanese is that verb conjugation is extraordinarily regular and that once you learn a couple of key points you may with almost total confidence proceed to apply any newly learned tense to just about any and every verb you already know or ever will know.

Starting to understand them now, I've been reading alone for 2 months looking in every book and website and not understanding it but now its kinda clicked. Now I can start widening my actual vocabulary and make some sentences finally lol..

The verb Read however is a pain in the *** because of the N/M business -_-

Mike Cash · 16 Sep 2011

You just have to remember that bu mu and nu all work that way. Run them together in your head as a nonsense word: "bumunu"

dimitri_can · 17 Sep 2011

If you look at my chart, that will be even clearer.

Do these look right?

Coffeesan

先輩

Glenn

一切皆苦

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Coffeesan

先輩

Glenn

一切皆苦

Coffeesan

先輩

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう

Coffeesan

先輩

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう

dimitri_can

後輩

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