Verb Conjugation Help

Hi all,

I'm trying to teach myself Japanese and I want to make sure of a few group-1 (u-dropping) conjugations. When I type these simple sentences into a translator (I know translators are generally not very good, but they seem to work for the really basic stuff) the following translates as expected:

わたしが この ほんを よむ。-'I am reading this book.'
わたしが この ほんを よまない。 -'I am not reading this book.'

But whenever I try to translate a -te or -ta form of a verb everything goes to hell, for example.

わたしが この ほんを よった。-'I did read this book.' Doesn't work at all, but the next two conjugations, which are also past indicative, work just fine:

わたしが この ほんを よまなかった。
わたしが この ほんを よみした。

The same problem comes up with:

わたしが この ほんを よった だろう。
わたしが この ほんを よった しょう。

Whereas this works just fine:

-よまなかった ｄらおう or でしょう

The same issue occurs with the imperative:

わたしが この ほんを よって ください。

And the past progressives:

わたしが この ほんを よって いる or います or いません

So is my conjugation using the -te and -ta forms incorrect? Or is the translator simple being difficult?

Another confusing thing is that for some verbs, for example かく, the past indicative form i expect to see is かった, but actually かいた is the correct conjugation. Why is this, and how to I know when to conjugate a verb with -tta or -ita and -tte or -ite?

My apologies for the mass confusion =)

The past tense of よむ is よんだ.

よった is the past tense of a couple of other verbs: よう and よる.

You need better learning materials. I would suggest a proper textbook.

Yes it's wrong, the te and ta forms for よむ are よんで and よんだ. Not よって or よった. The polite form of よんだ is よみました.

Edit:
You already got it explained. Sorry.

I think you are on the right track starting with verb conjugation. Japanese will be completely locked to you until you can conjugate all forms of verbs freely. It is a perfect place to start, but as said already better learning materials might be good.

Is this simply an exception, or are there other verbs that conjugate like this? And sorry to repeat the question, but is there any way to tell if I should be using -tta or -ita (or this new -nda thing)? Same goes for -tte, -ite and -nde? Or is this just something that needs to be memorised for every verb? The reason I ask is because I've been reading everywhere that Japanese verb conjugations are consistent but I've, as you can see, had a bit of trouble with exceptions.

I have ordered a few textbooks, but since there isn't much interest in Japanese down here in South Africa so I've had to special order them and it's taking a while.

I appreciate your help guys, thanks so much.

The verbs do conjugate consistently (except for the two irregular verbs, of course, and a very few exceptions), but う/Godan verbs are split into 5 groups when conjugating て form based on the dictionary form of the verb's ending syllable.

う・つ・る > って
む・ぶ・ぬ > んで
く > いて
ぐ > いで
す > して

Obviously た form is the same, just replace て with た and で with だ.

Here is a more complete guide to verb conjugation:

Verbs, congugations. Are there patterns for this?

Japanese Grammar Guide | Learn Japanese I'll peddle this one again. It helped me make sense of what used to be a mess of Japanese verb conjugations. It's got examples, nice tables for the irregular forms, example sentences, can be used as a reference and isn't loaded up with unneccessary things.

That said, from what I can tell, it's not a "complete" reference. I've been finding quite a few grammar points in actual texts that don't seem to be Tae Kim, but most of those can either be inferred from context (best way to learn IMO) or be looked up in a dictionary (despite being grammar points, my dictionary starts helping out nicely once "grammar" becomes something made up of more than one particle)

Thanks for the recommendations.