If you've studied Japanese using other Western resources before, you might have heard some things about conjugation.

But did you know that the word "conjugation" doesn't even exist in the Japanese language?

In actuality, almost anything Western resources refer to as "conjugation" in Japanese is either a misnomer at best or completely made up at worst.

Of course, conjugation in English refers to the variation of verbs to indicate different forms based on factors such as tense, person, number, and mood. For example, in the present tense, the verb "to be" conjugates as "I am," "you are," and "he/she/it is."

A lot of English-language Japanese teaching resources will start from English's verb conjugations and work backwards from there, resulting in exceeding confusion because, of course, Japanese grammar does not map 1:1 to English grammar. To form what is actually a translation of a given grammatical construction in English requires you to potentially mix multiple grammatical constructions in Japanese, resulting in tons of hand-waves and exceptions, as well as immense confusion, as you try to make sense of Japanese grammar without learning how it truly exists under a pointless layer of English translation.

Below, we will cover three distinct types of changes you can make to verbs in Japanese, all of which are commonly referred to (or even taught together) as "conjugation" in many Western learning resources. By the end of the lesson, you will know how to form all of the verb changes that are possible in the language, and begin to understand the differences among each of those and between them and the Western grammatical concepts they are often compared to.

First, we will start with the construction that is simplest (and most similar to the equivalent English grammar term), the Japanese past tense.

The Japanese Past Tense

To indicate that a verb's action has occurred in the past in Japanese, you slightly change the verb and then add the suffix た (ta).

The only change required to add a た (ta) to the end of a verb is to its final sound. This change varies depending on the "normal" final sound of the verb; however, there are only a limited number of changes, far from a language like English's endless lists of different conjugation groups and irregular verbs.

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For most Japanese verbs that end in る (ru), you simply remove the る (ru) and replace it with た (ta), such as in the word 起きた (okita, woke up).

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For Japanese verbs that end in other sounds, the changes vary, but, again, these changes are on a much smaller scale than English conjugation, hinging entirely around the final character of the verb:

- う (u), つ (tsu), and some cases of る (ru) are replaced with った (tta).
- す (su) becomes した (shita).
- く (ku) becomes いた (ita).
- ぐ (gu) becomes いだ (ida).
- ぬ (nu), ぶ (bu), and む (mu) become んだ (nda).

Beyond that, there are only three irregular verbs in Japanese (that's right, exactly three!):

- 行く (iku) becomes 行った (itta).
- 来る (kuru) becomes 来た (kita).
- する (suru) becomes した (shita).

Now, listing them all out in that way might seem overwhelming, but looking at some examples of these transformations together might help to show just how few things you have to remember. Remember, the following examples contain all the changes you need to be able to form the past tense of all verbs in all situations in the Japanese language:

Examples:

This is a short list, so it doesn't hurt to memorize them quickly. However, if memorization isn't your thing, don't worry. Again, unlike English and many other Western languages, strict upfront memorization isn't really required. As there are so few variations, it's likely that you will get the hang of these transformations naturally as you immerse yourself more in Japanese, as each will be repeated so often.

To end this section, note that crucially, unlike English and other Western languages, the Japanese past tense is not taught alongside other tenses which may place verb actions in the future, across a stretch of time in the past, or in a continuous context. There is simply the past tense, with its た (ta), and the "non-past" tense, which represents all other usages of the verb. In other words, any other changes you make to a verb in Japanese are not at all related to its placement in time.

This includes the next change we will cover, a common form of verbs in Japanese called the て (te) form.

The て (te) Form

The て (te) form of a verb in Japanese has a variety of uses, often to link two verbs together to indicate some sort of sequence, like in 起きて出た (okite deta, I woke up and left), or to add the verb's meaning to another verb, as in 待っている (matteiru, I am waiting).

Overall, this form can be difficult to get the hang of before you see it in its many contextual usages, since there really is no equivalent in English. However, it may be useful to start by thinking of it as an in-progress, incomplete, or continuing form of a verb, with the implication specifically that the thought you're trying to express with the verb will be followed by something else (typically another verb or related thought).

The good news about this form is that, while it has very little to do with the た (ta) form in terms of meaning, if you know how to change a verb into the た (ta) form, then you know how to change it into the て (te) form, too. You make the same change to the verb's final sound, and just put a て (te) instead of a た (ta) (or a で (de) instead of a だ (da)). Let's look at the examples above, but in the て (te) form.

Examples:

As we mentioned before, you will likely learn these transformations rather quickly, as they are few in number and thus will be repeated a lot as you immerse yourself in Japanese (even more so now that you see they are used by two different verb forms).

Other "Conjugation" in Japanese

Consulting nihonkarano.com's favorite English-Japanese dictionary, Jisho, the closest word to "conjugation" in Japanese is 活用 (katsuyō), which is usually translated as the same thing but actually refers to a specific grammatical concept in Japanese that is quite different from what an English speaker may understand as verb conjugation. This Japanese concept is rarely taught by Western Japanese learning resources in its pure form.

In Japanese, 活用 (katsuyō) is completely distinct from the past tense and て (te) forms of verbs. 活用 (katsuyō) has nothing to do with matching a word to its subject, person, number, or even tense, and any changes that are made fall into completely different categories than you might expect coming from English or other Western languages—so much so that we hesitate to even use the word "mood" to describe them. You can even perform 活用 (katsuyō) with other types of words than verbs!

活用 (katsuyō) refers to exactly six additional ways that you can vary the ending of verbs in Japanese to indicate their meanings, and each variation is extremely straightforward to learn both in function (if you actually learn them, instead of trying to learn English conjugation and then work backwards) and practical usage (with each involving only a single-character change).

We'll approach each of these six forms in turn. For each form, we will provide the real name in Japanese, followed by an attempted close translation, and finally some of the more common names you might find for these forms in English. Then, below, we will briefly explain what the form means in a sentence and how to construct it in different cases.

For reference, most of the information in the section below is sourced from a page from やる気アシスト, a real Japanese tutoring website that helps Japanese students prepare for their school entrance exams.

1. 未然形 (mizenkei) — Not Yet Form ("nai stem," "imperfective form")

On its own, the 未然形 (mizenkei) of a word implies that the action which a verb represents has not yet happened (literally, the first two characters of the name, 未然 (mizen), have a meaning of "not yet").

This form can then be combined with more words added to the ending of the verb in order to clarify the meaning of an entire phrase. For example, as the common English name "nai stem" implies, this form is often combined with ない (nai) in order to negate the word overall, e.g., 歩かない (arukanai, not walk). Other words that can be added to the end of 未然形 (mizenkei) verbs include ず (zu), せる (seru), and れる (reru). The last two might be particularly interesting if you've studied Japanese using Western resources before, but we will get into that more in later lessons!

As you can see in the above example, the 未然形 (mizenkei) of many verbs can be formed by replacing the u sound at the end of the verb with an a sound. For example:

- 歩く (aruku, to walk) becomes 歩か (aruka).
For verbs that end with る (ru), you simply drop the ending る (ru) to form the 未然形 (mizenkei).

2. 連用形 (ren'yōkei) — Continuing Usage Form ("masu stem," "continuative form")

Similar to the last form, the 連用形 (ren'yōkei) indicates that certain helper words will follow the verb, and that the completed phrase will typically end a thought or sentence.

This form is slightly more complicated when we look at how it is formed with words other than verbs; however, since the focus of this lesson is verbs, the main things you need to know are that this form often replaces the u sound at the end of verbs with an i sound (or, again, drops the る (ru) sound), and, as indicated by the common English name for this form, verbs in this form are often followed up with the polite ending ます (masu). Therefore:

- 書く (kaku, to write) becomes 書きます (kakimasu).
- 過ぎる (sugiru, to exceed) becomes 過ぎます (sugimasu).

3. 終止形 (shūshikei) — Ending Form ("plain form," "dictionary form")

This is the simplest form of verbs. It is used when a verb alone ends a sentence and requires no change to the verb from the "normal" form that you find in the dictionary. In the sentence 犬が歩く (inu ga aruku, the dog walks), 歩く (aruku) is in the ending form.

4. 連体形 (rentaikei) — Attributive Form ("modifying form")

By their similar names, you may deduce that the 連体形 (rentaikei) form of a verb is similar to the aforementioned 連用形 (ren'yōkei) form. Again, this form implies that the verb will be followed by certain helper words. However, the helper words in this case are usually nouns that expand the meaning of the verb (in a way that the verb is "attributive" to the noun).

A common example of this is the word とき (toki), which means "time." 寝るとき (neru toki, sleeping time) is an example of the verb 寝る (neru, to sleep) in its 連体形 (rentaikei) form followed by とき (toki).

From the example above, you can see that the 連体形 (rentaikei) form of verbs, like the 終止形 (shūshikei), does not require any changes from the "normal" verb you find in the dictionary.

5. 仮定形 (kateikei) — Hypothetical Form ("conditional form")

The 仮定形 (kateikei) form of verbs implies that an action might happen. This may seem similar to the 未然形 (mizenkei) form from before; however, try to keep in mind the difference between something which has not happened and something that may or may not happen.

This form is often followed by the ば (ba) helper in order to form a conditional statement. In general, you make it by changing the u sound at the end of a verb into an e sound. For example:

- 入る (hairu, to enter) becomes 入れば (haireba, if (you) enter).

6. 命令形 (meireikei) — Command Form ("imperative form")

The 命令形 (meireikei) form is perhaps the simplest form of a verb to explain, as it doesn't typically use any follow-up helper words or anything like that. This form indicates that you're issuing a command when you say it.

It's formed in the same way as the 仮定形 (kateikei) for verbs that don't end in る (ru). Therefore, if you want to order someone to drink:

- 飲む (nomu, to drink) becomes 飲め (nome), meaning "Drink!"

For words that do end in る (ru), you substitute that character for ろ (ro). So if you want them to eat too, you would say:

- 食べる (taberu, to eat) becomes 食べろ (tabero), meaning "Eat!"

Conclusion

We covered a lot in this lesson. Even if you haven't entirely mastered all of the verb changes, you at least understand the single temporal verb tense in Japanese and the situations in which you might put a verb into the て (te) form to connect it to other verbs, as well as the 活用 (katsuyō) changes that can clarify a verb's meaning within a sentence. You've also at least started to learn the simple pronunciation changes that are necessary in each of these circumstances.

Above all, we hope that this lesson has helped you begin to see how often Western grammatical terms can actually serve to confuse the true logical clarity of Japanese grammar. The multiple things that are often called "conjugation" are actually much simpler in Japanese if you break them down into their logical components. Approaching these concepts themselves from the perspective of Western terms and translations forces you to combine actually distinct grammar points and thus invent strange rules and exceptions when actually the concepts are incredibly regular in Japanese.

Remember: millions of people have learned Japanese as their first language, taught as it actually exists. In comparison, many people fail to learn Japanese as a foreign language when they try to study it masked by another language's terms and rules. Of course, it's useful to have English so that you can read these more complex descriptions of Japanese grammar and tell what is really going on. But you should always prioritize learning real Japanese grammar from its base components rather than trying to take English grammar and reverse-engineer it into Japanese. Here at nihonkarano.com, we focus on connecting you with real learning resources from Japan for that very reason.

In future lessons, we will delve into more of these verb changes in depth, as well as the changes you can make to other kinds of words to express yourself better in Japanese.

Until next time,

これからもよろしくお願いします。

Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu