Verb conjugation

[capriccio0009921]

May you please explain to me where do i use the volitional, te form, tai form, conditional, passive, causative and imperative forms of a verb. Thank you.

[mmmason8967]

Here are some very brief answers:-

Volitional form is used to suggest an action, such as "Let's eat" or "Let's go". There's an assumption that everyone is going to go along with the suggestion.

Te form is used for a number of things and is a bit tricky to summarise briefly (for me anyway). The first place that beginners encounter the te form is when using a verb in the 'progressive' sense. For example, sakana o taberu means "I eat fish" and sakana o tabete iru means "I'm eating fish" (tabete is the te-form of taberu).

Tai form is used when you want to do something, such as "I want to eat" or "I want to go".

Conditional is used when one action depends on another action, such as "if I go to Tokyo I want to eat natto" (where "if I go" is conditional).

Passive is used when the sentence subject is on the receiving end of the verb. For example, "I ate the pizza" is active and "the pizza was eaten by me" is passive.

Causative means letting someone do something or making them do something, such as "I let her eat it" or "I made him go".

Imperative means giving a direct order such as "Eat!" or "Be quiet!" The best known Japanese imperative is kudasai, which means "give me" but suggests an esteemed person lowering whatever it is to your humble self, so it's a very polite imperative.

マイケル

[natsukoy9313]

マイケルさん、Thank you very much for great explanation!!
capriccio0009921-san, please refer to his explanation, and if you want to know more about anything, please feel free to post again!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[capriccio0009921]

mmmason8967-san, thank you for the explaination. It was really a great help.