Verbs classification

[capriccio0009921]

Could anyone please explain to me how can i classify verbs according to its class for verb conjugation? Thank you.

[mmmason8967]

Class 3 verbs are the irregular verbs. There are only two of them, suru (to do) and kuru (to come). These two verbs are completely irregular; there are some other verbs that are slightly irregular (such as aru for example) but they don’t get classed as Class 3 verbs.

Class 2 verbs are also called ichidan verbs. The dictionary form always ends with ru. However, not all verbs ending in ru are Class 2 verbs.

Class 1 verbs are also called godan verbs, The dictionary form ends always ends with a hiragana character from the u row, including ru. This is the most common verb type.

Verbs have five bases from which the various inflections are built. For Class 2 verbs these five bases are the same (hence ichidan or one way) and for Class 1 verbs they are different (hence godan or five way).

Finally, i-adjectives conjugate like verbs; this means that when you find a verb-ending in a piece of text, it might be attached to an adjective rather than a verb. In fact i-adjectives are so much like a special kind of verb that you might want to include them in your study of verbs.

マイケル

[natsukoy9313]

マイケルsan, thank you very much for detailed explanation as always!
capriccio0009921-san, have you already learnt negative form of verbs (--nai form)?
Class 1 (godan) verbs take vowel "a" right before "nai"; Class 2 (ichidan) verbs keeps only the stem. This "--nai form" is the easiest way to find out.
If you haven't learnt it yet, don't worry too much about it just yet!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mmmason8967]

マイケルsan, thank you very much for detailed explanation as always!

I enjoy learning about the way that Japanese is structured but I sometimes wonder how useful that knowledge really is. Knowing the theory is one thing; being able to put the theory into practice is a very different thing. For example, today I was trying to translate a sentence and it was going well up until I got to the last word, which was してる. At this point things suddenly took a turn for the worse...

First, I try looking for してる in my dictionary and then online. My vocabulary is small, so it might easily be the dictionary form of a verb I don't know. But I didn't find. So it isn't the dictionary form of a verb but it must be a word that conjugates otherwise the dictionary search would have found it.

Next I try searching for してる using Google to see how many hits it gets. I know that よかった　is a very common word, and I know it gets about 200 million hits. してる gets 350 million hits. So now I'm pretty sure that it's a very, very common expression indeed.

Next I try looking at verb conjugation tables in my textbooks because it might be some verb ending I don't know about. But it doesn't seem to be that.

And now I'm stuck. It's an incredibly common word but I can't find it anywhere! I have a theory, though: I think it's a contraction of している. But that's only because if the sentence had している at the end, I would be able to understand it, so it's not a very convincing reason.

マイケル

[natsukoy9313]

マイケルさん、
Yes, you're correct!!
してる is contracted version of している. It IS very common use, but grammatically, it's not correct.
So, whenever you google some words, please use hit-number only as reference. High number doesn't necessarily mean "correct word".

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mmmason8967]

奈津子さん

いつものありがとうございました。

Yes, the only thing that Google tells me is how often a word is used. If it is used a lot then it is good to understand what it means. One recent discovery is that とっても is a very popular alternative to とても; I guess maybe it adds emphasis, but like you say, it's not correct so it isn't something I can use myself.

I work for a company that has offices in many countries around the world. We use English as the standard language for communication, which means that I often hear people speaking English at different levels. It should be very easy for me because I speak English like a native! But unless the person is very good at English it takes a lot of concentration to follow what they are saying. If they decide to try using slang, it can become almost impossible to understand them.

And sometimes people decide to try swearing. Or, even worse, the hate-speech words from Pulp Fiction.

One day I want to try using Japanese on real Japanese people. I know it will be difficult for them, so I am going to stick to standard, correct Japanese.

マイケル

[ricardo4567129279]

That is exactly why you should not use standard, correct, Japanese. Japanese people use many corrupted forms (for example いかされる ）regularly
and you will be much easier to understand if you use natural/current Japanese. Of course you will still be understood when speaking perfectly correct Japanese, but you will also sound like a robot/textbook.

However, like in anything, it's important to first learn standard Japanese so you understand where everything is derived from. Then begin to learn the language people are using.

[ricardo4567129279]

and just to relate to the above post, In conversation people always drop the い in present progressive forms. たべてる、みてる、e.t.c.

[natsukoy9313]

マイケルさん、
I know exactly what you mean... I really hate those Japanese who want to use slang and/or swearing words as if those come out naturally. I'm not a native speaker of English (actually, far from that), but I know how ridiculous they sound.
There's no bad things about using always the correct language! So, I'd love your way!!

ricardo4567129279-san,
you're right...corrupt Japanese...
Not only that, there are countless Japanese who actually cannot use correct Japanese (they seriously don't know it) and this is the real problem. Hope JapanesePod101.com listers won't learn from such Japanese people!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com