More grammar

Having covered the basics in the previous chapter, we will revisit and elaborate on certain inflections and conjugations, as well as list all of the other inflections that are used in the Japanese language. This chapter treats the inflections one by one, starting with a recap of politeness and explaining how it applies to all verbs, then treating all the basic — but not yet covered — inflections, followed by the more advanced inflections that are used in Japanese.

Note that as of this chapter all the verbs and adjectives that have been used in the previous chapter, which we will continue to use in this one, will not come with furigana. At this point, you should know how they are read (and if you don't, just flip back to the previous chapter for the readings).

Revisits and simple inflections

Politeness

Politeness, or the use of ていねいご丁寧語 as it is called in Japanese, revolves around using です and ます. We saw these explained in the previous chapter, but for completeness their bases will be listed again here:

ますですcopula
未然形ませ (ましよ)でしよだろでしょ/だろ
連用形ましでしだっ (で)
終止形です/だ
連体形ますですです/な
已然形ませ (ますれ)ならなら
命令形ませ

Of these, the copulae are used in combination with nouns and verbal adjectives, and ます is used in combination with verbs (in their 連用形 form). For both verb classes the procedure is the same: the present polite is formed by adding ます to the 連用形, whereas the past polite is formed by taking the present polite, and turning ます into its past tense, ました:

五段present politepast polite
連用形 + ますpolite present 連用形 + た
会う会い + ます会いまし + た
歩く歩き + ます歩きまし + た
急ぐ急ぎ + ます急ぎまし + た
話す話し + ます話しまし + た
待つ待ち + ます待ちまし + た
死ぬ死に + ます死にまし + た
学ぶ学び + ます学びまし + た
読む読み + ます読みまし + た
五段present politepast polite
連用形 + ますpolite present 連用形 + た
分かる分かり + ます分かりまし + た
切る切り + ます切りまし + た
売る売り + ます売りまし + た
帰る帰り + ます帰りまし + た
怒こる怒こり + ます怒こりまし + た
一段present politepast polite
連用形 + ますpolite present 連用形 + た
見る見 + ます見まし + た
伸びる伸び + ます伸びまし + た
食べる食べ + ます食べまし + た

The irregular verbs する, ある and る are regular with respects to using ます, although of course する's "す" becomes "し", and 来る's stem gets pronounced "き".

For nouns we use です, which is inflected to indicate tense:

nounmeaningpolite presentpolite past
noun + ですnoun + でした
ともだち友達friend友達 + です友達 + でした
いえhouse家 + です家 + でした

For verbal adjectives, we also use です, but unlike nouns, verbal adjectives inflect to show tense, rather than です:

adjectivepolite presentpolite past
連体形 + ですpast tense + です
高い高い + です高かった + です
楽しい楽しい + です楽しかった + です
薄い薄い + です薄かった + です
遅い遅い + です遅かった + です

A cautionary note: many beginning students of Japanese make the mistake of forgetting that verbal adjectives are verbal, and are themselves inflected, rather than using です for tense. One of the first mistakes (and arguably one of the biggest) made by beginning students is saying something like:

たのしいでした。

To mean "it was fun". Try, very hard, not to make this mistake. Remember for verbal adjectives "inflect first, then add です for politeness", not "add です first, then inflect".

Attributive

When something is attributive, it means that it is essentially doing what an adjective does: it attributes some quality to a noun. Verbs, verbal adjectives and nouns can all do this, but they do so in different ways.

For verbs and verbal adjectives, the 連体形 is attributive by its very definition (it is the "attributive" base). For verbal adjectives this seems fairly obvious, but for verbs, things are no different:

いいひとです。

"(he/she/it) is (a/the) good person."

コーヒーをむ人です。

"(he/she/it)'s (a/the) coffee drinking person."

For nouns, things are a little trickier. There are two classes of nouns, namely the ones we already saw in the previous chapter, linking up using の, and "noun adjectives", which are nouns denoting qualities or aspects, and are used in combination with the 連体形for だ, な, as attributives:

きれいなへや部屋です。

"(this/it) is (a) clean/tidy room."

しずかなひとです。

"(he/she/it) is (a/the) quiet person."

The reason for this is that we want to use the qualities that these nouns express attributively. On their own, the qualities in these two sentences would be "きれいだ", "is clean", and 静かだ, "is quiet". When we wish to use these attributively, we must change だ from its 終止形, or finalising form, to 連体形, which is the attributive form. So:

きれいだ → きれいな[noun]

静かだ → 静かな[noun]

For these kind of nouns, using の as in "きれいの[noun]" or "静かの[noun]" would be incorrect, because の is not used to attribute qualities. Sadly, without any prior knowledge it is essentially impossible to tell whether a noun will require の or な when it is being linked with other nouns. Sometimes you can guess, based on the fact that the noun marks some quality or aspect, but often you cannot.

Adverbial

In addition to the attributive, which attributes qualities to nouns, there are adverbs, which attribute qualities to verb actions. There are three word classes that can do this, namely the verbal adjectives, the noun "adjectives" (the ones that take な) and, of course, true adverbs.

True adverbs are easy, since they do exactly what you'd expect:

ほんみます。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) read(s) (a) book(s)."

時々(ときどき)本を読みます。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) sometimes read(s) (a) book(s)."

Here, the adverb 時々, 'sometimes', also written 時時 (the symbol 々 indicates kanji repetition) qualifies the action of reading to apply only sometimes, rather than in general.

We can achieve the same effect of qualifying the verb action by using verbal adjectives in 連用形 form:

なおします。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) will fix (it)."

はやく直します。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) will fix (it) quickly."

In this sentence, the adjective 速い, 'fast' (not to be confused with はやい, 'early'), is turning into the adverb 'quickly' by using its 連用形.

With noun adjectives, which do not inflect but must be paired up with the right particle to show their use in a sentence, we must use に, instead of な, to use them as adverbial words:

ける。

"divide (up)."

きれいに分ける

"divide cleanly/neatly"

You might recognise this に from the section on verb particles from the previous chapter. When used with quality or aspect nouns (and noun adjectives in general), using に leads to the noun being interpreted as a verb detail, which we grammatically term as being used adverbially. However, when the noun is a true noun, に does something very different. To illustrate this, two sentences:

かんぜん完全ける。

ともだち友達に負ける。

The first sentence has a noun that describes an aspect, 完全, meaning 'complete'. Thus, because it is paired with に, this noun is being used as an adverb to 負ける, 'lose'. This sentence translates to "Losing completely". On the other hand, 友達 does not describe a quality or aspect, it just means 'friend(s)'. As such, when it is paired with に it becomes a verb detail: "(I, you, he, she, we, they) lost to (my, your, his, her, our, their) friend(s)."

So be careful. If the noun you're using is not a noun 'adjective', you can quite easily say something completely different from what you intended to say.

Noun forms

Not just nouns can act as nouns: verbs and verbal adjectives, too, can be inflected so that they act like nouns. In the same way that we can either "walk" through a neighbourhood, or take "a walk" through a neighbourhood in English, so too in Japanese can verbs be used as nouns, provided we use their 連用形:

ぼくけだ。

"(It)'s my loss."

Here, the noun 負け, "loss", comes from the 一段 verb 負ける, "to lose". By using its 連用形, it can be used as a noun in a sentence. Both 一段 and 五段 verbs follow this rule.

For verbal adjectives, things are a bit more complicated, because adjectives as nouns requires you to know what kind of noun you want to use. For instance, in English we can turn the adjective "deep" into the noun "depth". This noun is then ambiguous in meaning: do we mean a measurable depth, like the depth of a crevasse or a lake, or do we mean the immeasurable quality of "depth" of paintings or poetry, for instance? In Japanese, this ambiguity doesn't exist, because the two different interpretations are expressed through different noun forms: turning a verbal adjective into a measurable (quantifiable) noun requires adding さ to the stem, whereas turning it into an immeasurable (qualifying) noun requires adding み to the stem:

adjectivemeaningquantified nounmeaning
たかhigh高さheight (e.g., of a mountain)
ふかdeep深さdepth (e.g., of a lake)
adjectivemeaningqualified nounmeaning
高いhigh高みheight (e.g., of an achievement or position)
深いdeep深みdepth (e.g., of a poem or painting)

In addition to these two, there's also け, げ or き (all pronunciations for け, げ, ぎ (気)), which instead of creating a quantified noun or qualified noun, creates a noun that stands for "having the impression of". To use this in a sentence, it is used as a noun adjective (as 気 itself is a noun adjective):

adjectivemeaningimpression nounmeaning
さむcoldさむけ寒気the sense/feeling of being cold
あぶないdangerousあぶthe sense/feeling of danger
かたfirm, honestかたぎ堅気instilling a sense/feeling of honesty

There are two notes to this scheme. The most important one is: "this does not apply to all adjectives". That may sound odd, but it comes down to the fact that while grammatically these rules are valid for all verbal adjectives, Japanese has been in use for many centuries and verbal adjectives for which this kind of nominalising made sense have long since been accepted as words on their own, while verbal adjectives for which this nominalising was simply not required simply aren't accepted as natural speech when you use them.

Secondly, the two irregular verbal adjectives, いい and ない, have their own forms. The よさ (良さ) form exists, but よみ does not, and rather than some よ気, there is 良さ. For ない, there is no なさ, except in the pattern なさそう, which will be treated in the section on impressions and likeness, and there are no み or 気 variants either.

More noun forms: 連用形 + 方

A more subtle noun form for verbs is the "way of doing ..." noun form. For instance, "the way one reads" in English is a full noun phrase, but in Japanese it's a compound noun consisting of the verb "read" in 連用形, paired with the noun 方 (pronounced かた in this use) meaning "way". Thus, む, meaning "read", becomes 読み方, meaning "way of reading".

はしつか使い方にれてないひとむずかしいです。

"It's hard for people who aren't used to the "way of using" chopsticks."

The verb "to use", 使う, is a transitive verb, and since transitive verbs have their direct object marked with を, the subphrase "to use chopsticks" could be お箸を使う. However, since both お箸 and 使い方 are nouns, we can also choose to use の to link them together. The difference is the following, noting the placement of the brackets:

(お箸を使い)方

The way of 'using chopsticks'

お箸の(使い方)

The 'way of using', for chopsticks

Both express the same idea, but the emphasis in the first sentence lies on the fact that it's about using chopsticks, while the emphasis in the second sentence simply lies with the 'way of using' something, which in this case happens to be chopsticks.

More negatives

The basic negative form was already discussed in the previous chapter, but it only covered one of the two plain negative forms, and didn't cover polite negative forms at all.

Let us first look at the second plain negative form first. In addition to the helper adjective of negation, ない, there is a classical helper verb of negation, ぬ, which is used quite frequently in formal speech (in its 連用形 form ず) and even more often in daily speech as part of the polite negation in the form of ん at the end of ません.

basesform
連用形
連体形ん (ぬ)
已然形

Technically, the 連体形 for this classical helper verb can be placed at the end of any verb's 未然形, to form a curt negative. While not in use in standard Japanese, this use is still prevalent in several modern Japanese dialects, such as Kansaiben. In addition to this, it is used for the negative of the helper verb of politeness, ます, to form its (polite by very definition) negative form ません.

The 連用形 form, ず, is used frequently to form a rather special kind of word: the adverbial negative. Added to a verb's 未然形, and paired with に (as it acts as a noun adjective) it turns the verb action into a 'not-taken' verb action instead. To illustrate this, an example:

あさはんべずにました。

"I came (over) without eating (my) breakfast."

In this sentence, the phrase 朝ご飯を食べず acts as adverb to 来ました, so that we can say that "きました is performed in an 朝ご飯を食べなかった manner". In this sentence, ず itself has no temporal aspect, so it gets its tense from whatever follows. As such, present or past tense comes from the final verb:

朝ご飯を食べずに来ました。

"I came (over) without eating (my) breakfast."

朝ご飯を食べずに来ます。

"I will come (over) without eating (my) breakfast."

This is considered an elegant form of negation, and is in formal and semi-formal settings preferred to the negative continuative for ない, which for our example sentence would be:

朝ご飯を食べなくて来ました。

"I didn't eat (my) breakfast and came (over)."

We will look at continuative forms that use this 'て' in detail later in this chapter, when looking at continuatives.

Basic inflections summarised

With the knowledge of what ん does, we can now (finally) look at the complete inflection schemes in terms of plain and polite, present and past, and affirmative and negative forms. First off, ます; since ます is inherently polite, it only has four forms we need to know:

affirmativenegative
presentますませ + ん
pastまし + たませ + ん + でした

Second, です. This too is inherently polite, so again we see four forms, two of which are contractions with a corresponding full form:

affirmativenegative
presentですじゃありません
ではありません
pastでしたじゃありませんでした
ではありませんでした

Then, だ. As this is the plain counterpart to です, it has no inherent politeness forms, although two forms are contractions with a corresponding full form. However, because the negative forms rely on ない, and because ない is a verbal adjective, this copula can also be made polite (at least for its negative forms) by adding です. It will make the inflection more polite than plain form, but not as polite as the corresponding negative form for です itself.

affirmativenegative
presentじゃない(です)
ではない(です)
pastだったじゃなかった(です)
ではなかった(です)

Next up are the verbal adjectives. Verbal adjectives have one polite affirmative form, using です, and two polite negative forms, because we can either use ない, or the polite counterpart to ない: ありません (the polite negative form of the verb ある). This leads to the following inflection table:

affirmativenegative
presentplain連体形未然形 + ない
polite連体形 + です未然形 + ない + です
polite (2)連用形 + ありません
pastplain連用形 + あった (c)未然形 + なかった
polite連用形 + あった (c) + です未然形 + なかった + です
polite (2)連用形 + ありません + でした

In this table, (c) has been used to indicate that a contraction occurs.

For completeness, the two irregular verbal adjectives get their own tables. First, いい (which is really よい):

affirmativenegative
presentplainよい, いいよくない
politeよいです, いいですよくありません
pastplainよかったよくなかった
politeよかったですよくなかったです

(of the two possible 連体形, いい is considered normal, while よい is considered formal)

And then finally, the helper adjective of negation, ない (無い):

affirmativenegative
presentplainないなくない
politeないですなくないです
pastplainなかったなくなかった
politeなかったですなくなかったです

Note that while technically ない has negative forms, they need pretty specific context before they make any sense.

Then the verbs: while the polite forms are the same for the two verb classes (as well as the irregular verbs), all verb classes will have all forms listed for completeness.

First, 五段 verbs, except for ある:

affirmativenegative
presentplain連体形未然形 + ない
polite連用形 + ます連用形 + ません
pastplain連用形 + た (c)未然形 + なかった
polite連用形 + ました連用形 + ませんでした

In this table, (c) has been used to indicate that a contraction occurs, depending on whether it's a す, く, ぐ, つ, ぬ, ぶ, む or る 五段 verb. It should also be noted that the verb く has an irregular past tense: 行った instead of 行いた, and that the rather rare verbs 問う, 訪う, 乞う and 請う get た suffixed to their 連体形, not 連用形.

For ある, the scheme is subtly different:

affirmativenegative
presentplain連体形ない
polite連用形 + ます連用形 + ません
pastplain連用形 + た (c)なかった
polite連用形 + ました連用形 + ませんでした

Then, the 一段 verbs, including

affirmativenegative
presentplain連体形未然形 + ない
polite連用形 + ます連用形 + ません
pastplain連用形 + た未然形 + なかった
polite連用形 + ました連用形 + ませんでした

(The stem for 来る changes: its 連体形 is く, its 連用形 is き, and its 未然形 is こ - however, inflection uses the same rules)

And finally, the irregular verb する:

affirmativenegative
presentplain連体形し-未然形 + ない
polite連用形 + ます連用形 + ません
pastplain連用形 + たし-未然形 + なかった
polite連用形 + ました連用形 + ませんでした

And so, with these basic inflection tables finally complete, we can move on to genuinely new inflections, to examine the rest of what can be done with verbs and verbal adjectives in the Japanese language.

Further inflections

Conjunctive

Conjunctives are words or constructions that join up two or more phrases. For instance, in the English sentence "The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming; spring had arrived properly", the comma between 'the birds are singing' and 'the flowers are blooming' acts as a conjunctive, as does the semi-colon between 'the flowers are blooming' and 'spring had arrived'. In Japanese, this particular kind of conjunction can be done in a remarkably simple way: each sentence that is to be "conjoined" with the next has its final verb put in 連用形, and we're done:

とりく。

"(The) birds sing."

はなく。

"(The) flowers bloom."

はるた。

"Spring is here."

If we change the final verbs in the first two sentence from 連体形 to 連用形, then we can join them up to form the translation for our original English sentence:

鳥が鳴き花が咲き春が来た。

"(The) birds are singing, (the) flowers are blooming; spring is here."

For added emphasis, we can also place a Japanese comma after each of the conjoined sentences:

鳥が鳴き、花が咲き、春が来た。

While not required for the sentence to be grammatically correct, the addition of a comma can make a sentence easier to read. When translating this kind of conjoined sentence, one can usually either use a comma, or the conjunctive "and". However, it should be noted that the real meaning is just a comma or a semi-colon: since this construction creates a sentence where the second part of the full sentence is merely a continuation of a story started in the first part, there is no real "and" to speak of. Typically in English the word "and" will look like it belongs there, but you should remember that the Japanese sentence only faintly implies it. As such the following translations are all possible, but not all of them sound like natural English.

鳥が鳴き花が咲き春が来た。

"(The) birds are singing, (the) flowers are blooming; spring has arrived."

"(The) birds are singing and (the) flowers are blooming; spring has arrived."

"(The) birds are singing, (the) flowers are blooming and spring has arrived."

"(The) birds are singing and (the) flowers are blooming and spring has arrived."

A further note on translating "and": even though a Japanese conjunction can be translated to "... and ...", going the other way — from English to Japanese — typically means you cannot translate "and" with this 連用形 construction. The reason for this is that conjunction is a very specific thing, whereas the word "and" performs many roles in English:

"I ate breakfast and went to school"serial action
"I bought juice and tomatos"noun list
"It's my car, and don't you forget it"emphatic

Typically, when you encounter "and" in an English sentence, the Japanese sentence (unless you're translating to formal Japanese) will not have it mapped to a 連用形 construction.

In addition to this conjoining of sentences, the 連用形 conjunctive also works for certain word combinations, which we shall look at here.

Verb/verb conjunctions

The most common conjunction is the verb/verb conjunction. This takes two verbs, and forms a compound verb with them, by placing the first verb in 連用形 and combining it with the second verb in its normal form. There are plenty of examples to choose from for this type of conjunction:

first verbsecond verbcompound verb
ぶ, "fly"す, "take out"飛び出す, "come flying out"
あるく, "walk"まわる, "go round", "turn"歩き回る, "walk around in circles"

When verbs are conjoined this way, it is quite common for the okurigana (the hiragana that indicates inflection on verbs and verbal adjectives) of the first verb to be omitted: 飛び出す may be written as 飛出す, but is still pronounced とびだす, and 歩き回る may be written as 歩回る but is still pronounced あるきまわる.

A lot of the time, compound verbs created this way have a meaning which is readily guessable. However, sometimes the compound verb is one that's been in use for ages and its meaning has changed over time. This is a good reminder that while the grammar explains forms, it doesn't necessarily explain semantics (i.e., the actual intended meaning). Be careful when creating your own compound verbs - it's not unlikely you will come up with a combination that already means something else in some subtle, or even not so subtle way.

Common conjunctions

There are a few common verbs which, when used in this fashion, add a specific meaning to the compound. These are:

直す — 'Fix', 'correct', 'repair'

Used as second verb in a verb/verb compound, this verb creates a "to re-[...]" verb, such as:

original verbmeaningjoined verbmeaning
write書き直すrewrite
やるdoやり直すredo, do over
込む — 'Crowd', 'fill up'

This verb helps create compound verbs that calls forth a mental image of something going into something else, such as something being filled up, something entering something else, or even something being invested in something else. Examples of this are:

original verbmeaningjoined verbmeaning
はいenter入り込むgo into (someone's) house/room
roll, wind巻き込むbecome involved/entangled in
切る — 'Cut'

Used in compounds, 切る can mean anything from cutting physically to cutting conceptually, such as cutting off someone's speech, cutting a meeting short, or doing nothing but that one thing (which can be thought of as cutting off any other action). A few examples are:

original verbmeaningjoined verbmeaning
say言い切るdeclare, assert
かるunderstand分かり切るto fully understand
出す — 'Come out'

When used in compounds, 出す roughly speaking indicates the inverse of 込む, signifying something is going or coming out of something else. This can be objects from a container, words from a mouth, or even thoughts from a cloudy mind:

original verbmeaningjoined verbmeaning
おもthink思い出すto suddenly remember
say言い出すto break the ice (i.e., to start talking)

Verb/adjective conjunctions

There are three adjectives that are commonly used in verb/adjective compounds, being やすい, にくい and がたい, used to mean "easy to ..." and "hard to ..." (twice). For instance, if a book is easy to read, then this can be said in Japanese by combining the verb for reading, む, with the adjective easy, 易い, to form 読み易い, meaning "easy to read". In English this is a noun phrase, but in Japanese this is still an adjective, and can be used to describe objects, such as for instance:

み易いほん

An easy to read book.

And of course the same goes for 難い:

にくこと

Something that is hard to say.

(literally: "a hard-to-say thing")

Unlike the verb/verb conjunctions, this type of conjunction never drops the verb's okurigana.

While both にくい and がたい signify "hard to ...", にくい is a more modern reading; most things that are "hard to ..." in modern Japanese will use the にくい reading. Examples of the がたい reading are found in for instance がたい, which is commonly known as paired with the verb ございます, with which it becomes ありがとうございます, meaning "thank you".

Verb/noun conjunctions

This conjunction is a very nice one, because it shows an elementary simplicity in the creation of some of Japanese's nouns: compounding. By combining a verb in 連用形, which we know can act as a noun on its own, with another noun, we can form a new compound noun. This particular conjunction can be seen in some words that one would not immediately think of as compound nouns:

verbmeaningnounmeaningconjunctionmeaning
wear (on the body)ものthingきもの着物kimono
board, get onplacea stop (i.e. bus stop)

Continuative: て form

The continuative in Japanese is also commonly referred to as the "て form", because it relies on the 連用形 of the classical helper verb for completion, つ, which is て. This inflection is used for at least three things in Japanese, of which verb chaining is probably the most frequently used. Aside from this, it is also used to issue (implied) imperatives, and it can be used in combination with several special verbs to create special constructions.

basesform
未然形
連用形
終止形
連体形つ (or る)
已然形つれ
命令形てよ

For 五段 verbs, the combination of 連用形 with て leads to contracted forms in modern Japanese, with different contractions occurring for the different 五段 verbs, just like for the plain past tense た. The following table again lists which contractions occur, and what the "change rule" is:

五段continuativemodern continuativechange rules
話す連用形+て: 話して話してす verbs: no change
歩く連用形+て: 歩きて歩いてく verbs: きて → いて
急ぐ連用形+て: 急ぎて急いでぐ verbs: ぎて → いで
死ぬ連用形+て: 死にて死んでぬ verbs: にて → んで
学ぶ連用形+て: 学びて学んでぶ verbs: びて → んで
読む連用形+て: 読みて読んでむ verbs: みて → んで
会う連用形+て: 会いて会ってう verbs: いて → って
待つ連用形+て: 待ちて待ってつ verbs: ちて → って
分かる連用形+て: 分かりて分かってる verbs: りて → って
ある連用形+て: ありてあってる verbs: りて → って

And again 行く is an exception:

Irregular連用形classical continuativemodern continuative
行き連用形+ていって

For the 一段 verbs, as well as verbal adjectives, no contractions occur:

一段continuative
見る連用形+て: 見て
伸びる連用形+て: 伸びて
食べる連用形+て: 食べて
Irregular連用形continuative
する連用形+て: して
来る連用形+て: きて

And finally, no contractions occur either for the small set of formal literary verbs that use their 連体形 instead of their 連用形 for this inflection:

verbmeaningcontinuative
ask, question, accuse問うて
訪うて
ask乞うて
請うて

As we saw earlier, the 連用形 conjoins sentences, and so it should be relatively obvious that this construction conjoins sentences too, but in a slightly different way from the plain 連用形. Rather than simply joining sentences in such a way that there's no order in which verb actions take place, the て form explicitly preserves the order in which the actions occur. For instance, the following two sentences say different things, in terms of which actions follow which other actions:

あさはんべて、がっこう学校って、じゅぎょう授業ました。

"(I) had breakfast, went off to school and went to class."

学校に行って、授業に出て、朝ご飯を食べました。

"(I) went off to school, went to class and had breakfast."

These are two very different ways of spending one's morning.

You may have noticed that in these two sentences only the last verb in the sentence has an inflection indicating tense (present/past) and polarity (affirmative/negative). This is a consequence of using て: while つ itself is the classical helper verb for verb completion, its 連用形 means there is no indication in which way the action has been completed. To indicate the particular completion, the last verb is placed in whichever form is required, and this form then applies to all previous verbs in て form. To illustrate:

ほんんでおんがく音楽きます。

"(I) read a book and listen to music."

本を読んで音楽を聞きました。

"(I) read a book and listened to music."

('read' is past tense in this sentence)

Verbal adjective continuative

Verbal adjectives, too, can be chained in this way by using their 連用形 + て:

adjectiveて form
高い高く + て
楽しい楽しく + て
薄い薄く + て
大きい大きく + て
よい (いい)よく + て
ないなく + て

This lets us write the previous "book" sentence in the following manner, using the adjectives おおきい, big, あかい, red and おもい, heavy.:

これはおおきくてあかくておもほんです。

"This is a big, red, heavy book."

Just like with verbs, the actual inflection of the adjectives in て is determined by the final adjective. To illustrate, the following sentence is entirely in past tense affirmative:

大きくて赤くて重かったはこです。

"(It) was a big, red, heavy box."

To make everything negative, we take the plain negative form of adjectives, ending on ない, and simply use ない's て form:

大きくなくて赤くなくて重い本です。

"(It)'s a not big, not red, heavy book."

Of course, since they're both just て forms, we can even mix the two:

大きくて赤くなくて重かったはこです。

"(It) was a big, not red, heavy box."

This "placing ない in て form" to form the negative て form for verbal adjectives also applies to verbs, by first forming their plain negative form, 未然形 + ない, and then turning this negative into a て form:

べなくてかえりました。

"(I) didn't eat, and went home."

Noun continuative

For nouns, which rely on copulae for inflections, we do not use the 連用形 for つ, but instead rely on the 連用形 for です, which is で:

きれいで、あかるいへや部屋です。

"A tidy, bright room."

As with the verbal て form, tense and polarity are expressed by the final verbal (which can be either a verb, verbal adjective or a copula), so that if we want to place the previous sentence in past tense, we need only change the tense for あかるい:

きれいで、明るかった部屋です。

"(It) was a tidy, bright room."

The negative form for this continuative uses じゃない (or ではない), which due to it ending on ない uses the adjectival て form. So far so good, but this is where things get a little complicated: because ない is a verbal adjective, and verbal adjectives can be paired with です, we can actually choose between two "て" forms. One is the regular て form, なくて; the other is ない + 連用形 of です, giving us ないで instead. Both are used, but depending on the speaker's intention, one is usually preferred over the other. For regular chaining, ないで tends to be preferred; for a chaining with an implied contrast of sorts, なくて is typically preferred. To illustrate:

きれいじゃないで、明るい部屋です。

"(it) is a not (so) tidy, (but) bright room."

(no real contrast, although in English the phrasing makes it sound like one)

しずかじゃなくて、にぎやかなくうき空気でした。

"Rather than quiet, it was a very lively atmosphere."

(real contrast, explicit "rather than X, Y instead" connotation)

Of course this continuative also works for verbal adjectives and verbs in plain negative form, as these end on ない:

おおきくてあかくないでおもかったはこです。

"(It) was a big, not red, heavy box."

べないでかえりました。

"(I) didn't eat, (then) went home."

As mentioned in the section on negatives in this chapter, the negative continuative ないで/なくて is actually similar in role to using a verbal 未然形 + ず + に, meaning "without ...", but there is the subtle difference: ないで is a verb form, while -ずに is an adverbial form. Chaining many affirmative and negative verb actions using the negative て form is possible, while 未然形+ずに doesn't allow you to 'chain':

食べなくて学校へってバスをらなくてきました。

食べないで学校へ行ってバスを乗らないで着きました。

"[I] didn't eat, went to school, didn't take the bus and arrived."

We can interpret this sentence as the more natural sounding "I went to school without eating and (then) arrived without taking the bus." but this misrepresents the actual Japanese, which chains four verb phrases. For actual Japanese that reflects this English sentence, we must use the following:

食べずに学校へ行って、バスを乗らずに着きました。

In the て form sentence, we're chaining four different actions, namely not eating, going, not boarding, and arriving. However, in this sentence using -ずに we are listing just two actions, and both of these are adverbially constrained: 食べずに行く is "going without eating" and バスを乗らずに着く is "arriving without having taken the bus".

Special て form conjunctions

We're not quite done with the て form yet, because there are a number of special て form combinations with verbs that should not be taken literally, but should be considered idiomatic: they mean something different from what the used words would normally imply themselves. These combinations only work for verbs in て form, and do not apply to verbal adjectives in て form or nouns followed by で (or ないで).

Special conjunctions: ている/てある

Combining the て form with ある and いる profoundly changes the verb's meaning in terms of its grammatical role. Using these two verbs as helper verbs lets us turn any verb into a resultant state, a present progressive form or an habitual act, depending on whether the verb is transitive or intransitive, and whether we use ある or いる. The table of which combinations can imply which constructions is as follows:

て+あるて+いる
transitive1. Resultant state1. Habitual
(implying something or2. Progressive
someone caused the state)
intransitive (impossible combination)1. Habitual
2. Progressive
3. Resultant state

Looking at the table, we see that the て+ある form is used to indicate that something is in a particular state, and that this state was caused by someone or something. Examples of this "resultant state" are for instance:

ボタンがはずしてある。

"The button is (in an) unfastened (state) (because someone unfastened it)."

くるまめてある。

"The car is (in a) stopped (state) (because someone stopped it)."

This construction describes the state of something, just like a normal intransitive verb would, but also implies that someone is responsible for this state. The reason for this is the fact that a transitive verb is used as basis: a transitive verb describes an action being performed by something or someone. Thus, even if the something or someone that performs the verb is left off, the fact that a transitive verb was used is in itself enough to tell us that something or someone must have performed it.

On the other hand, the resultant state that is created using the て+いる form does not imply this additional "someone did it", because it uses an intransitive verb instead, which merely passively describes the current state of the world without any implications of how it might have come to be this way:

ボタンが外している。

"The button is (in an) unfastened (state)"

車が止まっている。

"The car is (in a) stopped (state)."

One principal difference is that while て+ある operates on transitive verbs for resultant state, て+いる operates on intransitive verbs. Another difference is that while て+ある can only be used to create a resultant state, て+いる can also be used to create the progressive verb form, as well as to indicate a habitual action. Both these forms can be made with either transitive or intransitive verbs:

いまえいが映画ています。

"(I) am watching a film right now."

Form: transitive progressive

よくしんぶん新聞んでいます。

"(I) frequently read the newspaper."

Form: transitive habitual act

まどが開いています。

"(The) window is opening."

Form: intransitive progressive

そのドアがよくきしっています。

"That door often creaks."

Form: intransitive habitual

To make sure there's no mistakes possible: て+ある/ て+いる can both do resultant state, but they operate on transitive and intransitive verbs, respectively: "Aru, TrAnsitive - Iru, Intransitive". In addition to this, て+ いる can also signify progressive state and habitual form of any verb.

Colloquially, the て+いる form is often shortened by dropping the い, to create てる instead. This means that the following two sentences are technically the same, but the first is formal, and the second less formal:

なにをしていますか。

何をしてますか。

"What are [you] doing?"

Special conjunctions: ていく/てくる

Another important pair is the て+く/て+る pair, where 行く is sometimes written or pronounced as ゆく instead (this is not wrong, but simply an older, alternate way to write and say 行く, used a lot in songs, poetry and still commonly used in many dialects). These two constructions stand for a gradual process directed either towards the speaker in some way, or heading away from the speaker in some way. This towards/away can be either a physical process or an abstract process such as "it feels like her mind is slowly slipping away":

よるになっていく。

"It's (gradually) becoming night."

はるになってきた。

"It has (gradually) become spring."

ふじさん富士山えてきます。

"Mt. Fuji is (gradually) coming into view."

When used in this way, 来る or 行く are usually written くる and いく instead of using kanji.

Note that these "gradual process" interpretations do not always apply. For instance, [...]て+くる is also a common pattern used in combination with activity verbs to indicate "てくる". For example, ってくる means "going to buy something (and then come back afterwards)" or 行ってくる means "going (somewhere) (and then coming back after whatever one had to do there is done)".

Note that a verb can sometimes be interpreted in two or three ways:

んできた。

Interpreted normally: "(He) came flying over."

As a gradual process: "It came flying into view."

いまてきます。

As a gradual process: "It's coming out (into view) right now."

As 'do and come back': "(I'm) going out (to do something, and will then come back) now."

Special conjunctions: てください

This construction signifies a semi-formal request, something which we will look at in more detail when treating verbs for giving and receiving in the chapter on language patterns. For now it suffices to say that using て+ください turns a verb into a polite command or request:

まどけて下さい。

"Please open the window."

べて下さい。

"Please eat (this)."

Special conjunctions: てしまう

The construction て+しまう is a very interesting construction. It lacks an adequate corresponding construction in English, but indicates that some action has been irrevocably performed. This can either be a good thing ("we are done working on this project"), a bad thing ("I broke the radio...") or something of which one might wish it wasn't irrevocable ("I finished reading this series of books... I wish there were more"). Because of this, translations for this construction are highly context sensitive:

ああ、ってしまった......

"Oh (man), now (you)'ve said it..."

literally: "Ah, you've said it (even though it would have been better if you hadn't, but you can't take it back now)"

One can expect to hear something like this when someone says something that everyone knows, but no one had dared say because of the repercussions, such as telling the boss that everyone in his department is better suited for his job than he is.

ラジオをこわしてしまった。

"(I) broke the radio... (and that's something I wish I hadn't)."

In this line, it should be obvious why the fact that 壊せる, "break", having been completed is a bad thing.

Colloquially, て + しまう can be contracted into ちまう or ちゃう, (with で + しまう contracting to じまう or じゃう respectively) resulting, for instance, in:

あっ、きょうかしょ教科書わすれちゃった。

"Ah! (I) forgot (my) textbook..."

Again, it is clear that 忘れる, "forget", is a bad or regrettable thing when completed, especially in relation to needing your textbook in class.

Special conjunctions: ておく

Also important is the て+おく construction. On its own, the verb くmeans "to put [something] [somewhere]", but when paired with a verb in て form, it creates a construction meaning "to do something with the intention of leaving it that way [for whatever reason]". This may sound a bit cryptic, so let's look at an example for clarification:

でんき電気けておいてください。

"Please turn on the lights."

This sentence uses the て form of おく for a polite command (using 下さい), and asks for the lights to be turned on without there being a need for them to be on right now, other than it saving having to turn them on later. Literally this sentence would read "Please turn on the lights and leave them that way". Colloquially, the combination of て+お is often changed to とく instead, so the following two sentences are the same, except that the first is more formal, and the second more colloquial:

まどけておきます。

窓を開けときます。

"(I)'ll open the windows (now, rather than having to do it later when it becomes genuinely necessary)."

Special conjunctions: てみる

Another construction that changes the meaning of the suffixed verb is the て+みる form. みる (見る) alone means "to see", but suffixed to て forms, this construction means "to do ... to see what it's like" or "to do ... to see what happens":

すし寿司べてみませんか。

"Won't (you) try eating (some) sushi?"

Here a negative question is asked as a more polite way of offering a suggestion, and the 食べてみます part stands for "trying to eat, to see what happens". In this case, the "to see what happens" is probably related to "seeing if you like it".

じてんしゃ自転車ってみましたがぜんぜん全然だめでした。

"(I) tried to ride a bicycle, but failed horribly."

literally: "but (it/I) was no good at all."

Here, the act of riding a bicycle was tried to see what would happen, but we can conclude from the remainder of the sentence that riding a bike isn't for this particular speaker.

Representative listing: たり

If, instead of chaining, you want to only list representative actions for which order doesn't matter, such as "Today I read my book, played some video games and walked the dog" in which you probably did all those things a few times in no real order, then the て form is of little use. Instead, the classical helper verb たり is the one you want to be working with. This verb has the following bases:

basesform
未然形たら
連用形たり
連体形たり
已然形たれ
命令形たれ

Just like て, the 連用形 of たり is used, and just like for て and た, contractions occur when used with 五段 verbs (with 行く having an irregular contraction, and 問う, 訪う, 乞う and 請う inflecting via their 連体形 rather than 連用形). However, unlike the て form, which can pair up with any 'final verb' for its inflection, たり gets its inflection specifically from the verb する, meaning "to do":

きょう今日がっこう学校ったり、じゅぎょう授業たり、ごはんべたりしました。

"Today (I) went to school, went to class and ate."

This sentence literally reads "Today I did: going to school, going to class, eating", without any distinction in which action occurred when, in relation to other actions; we're literally only summarising activities performed.

Verbs in たり form can also be used on their own in a sentence, in which case it translates to "doing things such as", and still get closed off by する:

きのう昨日ほんんだりした。

"Yesterday (I) did things like reading a book."

The negative たり form is constructed by placing a verb in plain negative form first (未然形 + ない) and then turning this verbal negative into a たり form by the same formula: 連用形+たり (with a contraction just as for past tense), forming 未然形 + なかったり.

Conditional: たら, なら

In the same series of inflections that contract with 五段 verbs (た, て and たり), we find たら, which is the conditional form, or かていけい仮定形, for た. It combines in the same way as た, て and たり do, being added to the 連用形, and contracts with 五段 verbs as well as with verbal adjectives:

五段conditional
会う会ったら
歩く歩いたら
急ぐ急いだら
話す話したら
死ぬ死んだら
学ぶ学んだら
読む読んだら
待つ待ったら
分かる分かったら

Noting the exception for the verb く:

Irregularconditional
行く行ったら

No contractions occur for 一段 verbs:

一段conditional
見る見たら
伸びる伸びたら
食べる食べたら

And the irregular verbs get their own table:

Irregular連用形conditional
するしたら
来るきたら
あるありあったら
ますましましたら

For verbal adjectives we see contractions:

verbal adjectivesconditional
高い高かったら
楽しい楽しかったら
薄い薄かったら
大きい大きかったら

And for nouns the copulae inflect instead:

nounspast tense
noun + だnoun + だったら
noun + ですnoun + でしたら

So what does it do? In simple terms, this construction sets up an "if ..., then ..." condition:

まちを歩いたら、おもしろ面白いおみもの見物をいっぱい見ます。

"If (you) walk around town, (you) will see many interesting sights."

This can also be used for actions that are constrained by some condition, such as:

にじかん時間したら、べんきょう勉強します。

"I'll go study 2 hours from now"

Here, the act of studying is constrained by 2 hours of something else needing to pass first.

In less simple terms, the たら construction is a "hypothetical future past". That is, it sets up a hypothetical future in which some action has already been taken, about which comments are then made. Looking at the previous sentences using this explanation, we get some rather conceptual translations:

町を歩いたら、面白いお見物をいっぱい見ます。

"In a future where you are walking around town, you see lots of interesting things"

2時間したら、勉強します。

"In a future in which I have spent 2 hours doing (something), I will (then) go study."

This explanation doesn't quite work for noun conditionals, which use なら. This is the 已然形 for the copula だ, rather than for the conditional form of the helper verb of past tense, and rather than a hypothetical future past, is essentially just a plain if[...]then[...] construction:

せんせい先生ならきっと分かる。

"I'm sure the teacher will understand."

literally: "If the teacher, (he/she) will understand."

There are a few more conditionals in Japanese, so (much like with "and" and the 連用形) when translating from Japanese to English, translating たら with "if ... then ..." is fine, but translating an English sentence that has an if/then construction to Japanese requires figuring out exactly which style of if/then is being used.

For instance, "If you walk around town, you will see many interesting sights" is an example of a conditional pertaining to a current situation, "If you get fired, I'll quit too" is a conditional pertaining to a hypothetical situation, and "If you're late for the exam, you fail it." is actually not a conditional but a factual statement ("if A, then B as well").

Of these, the first uses たら as conditional, the second uses the hypothetical construction -えば (explained later in this chapter) and the third uses the simultaneous action marker, と (possibly the most abused particle by beginning students), which is explained in the chapter on particles.

Desire

first person: たい

Unlike the previous constructions starting with the syllable た, this inflection doesn't involve a classical helper verb, but a helper adjective, たい (which has a kanji form, 度い, but this is not used in modern Japanese). This also means that unlike the previous -た, -て, -たり and たら constructions, no contractions occur with 五段 verbs, which makes forming the first person desirative very easy. Since this is an adjective, rather than a verb, it has a slightly different set of bases for further conjugation:

basesform
未然形たく
連用形たく
連体形たい
已然形たけれ

However, as an inflection the first person desirative is about as simple as it gets, pairing with 連用形:

verbfirst person desirative
会う会い + たい
歩く歩き + たい
急ぐ急ぎ + たい
話す話し + たい
死ぬ死に + たい
学ぶ学び + たい
読む読み + たい
待つ待ち + たい
分かる分かり + たい
verbfirst person desirative
見る見 + たい
伸びる伸び + たい
食べる食べ + たい
verbfirst person desirative
するし + たい
来るき + たい

You may have noticed that です and ます are not listed here. The absence of です is easy to explain because it is the copula, and one cannot want something to have a particular property in Japanese using the copula (this uses the adjective しい instead, explained later in this section on desiratives). The absence of a たい form for ます is more subtle: there is no たい form for ます because using たい to express one's desire is intrinsically selfish, and thus mutually exclusive with polite phrasing. To make a statement that expresses desire that is less selfish, the Japanese use a construction that expresses "I think I want/would like to ...", using the particle と and the verb おもう, which makes the actual desire less strong because it's only a thought, rather than a 'genuine' desire:

あたらしいくるまいたいとおもいます。

"I think I would like to buy a new car."

This is a very civil way of expressing one's own desire, compared to the plain:

新しい車を買いたい。

"I want to buy a new car."

Because たい is an adjective, it can also be followed by です to make it more polite, in which case the translation stays the same, but the perceived strength of the desire is tuned down just a bit, although not as much as when the desire is turned into a thought using +と+思う:

新しい車を買いたいです。

"I want to buy a new car."

To say one doesn't want something, all we have to do is form the negative of たい, which we know is たくない:

きょう今日なにもしたくない。

"I don't want to do anything today."

second and third person: たがる

Because of the way Japanese works, and the way the world is interpreted and thought about in the Japanese mindset, one never presumes to truly know what's going on in someone else's head. Because of this, you cannot say that "Bob wants an apple", because even though he might give off all the signals that he does, and even though he may have said so himself, you might still be interpreting the signals wrong, and he might have only said he wanted one instead of really wanting one. Because of this, rather than using たい for second/third person desiratives, the classical helper verb たがる is used.

basesform
未然形たがら / たがろ
連用形たがり / たがつ
連体形たがる
已然形たがれ

Like たい, this form does not suffer from contracted inflections, and is added directly to the 連用形:

verbsecond/third person desirative
会う会い + たがる
歩く歩き + たがる
急ぐ急ぎ + たがる
話す話し + たがる
死ぬ死に + たがる
学ぶ学び + たがる
読む読み + たがる
待つ待ち + たがる
分かる分かり + たがる
verbsecond/third person desirative
見る見 + たがる
伸びる伸び + たがる
食べる食べ + たがる
verbsecond/third person desirative
するし + たがる
来るき + たがる

Again です and ます are missing. Not unlike たい, たがる can be considered somewhat rude as it presumes to know something about someone else. This construction can be made less rude by adding the noun adjective そう to the 連体形, to emphasise that this is merely an impression:

きみこ君子さんがたがるそうです。

"It seems Kimiko wants to leave."

However, note that the following is also possible, using そう with the 連用形:

君子さんが出たがりそうです。

"It seems Kimiko wants to leave."

When そう follows a 連体形, it generally does not mean the same thing as when it follows a 連用形. Normally, そう following a 連体形 expresses a form of hearsay, implying the information's been read somewhere or has been told to the speaker by someone, and そう following a 連用形 expresses the concept of something "being at the point of ..." or "seeming to be ...". While generally two different things, both can be used due to the nature of たがる, but the different uses have difference nuances:

君子さんが出たがるそうです。

"It seems Kimiko wants to leave (I know this because she for instance told us, or someone else told me this was the case)."

君子さんが出たがりそうです。

"It seems Kimiko wants to leave (this is my impression, because she's giving off all the signs of someone who wants to leave)."

The negative form for たがる is a normal verb negative, being either たがらない or たがりません.

states: —て欲しい

Unlike the previous two desirative forms, there is also the 'desire for something to be in a particular state' that was previously hinted at. For instance "I want this door to be red" cannot be expressed with the previous two forms, because they cannot express this state, but can only express verb actions or processes. To express a state desirative, the verbal adjective て form plus the adjective 欲しい, a verbal adjective for indicating that something is desirable, is used:

このドアがあかくて欲しい。

"(I) want this door red."

Note that because these are verbal adjectives, we use the particle が, not を. Even though "desire" is a verb in English, it is an adjective in Japanese, so rather than saying "I want this door red", the more literal translation would be "this door is (more) desired (when) red".

In terms of politeness, 欲しい is just as direct and selfish as たい, and it can be softened by adding です:

つか使って欲しい。

"[I] want it made."

使って欲しいです。

"(I) want it made (being said in a less direct manner than the above sentence)"

Since 欲しい is a normal verbal adjective, we can inflect it further like any other verbal adjective:

basesform
未然形欲しく
連用形欲しく
連体形欲しい
已然形欲しけれ

Pseudo-future: おう/よう

The pseudo-future is used for three things, which are called the presumptive ("it's probably the case that..."), the dubitative ("will/shall ...?") and the cohortative ("let's ...").

Dubitative / cohortative

These forms, as mentioned in the outline for Japanese, turn the 未然形 into something that ends on an お sound through a contraction. There are both a normal and a polite form of this construction, with the polite form simply being the verb in polite form, with ます turned into a pseudo-future.

The way in which the direct pseudo-future is constructed differs for the two verb classes: 五段 verbs get う added to the 未然形, but the combination of the 未然形 あ—row syllable and the う changes the pronunciation (as well as written form) to an お—row syllable instead, so か+う becomes こう, ま+う becomes もう, etc. To see why this happens we have to look back at Japanese, where the combination of an あ—row syllable and an う always changed the pronunciation to that of the corresponding お—row syllable; not just for 未然形 constructions, but for any written combination of the two. While the language reforms of the mid 20th century changed many of the rules for written language so that it would correspond to spoken language more, constructions involving the 未然形 have generally been left alone (another 未然形 'quirk' can be found in 五段 verbs ending on う, which becomes わ rather than あ).

五段 verbpseudo-futurepolite pseudo-future
会う会 [わ → お] + う= 会おう会い + ましょう
歩く歩 [か → こ] + う= 歩こう歩き + ましょう
急ぐ急 [が → ご] + う= 急ごう急ぎ + ましょう
話す話 [さ → そ] + う= 話そう話し + ましょう
死ぬ死 [な → の] +う= 死のう死に + ましょう
学ぶ学 [ば → ぼ] + う= 学ぼう学び + ましょう
読む読 [ま → も] + う= 読もう読み + ましょう
待つ待 [た → と] + う= 待とう待ち + ましょう
分かる分か [ら → ろ] + う= 分かろう分かり + ましょう
あるあ [ら → ろ] + う= あろうあり + ましょう

For 一段 verbs, we simply add よう to the 未然形, and for the irregular verbs and copulae we see special cases:

一段 verbpseudo-futurepolite pseudo-future
見る見 + よう見 + ましょう
伸びる伸び + よう伸び + ましょう
食べる食べ + よう食べ + ましょう
irregularpseudo-futurepolite pseudo-future
するし + ようし + ましょう
来るこ + ようき + ましょう
ますまし + よう= ましょうalready polite
ですでしよ + う= でしょうalready polite
で + あろう= だろう×

For verbal adjectives, the plain pseudo-future is formed by (once again) combining the adjective's 連用形 with ある, this time in pseudo-future form. The polite version is simply the adjective followed by だ or です in pseudo-future form:

adjectivepseudo-futurepolite pseudo-future
高い高く + あろう= 高かろう高い + だろう/でしょう
楽しい楽しく + あろう= 楽しかろう楽しい + だろう/でしょう
薄い薄く + あろう= 薄かろう薄い + だろう/でしょう
大きい大きく + あろう= 大きかろう大きい + だろう/でしょう

For nouns, there is little choice: they are followed by だ or です in pseudo-future form:

noun + だnoun + だろう
noun + ですnoun + でしょう

Using the pseudo-future is fairly straight forward:

うみこう。

"Let's go to the beach."

海に行こうか。

"Shall [we] go to the beach?"

どこでしょうか?

"Where could it be?"

あのほんおもしろ面白いでしょうか。

"(I) wonder if that book (over there) is interesting."

そうしましょう。

"Let's do so."

Presumptive

The presumptive form uses the pseudo-future of the copulae to turn verbs into presumed acts. While this form uses the 未然形 of the copula verb, the verb conjugation itself is actually technically a 連体形 conjugation, and therefore is explained in more detail in the section on 連体形. For now, it suffices to say that it lets us say things like "This computer will probably still work" or "I am sure my coffee isn't cold yet" and similar presumptive statements in Japanese:

コーヒーはもうめただろう。

"The coffee's probably cold by now."

あのひとたぶん多分せんせい先生でしょう。

"(he/she)'s probably a teacher."

The pseudo-future + と + verbs

One of the special things about the pseudo-future is that when combined with several verbs, the intuitive meaning isn't always preserved. We can distinguish at least two such cases: the pseudo-future + と + する and the pseudo-future + と + おもう. While [...]+と+する normally means "to consider something [...]", the meaning changes to "at the point of doing [...]" when combined with a pseudo-future:

はんを食べようとしたら、でんわ電話がかかってきた。

"As (we) were about to eat, the phone rang."

Similarly, on its own 思う means "to think", but when used with the pseudo-future, the combination becomes more nuanced, expressing "to think about [doing ...]":

てがみ手紙こうと思います。

"(I)'m thinking about writing a letter."

Negative pseudo-future

Since the pseudo-future doesn't quite end on a verb that can be placed in a 未然形, creating the negative form cannot be done using ぬ or ない. Instead, the negative pseudo-future uses the classical helper verb まい. To make matters slightly more confusing, while 一段 verbs use their 未然形 as base form, 五段 verbs use their 連体形 as base form for the negative pseudo-future.

五段 verbnegative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
会う会う + まい会い + ます + まい
歩く歩く + まい歩き + ます + まい
急ぐ急ぐ + まい急ぎ + ます + まい
話す話す + まい話し + ます + まい
死ぬ死ぬ + まい死に + ます + まい
学ぶ学ぶ + まい学び + ます + まい
読む読む + まい読み + ます + まい
待つ待つ + まい待ち + ます + まい
分かる分かる + まい分かり + ます + まい
あるある + まいあり + ます + まい
一段 verbnegative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
見る見 + まい見 + ます + まい
伸びる伸び + まい伸び + ます + まい
食べる食べ + まい食べ + ます + まい
五段 verbnegative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
するする + まいし + ます + まい
来るくる + まいき + ます + まい
ますます + まいalready polite

And some example sentences:

そんな事が分かるまい。

"(I) do not expect (him) to understand such matters..."

そのえいが映画ようか見まいか。

"Should (I) go see that film, or not see that film..."

どうしてもびまい。

"That shouldn't stretch regardless of what (you) do."

For verbal adjectives, the negative pseudo-future uses the verbal adjective in negative form, —くない, with ない in pseudo-future form, —なかろう:

adjectivenegative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
高い高く + なかろう高くありません + だろう/でしょう
楽しい楽しく + なかろう楽しくありません + だろう/でしょう
薄い薄く + なかろう薄くありません + だろう/でしょう
大きい大きく + なかろう大きくありません + だろう/でしょう

For nouns the idea is, again, to inflect だ or です appropriately:

negative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
noun + だnoun + じゃない + だろうnoun + じゃありません + だろう
noun + だnoun + ではない + だろうnoun + ではありません + だろう
noun + ですnoun + じゃない + でしょうnoun + じゃありません + でしょう
noun + ですnoun + ではない + でしょうnoun + ではありません + でしょう

However, for the negative pseudo-future form for nouns the typical pattern involves the copula である instead, and its (small) table is as follows:

negative pseudo-futurepolite negative pseudo-future
noun + であるnoun + であるまい

However, the negative pseudo-future is a pattern that you will likely not hear too often, as there are other, more frequently used constructions that express negative expectation.

Hypothetical: えば

The hypothetical construction, hinted at earlier in the section on たら, is created by adding the particle ば to the 已然形, forming the かていけい仮定形, known as the hypothetical form. The negative hypothetical is formed by adding ば to the 已然形 of the plain negative form, as the following tables show:

五段 verbhypotheticalnegative hypothetical
会う会え + ば会わなけれ + ば
歩く歩け + ば歩かなけれ + ば
急ぐ急げ + ば急がなけれ + ば
話す話せ + ば話さなけれ + ば
死ぬ死ね + ば死ななけれ + ば
学ぶ学べ + ば学ばなけれ + ば
読む読め + ば読まなけれ + ば
待つ待て + ば待たなけれ + ば
分かる分かれ + ば分からなけれ + ば
あるあれ + ばなけれ + ば
一段 verbhypotheticalnegative hypothetical
見る見れ + ば見なけれ + ば
伸びる伸びれ + ば伸びなけれ + ば
食べる食べれ + ば食べなけれ + ば
irregularhypotheticalnegative hypothetical
するすれ + ばしなけれ + ば
来るくれ + ばこなけれ + ば

For ます, the negative hypothetical is a bit different, since its negative uses the classical helper verb ぬ:

hypotheticalnegative hypothetical
ますますれ + ばませね + ば

For verbal adjectives, the same rules apply as for verbs:

adjectivehypotheticalnegative hypothetical
高い高けれ + ば高くなけれ + ば
楽しい楽しけれ + ば楽しくなけれ + ば
薄い薄けれ + ば薄くなけれ + ば
大きい大きけれ + ば大きくなけれ + ば

For nouns, the hypothetical construction has three possible affirmative versions, two using the 已然形 for だ, which is なら, either with or without ば, and a third using a slightly different copula: である, of which the ある part is the familiar verb.

hypotheticalnegative hypothetical
noun + だnoun + ならnoun + じゃない + なら
noun + なら + ば(noun + じゃない + なら + ば)
noun + ですnoun + であれ + ばnoun + じゃなけれ (ではなけれ) + ば

Note that the noun + じゃない + なら(ば) forms are possible due to the fact that ない is a verbal adjective; while it may not be followed by だ, it may be followed by なら. In this case, we cannot substitute ありません for ない, as this is a normal verb form and can therefore never be (directly) followed by a present tense copula. Also, while "noun + じゃない + なら + ば" is technically a valid negative hypothetical, it isn't really used, as the polite form "なら + ば" is considered not to mix with the plain form "じゃない".

So which is what? For the affirmative, in increasing order of politeness: なら, then ならば, and then であれば. For the negative: じゃないなら, then じゃなければ, then ではなければ, and then finally the overly formal じゃありませねば and ではありませねば. As a word of caution, do not use these last two unless you know why you are using them. They will typically be considered clumsy speech.

How do we interpret the hypothetical? The simplest explanation is that this creates an if/then construction, with the note that the specific type of conditional created is one that is best thought of as meaning "should [X] be the case, then [Y]". The following two example sentences should illustrate this quite clearly:

ハイデガーをめばかります。

"If (you) read Heidegger, (you)'ll understand."

literally: "Should (you) read Heidegger, (you)'ll understand."

かねがあれば、おいしいものえます。

"If (you) have money, (you) can buy delicious food."

literally: "Should (you) have money, (you) can buy delicious food."

It is important to note that, while usually these sentences are translated with "if" or "when" (because they sound more natural than "should"), the real meaning of the 仮定形 is not really "if" or "when", but is really only a hypothetical conditional: "supposing that ..." or "should ...". The danger in using the word "if" lies in the fact that it implies a more general kind of truth: compare "If it rains, we get wet" to "assuming that it rains, we'll get wet". The first states a truth under all circumstances, the second gives a possible truth for only one instance. Similarly, "when" carries the implication that something will definitely happen, being only a matter of time before it does. The 仮定形 implies neither of these things.

Commands

There are two kinds of commands, namely imperative commands (things one should do) and prohibitive commands (things one should not do). There are a number of ways in which to issue imperative and prohibitive commands, and we'll look at all of these.

Imperative commands

Imperative commands are quite easy to form in Japanese: for 五段 verbs, simply take the 命令形 and you're done:

五段 verbimperative form
会う会え
歩く歩け
急ぐ急げ
話す話せ
死ぬ死ね
学ぶ学べ
読む読め
待つ待て
分かる分かれ
あるあれ
ますませ

For 一段 verbs there is a bit of choice, as one can either use the + ろ, or the + よ, depending on how strong the imperative should be:

一段 verbimperative formalternative form
見る見 + ろ 見 + よ
伸びる伸び + ろ伸び + よ
食べる食べ + ろ食べ + よ

What is the difference between these two forms for 一段 verbs? In standard Japanese, the -ろ imperative is a true command. If someone says 見ろ, you look. The second is more of an instruction than a command. For instance, if you're browsing though a dictionary and there is a footnote telling you to see page 214 for further information, this will typically use 見よ, rather than 見ろ. However, this distinction only applies to standard Japanese, or ひょうじゅんご標準語, which is the "dialect" spoken in the かんとう関東 region, which is where Tokyo lies. North of this region, the -ろ form is typically used to issue imperatives, whereas South of this region the -よ form tends to be used instead.

Not unexpectedly, the irregular verbs have their own 命令形:

verbimperativealternative
するしろせよ
来るこいこよ

However, there is also another verb with an irregular commanding form, namely the 一段 verb れる (usually written in hiragana rather than using its kanji form). This verb is part of the set of verbs used in giving and receiving, and is thus vitally important to know. It only has one imperative form:

verbimperative
くれるくれ

To illustrate the use of the imperative command, some example sentences:

みんな、よくけ。

"Everyone, listen up!"

はやくしろ。

"Hurry up!"

もう、きろ。

"Oh come on, wake up already!"

There is a second way to issue imperative commands, using the verb なさる, which is the (normally) honorific counterpart to the verb する. This verb belongs to a set of verbs with a deviant 連用形 and 命令形, so to see how these differ, let's briefly look at the bases for all five verbs in this set:

なさるくださるいらっしゃるおっしゃるござる
meaningdoissuebe, come, gosaybe
未然形なさら下さらいらっしゃらおっしゃらござら
連用形なさい下さいいらっしゃいおっしゃいござい
連体形なさる下さるいらっしゃるおっしゃるござる
已然形なされ下されいらっしゃれおっしゃれござれ
命令形なさい下さいいらっしゃいおっしゃいござい

This set tells us several things: first, it tells us that ください in the special て form -てください is the 命令形 for くださる. Second, it explains why ござる would become ございます: its 連用形 is simply ござい. Third, it tells us what we need to know to form a command using なさる. If we add the 命令形 for なさる, なさい, to a verb's 連用形, we get a command that is less direct than a plain 命令形 (and thus, more formal/polite), but is still a command:

五段 verbなさる imperative
会う会い + なさい
歩く歩き + なさい
急ぐ急ぎ + なさい
話す話し + なさい
死ぬ死に + なさい
学ぶ学び + なさい
読む読み + なさい
待つ待ち + なさい
分かる分かり + なさい
一段 verbなさる imperative
見る見 + なさい
伸びる伸び + なさい
食べる食べ + なさい
irregularなさる imperative
するし + なさい
来るき + なさい

And finally, ある, ます and the copulae do not have this imperative form.

For verbal adjectives, the idea of an imperative is a bit odd, but that doesn't mean we can't form one. Relying on 連用形 + ある for the inflection again, we can form the imperative command for verbal adjectives. We can either leave these as is, or contract them. The difference is subtle: the uncontracted form is considered an adjectival statement akin in use to, for instance, the English "be faster!" (in Japanese: はやくあれ). Contracted, this is an adverbial statement (はやかれ), which has no English equivalent and is thus harder to explain; it is experienced as an adjectival statement in the same way that the past tense for verbal adjectives is still an adjectival statement.

adjectiveimperative formcontracted
高い高く + あれ高かれ
楽しい楽しく + あれ楽しかれ
薄い薄く + あれ薄かれ
大きい大きく + あれ大きかれ

The same goes for the copula, for which we must use である (since neither だ nor です have a commanding form of their own):

copulaimperative form
であるであれ

Prohibitive commands

If you want to tell people to not do something, then the form of the command is much simpler: simply add the particle な to the 連体形 of any verb:

五段 verbprohibitive form
会う会うな
歩く歩くな
急ぐ急ぐな
話す話すな
死ぬ死ぬな
学ぶ学ぶな
読む読むな
待つ待つな
分かる分かるな
一段 verbprohibitive form
見る見るな
伸びる伸びるな
食べる食べるな
irregularprohibitive form
するするな
来るくるな
ますますな

And finally ある, which has a negative imperative based on ない: なかれ.

Even easier than the normal imperative command, some example sentences are:

にど二度るな。

"Don't come (round here) a second time!"

なんだ、見るなよ。

"What, don't look (at me)."

(よ is an emphatic particle, added to the end of a sentence as an extra level of "I am telling you ...". This particle will be treated in more detail in the chapter on particles.)

In addition to this rather simple prohibitive, we can also turn the 連用形 + なさい imperative into a prohibitive, by using 連用形 + なさる + な. However, while grammatically sound, practically speaking this form is very rarely used. This works for any verb, except for する, which is technically the same verb as なさる but at a different formality/politeness level. Rather than using し + なさる + な, just なさる + な is used.

Requesting: て, —て下さい

Imperative request

We already saw that we can use the verb 連用形 + てください to form a request,

コーヒーをにはい二杯ください。

"Two coffee, please."

But we can also use the plain て form to form an informal request, or plea:

って。

"Wait (please)"

これをって?

"Buy this (for me)?"

Of course, like all requests, they can be made to sound demanding, so intonation counts. If we say 待て instead of 待って, cutting out the stop in the middle to sound curt, then rather than a request this may very well be experienced as a command instead. Similarly, saying して in a stern tone might be less commanding than しろ, but will still be experienced as a command more than as request. However, using this plain て form (rather than paired with ください) can be experienced as curt, or even impolite language, depending on the setting it is used in, so be careful.

Prohibitive request

This kind of requesting can of course also be done in a prohibitive manner, in which case we rely on the continuative form for ない using です, ないで:

かないで。

(Please) don't go.

In this sentence the "please" is implied, and depending on intonation and context this form may be experienced as anything between a mandate (such as a police officer asking you not to come too close to a crime scene) or a plea for someone to not do something (such as a friend in need asking you not to leave quite yet). We can also use an explicit "please" in the form of ください:

行かないでください。

Please don't go.

Again, depending on intonation and context this might be experienced as anything between a mandate and a plea.

Passive: れる/られる

Passive constructions are, as their name implies, constructions which describe actions in a passive voice. Unlike "I eat dinner" or "The cat is playing with the squeaky toy", which are in active voice, they refer to phrases like "Dinner was eaten by me" or "The squeaky toy was played with by the cat". In Japanese, this passive voice, called うけみ受身, is achieved through the use of the two helper verbs れる (for 五段 verbs) and られる (for 一段 verbs), which are added to a verb's 未然形:

五段 verbpassive
会う会わ + れる
歩く歩か + れる
急ぐ急が + れる
話す話さ + れる
死ぬ死な + れる
学ぶ学ば + れる
読む読ま + れる
待つ待た + れる
分かる分から + れる
一段 verbpassive
見る見 + られる
伸びる伸び + られる
食べる 食べ + られる
irregularpassive
する (1)さ—未然形 + れる, forming される (most common)
する (2)せ—未然形 + られる, forming せられる
来るこ + られる

The helper verbs involved are both 一段 verbs, so they can themselves be conjugated further by using their appropriate base:

basesられるれる
未然形-られ-れ
連用形-られ-れ
連体形-られる-れる
已然形-られれ-れれ
命令形-られ-れ

Thus, a simple phrase like べます, meaning "(I) eat", can be made passive: 食べられます, "(something) is being eaten (by someone)".

This change from active voice to passive voice comes with two complications in Japanese: first, what was first the direct object has now become the verb subject instead. This is no different from English, except because in Japanese the grammatical roles are explicitly written, we must make sure we use the right particles:

ばんはんを食べます。

"(I) eat dinner."

Active, verb uses を in relation to ご飯.

晩ご飯が食べられます。

"Dinner is being eaten (by me)."

Passive, verb uses が in relation to ご飯.

Second, what used to be the verb actor has become a verb detail instead. In English we see this expressed by the fact that the verb actor moves to being part of a preposition phrase ("I" becomes "by me", for instance), and from the section on verb particles in chapter 2, we know that these kind of phrases are marked with に in Japanese:

おれが晩ご飯を食べます。

"I eat dinner."

Active, actor is marked with が.

晩ご飯が俺に食べられます。

"Dinner is being eaten by me."

Passive, actor is marked with に.

いぬがほえて、こわかった。

"(A) dog barked (at me), (and that) was scary."

Active, actor is marked with が.

犬にほえられて怖かった。

"(I) was barked at by (a) dog, (and that) was scary."

Passive, actor is marked with に.

In addition to the regular passive construction, these verbs are also used to form what is known as the めいわく迷惑うけみ受身, or "passive form of bother". A somewhat inelegant name, this specific passive is used to indicate that some action (taken by someone) has inconvenienced you, or someone else. Let us look at how this works:

だれかがおとうとじてんしゃ自転車ぬすみました。

"Someone stole my (younger) brother's bicycle."

Active, verb uses を in relation to 自転車.

誰かに弟の自転車が盗まれた。

"My brother's bike was stolen by someone."

Passive, verb uses が in relation to 自転車.

However, this "form of bother" only applies to actions that were taken by someone, which inconvenienced you (or someone else). In the following sentence, for instance, the verb form is merely passive rather than a "passive form of bother":

あめられた。

"(I) was rained on."

While inconvenient, this is not a 迷惑の受身, because the rain isn't actively inconveniencing you — it is simply something that happens. Remember that for a passive to also be a 迷惑の受身, the act has to have been performed, intentionally, by someone.

In addition to describing the passive and passive form of bother, the helper verbs れる and られる are also used to form potential verb constructions, as well as honorific verb forms, and we shall look at these later on in this chapter.

Causative: せる/させる

Causative constructions are, as their name implies, constructions which indicate something was caused by someone. In English, this comes down to statements such as "I was made to do the dishes by my mom", and in Japanese, these constructions use the verbs せる (for 五段 verbs) and させる (for 一段 verbs). These are paired, like れる/られる with the 未然形.

(さ)せる follow the 一段 scheme:

basesさせるせる
未然形-させ-せ
連用形-させ-せ
連体形-させる-せる
已然形-させれ-せれ
命令形-させ-せ

As mentioned, the way these two helper verbs are added is identical to the way (ら)れる are added:

五段 verbcausative
会う会わ + せる
歩く歩か + せる
急ぐ急が + せる
話す話さ + せる
死ぬ死な + せる
学ぶ学ば + せる
読む読ま + せる
待つ待た + せる
分かる分から + せる
一段 verbcausative
見る見 + させる
伸びる伸び + させる
食べる 食べ + させる
irregularcausative
するさ—未然形 + せる
来るこ + させる

Again, we should take note that we use the correct particles, except in this case we cannot rely on a parallel with English: the person doing the causing is marked with が, because they are the verb actor, the person(s) affected are marked with に, and the direct object is left as such (if there is one):

かあさんがこども子供たちに朝ご飯を食べさせました。

"The mother made (her) children eat breakfast."

Some more examples:

たせたね。

"(I) made you wait, (didn't I)?"

いもうとこさせました。

"My (younger) sister woke me up."

In addition to being a causative, this construction is also a "permissive", which just means that it's a construction that indicates giving permission to "let someone do something":

しゃちょう社長がプロジェクトをけさせました。

"(The) CEO let me take on (the) project."

This sentence could technically also mean "The CEO caused me to take on the project" or "The CEO made me take on the project", so context is all-important. However, in most cases where it could either be a forced action or a permission, it's usually a permission.

Causative passive: せられる/させられる

The title sounds like a combination of the causative and the passive, and that's essentially what it is. It's long, and its use is not rare. In English, this form reads "have been made to do ..." and is also quite long. So, just like in most western language, the more nuance you want to place in your verb conjugation, the longer it'll get.

However, because this is a passive, we must make sure to use particles accordingly:

こども子供たちがおかあさんにあさはんべさせられました。

"The children were made to eat breakfast by their mother."

せんせい先生しゅくだい宿題をやりなおさせられました。

"(I) was made to redo (my) homework by (the) teacher."

Potential

Long potential: られる

As mentioned in the section on the passive, one of the other roles that れる/られる can play is that of the (long) potential. The potential form of a verb in English is typically constructed using the auxiliary verb "can", such as when turning "I swim" into "I can swim", but in Japanese this is a conjugation instead. The reason this form is called the "long" potential is that there exists a shorter potential form for the 五段 verbs, which will be discussed after this section. Forming the long potential is no different from forming the passive, except that it is generally not used for 五段 verbs:

Formation of the long potential form is the same as for the passive form:

verbmeaningpotentialmeaning
見るsee見られるbe able to see
伸びるstretch伸びられるbe able to stretch
食べるeat食べられるbe able to eat
comeられるbe able to come

There is one striking exception to this potential form, and that's the irregular verb する, "do". Rather than inflecting, this verb is simply replaced entirely with the verb でき出来る, which literally means "be able to do".

We need to be mindful of particles again: verbs in potential form are always intransitive, and so any direct object it might take in normal use becomes a verb subject instead, requiring the use of が rather than を. However, quite often in colloquial Japanese, the direct object particle を will be heard used in combination with these verbs, rather than the subject particle が, not because this is grammatically correct, but because it "feels right". If you are a beginning student of Japanese, however, it is recommended you stick with proper grammar until you have mastered it to a level that allows you to interact with native speakers, so that you get a feel for what is "right" through exposure to the language as it is used by people.

You may also hear people using れる rather than られる, but at the moment this is discouraged language abuse: the idea behind it is that the short potential form for 五段 verbs always ends on え—row syllable + る, and so using れる for 一段 verbs "does the same thing". However, while they might sound the same, れる is a classical helper verb, whereas the え—row syllable + る sound for 五段 verbs is actually a contraction from what used to be い—row syllable + える, so they have completely different background. So until the Japanese language authorities start accepting this highly colloquial "short potential for 一段 verbs" as right and proper, you're best off avoiding it; at least outside of colloquial interaction with Japanese people who use it.

Note that because this is a potential form, を has to be swapped for が:

A: くるまめてください。

B: すみません、車がいま止められません。

A: "Please stop the car."

B: "(I am) sorry, but (I) cannot stop the car right now."

Also note that this potential form is one of a temporary nature. For instance, rather than meaning "I can see" in general (because you have eyes that work), 見られる means "I can see (whatever I am supposed to see right now)". Similarly, べられる means "(I) can eat (this)", rather than the more general "(I) can eat". If we want to say that we have an inherent ability to do (or not do) something, we have to use 連体形 + ことができ出来る, which will be explained after we cover the short potential form.

Finally, some verbs are not inflected to form the potential form, instead requiring the use of a related, but different verb. For instance, while 見られる is a valid long potential form, you will find the verb える is often used, instead. Similarly, there are 五段 verbs for which alternate potential forms exist, such as the verb く ("to hear/listen"). Rather than the normal potential form, explained in the next section, the verb こえる ("to be able to hear") is used. This highlights an important rule: when learning new verbs, make sure to learn to inflect them correctly; some inflections may in fact use a different verb entirely!

Short potential: 連用形 + 得る

The short potential form is called "short" because it is simply a lot shorter than the full 未然形+られる version of the potential. However, in modern Japanese, this construction only exists for 五段 verbs. For 一段 verbs, the only grammatically correct potential form is the られる potential form. To create the short potential form, the 連用形 is paired with the verb る, meaning "to acquire", to form an "attainable" form of verbs.

In this combination, the final い—row syllable of the 連用形 for 五段 verbs has become contracted with the え sound from 得る over the course of history, becoming an え—row syllable instead. To illustrate:

verbmeaningpotentialcontracted viamodern inflection
会うmeet会いえる会いぇる会える
読むread読みえる読みぇる読める
分かるunderstand分かりえる分かりぇる分かれる

While this construction in modern Japanese is a contraction, there are a handful of verbs in which this contraction never occurred, and as such are still in use today in the uncontracted form. Verbs such as ありえる (from ある) or こりえる (from 起こる, "to occur") are examples of this. Interestingly, this potential form can also be seen in certain modern 一段 verbs that have traditionally been paired with 得る, such as える, "to (be able to) see", from the 一段 verb 見る, or える, "(be able to) boil", from the 一段 verb 煮る.

Just like with the 未然形 potential form, verbs placed in this short potential form become intransitive, which means that technically they can only be used in relation to subjects, and no longer in relation to direct objects.

五段 verbshort potential form
会う会える
歩く歩ける
急ぐ急げる
話す話せる
死ぬ死ねる
学ぶ学べる
読む読める
待つ待てる
分かる分かれる
あるありえる

Some examples to show this potential form:

びょうき病気であんまりあるけません。

"Because of (my) illness, I can't walk that well (at the moment)."

これでいけるでしょうか。

"I wonder if this will do."

The いける in this second sentence is actually a fairly important word to know. While strictly speaking the short potential form of く, its meaning of "being able to go" has become overloaded with the figurative meaning of "something being able to go well". As such, いける means "being fine", "being good" as well as noting that something "will do" or "is acceptable".

Note again that because this is a potential form, を has to be swapped for が:

A: ほんをいくら読みますか。

B: そうですね。じかん時間がたっぷりあって、本がいっぱい読めます。

A: "How much do you read?"

B: "Good question. (I) have plenty of time, so (I) can read a lot of books."

Nominalised potential

A third way to form the potential, for any verb, is by using the construction 連体形 + ことでき出来る. 事 literally means 'concept', and we already saw that 出来る means "be able to do", and this in combination with a verb in 連体形 creates a generalised ability.

For instance, as mentioned earlier, 見られる means "being able to see (something) (at this moment)". Similarly, あるける means "being able to walk (at this moment)". In contrast, 見ることが出来る and 歩くことが出来る mean being able to see, or walk, in general. Particularly with negatives, this difference is striking. For instance, a person whose glasses are so dirty they can't really see any of the things we point out to them might say:

見られません。

"I can't (really) see (it)."

This is hardly anything to worry about as the potential form used is one associated with temporary impairment. However, if they had used:

見ることが出来ません。

We would have good reason to apologise for telling them to look at something; they're blind.

Formal speech patterns

In addition to being polite, an important aspect of formal Japanese is to use the right mix of humble (けんじょう謙譲) and honorific (そんけい尊敬) speech patterns. In part, this is expressed by picking the right words to use, but in part it also depends on which verb inflections you pick. One can argue whether this belongs in a reader that should serve as introduction to Japanese, as it's a rather advanced subject, but I would argue that in terms of how verbs can generically be made humble or honorific, the rules are relatively straight forward. What makes it an advanced topic is not how to do it, but how to do it in such a way that a native speaker doesn't raise an eyebrow at it. And that's hard enough to make even Japanese people get it wrong once they need to start using it.

Humble and honorific patterns are significantly different from politeness. This can be made fairly obvious by using an English example. Compare the following sentences:

  1. "I would like to humbly offer my apologies."
  2. "I do apologise."
  3. "I'm sorry."

Of these, the first sentence is humble, polite English. The second sentence is merely polite, and the third is essentially neutral. It's not really polite, nor is it humble, but then it's not offensive either. Of course, we can mix these patterns to produce something that sounds odd to our ears:

"I humbly am sorry."

This sentence mixes humble form with neutral terms. This sounds very odd to an English speaker, and likewise mixing humble or honorific speech without using appropriate politeness will sound odd in Japanese, but it can be done; just like in English.

humble

When one addresses someone who stands much higher on the social ladder than oneself (in a particular setting), it is customary to lower one's own status by using humble speech. Humble speech applies to everything that has to do with oneself; not just verb actions, but also opinions and things requiring copula statements.

The way to turn any old verb into a humble variant is relatively straight forward: the honorific particle 御 (pronounced お for most verbs, and ご for noun+する verbs where the noun uses おんよ音読み reading), is prefixed to the verb in 連用形 form, and suffixed either with する, or the explicitly humble counterpart to する, いたす. When する is used, the honorary prefix can sometimes be omitted for a slightly less formal humble form, but when 致す is used, it has to be present.

五段 verbお + 連用形+するお + 連用形+致す
会うお + 会い + するお + 会い + 致す
歩くお + 歩き + するお + 歩き + 致す
急ぐお + 急ぎ + するお + 急ぎ + 致す
話すお + 話し + するお + 話し + 致す
死ぬお + 死に + するお + 死に + 致す
学ぶお + 学び + するお + 学び + 致す
読むお + 読み + するお + 読み + 致す
待つお + 待ち + するお + 待ち + 致す
分かるお + 分かり + するお + 分かり + 致す
一段 verbお + 連用形+するお + 連用形+致す
見るお + 見 + するお + 見 + 致す
伸びるお + 伸び + するお + 伸び + 致す
食べるお + 食べ + するお + 食べ + 致す

For the irregular verb する, the humble version is (necessarily) 致す, since this simply is the humble counterpart. However, in addition to する, there are several other verbs for which an established humble counterpart exists, typically being preferable to the お + 連用形 + する/致す construction:

verbmeaninghumble counterpart
comeまい
go
いるbe/exist (for animate objects)おる
say/be calledもう
するdoいた
knowぞんじる
seeはいけん拝見する
べるeatいただく
drink
もらreceive
askうかが
listenうけたまわ
あげgiveげる
meetかる
せるshowらんれる

For verbs consisting of a noun + する, the noun gets prefixed with the honorific 御, pronounced ご, and する is either left as is, or replaced with 致す for a more humble pattern:

verbmeaninghumble counterpart
ちゅうい注意するpay attention toご注意する or ご注意致す
あんない案内するguide (someone)ご案内する or ご案内致す
れんらく連絡するcontact (someone)ご連絡する or ご連絡致す

One confusing result of using these humble patterns and humble counterparts is that humble speech still means exactly the same thing as the normal verb form. The following seven sentences illustrate this idea: they all mean exactly the same thing, but express this meaning with an increasing degree of humility and politeness:

ことわる。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s)."

Form: plain.

断ります。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s)."

Form: polite.

断りします。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s)."

Form: polite, but only marginally humble, using noun form + する.

お断りする。

"I refuse."

Form: humble, but plain form. As this is humble form, the only person this can apply to is first person, so 'I' has become explicit.

お断りします。

"I refuse."

Form: humble polite.

お断りいたす。

"I refuse."

Form: more humble, but plain. This sounds a tad odd, as using 致す typically implies a need to be polite, too.

お断り致します。

"I refuse."

Form: more humble, polite.

While the copulae have, strictly speaking, no humble counterpart, there is a more polite copula that tends to be used in setting where humility is required: でござる, used in the form でございます. This copula does exactly the same thing as だ, です and である, except its high level of politeness makes it particularly suited for use in humble speech patterns:

とうきょうだいがく東京大学にねんせい二年生きむら木村でございます。

"Kimura, second year student at the university of Tokyo."

Careful observation reveals that this sentence is actually not humble, merely very polite, and as such it could have been spoken by the student in question, or by someone doing a formal introduction to someone else, whose social position requires a humble, or at the very least properly polite, form of speech.

humble

While speech pertaining to oneself is humbled, things pertaining to the person of higher social status are elevated by using honorific patterns. Similar to how verbs can be made humble by using the お + 連用形 + する/致す pattern, nearly all verbs can be made honorific by using a similar pattern involving either に + なる or なさる, similar to the humble choice between する and 致す:

五段 verbお+連用形+に+なるお+連用形+なさる
会うお + 会い + に + なるお + 会い + なさる
歩くお + 歩き + に + なるお + 歩き + なさる
急ぐお + 急ぎ + に + なるお + 急ぎ + なさる
話すお + 話し + に + なるお + 話し + なさる
死ぬお + 死に + に + なるお + 死に + なさる
学ぶお + 学び + に + なるお + 学び + なさる
読むお + 読み + に + なるお + 読み + なさる
待つお + 待ち + に + なるお + 待ち + なさる
分かるお + 分かり + に + なるお + 分かり + なさる
一段 verbお+連用形+に+なるお+連用形+なさる
見るお + 見 + に + なるお + 見 + なさる
伸びるお + 伸び + に + なるお + 伸び + なさる
食べるお + 食べ + に + なるお + 食べ + なさる

Again, there are several verbs for which this pattern is essentially inferior to using an appropriate honorific counterpart instead:

verbmeaninghonorific counterpart
comeいらっしゃる
でになる
お出でなさる
goいらっしゃる
でになる
お出でなさる
いるbe/exist (for animate objects)いらっしゃる
お出でなさる
say/be calledおっしゃる
するdoなさる
knowぞんじ存知
ご存知でいらっしゃる
seeらんになる
らんなさる
べるeatがる (し means 'summon' here)
drink召し上がる
sleepやすみになる
お休みなさる
おもthinkおぼす (normal honorific pattern also possible)
wear (on the body)お召しになる (し means 'clothing' here)

For compound verbs consisting of a noun paired with する, the noun gets prefixed with the honorific 御, pronounced ご, and する is either replaced by になる or なさる:

verbmeaninghonorific counterpart
ちゅうい注意するpay attention toご注意になる or ご注意なさる
あんない案内するguide (someone)ご案内になる or ご案内なさる
れんらく連絡するcontact (someone)ご連絡になる or ご連絡なさる

When using a copula while being honorific, rather than using the polite でござる, the properly honorific でいらっしゃる copula, in the form でいらっしゃいます, is used instead:

こさま子様はおいくつでいらっしゃいますか。

"How old is your child(/son/daughter)?"

In this sentence, お子様 is an honorific for the noun 子, "child", and でいらっしゃいます acts as honorific form of です. The word いくつ, meaning "how old" in this sentence, can only be used for children that are (or seem) younger than ten (the reason for this being that it is a question word used for counting statements using the counter つ, which can only count up to and including nine. Anything higher uses the counter さい, also written 才, with corresponding question word なんさい何歳). Given this information, we see that the sentence is actually identical (in meaning) to the following, plain form, sentence:

いくつですか。

"How old is (your son/daughter)"

In the plain form sentence, we can drop the fact that we're asking this in relation to some child, because the use of いくつ should be enough information for the listener to figure this out. Being much shorter than the honorific form, we once more see a confirmation of the general rule for politeness when it comes to Japanese: the longer a statement is, the more formal polite it will be.

As with the humble pattern, there is no change in actual meaning when going from plain form to honorific, other than ruling out single person as implied actor or subject (since one cannot honour oneself).

ことわる。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s)."

Form: informal.

断ります。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s)."

Form: formal polite.

断りします。

"(I, you, he, she, we, they) refuse(s). "

Form: more formal than formal polite, using noun form + する.

お断りになる。

"(you, he, she, they) refuse(s)."

Form: plain honorific. As this is honorific form, this can no longer apply to first person single or plural.

お断りになります。

"(you, he, she, they) refuse(s)."

Form: polite honorific.

お断りなさる。

"(you, he, she, they) refuse(s)."

Form: plain, but more honorific than when using に+なる.

お断りなさいます。

"(you, he, she, they) refuse(s)."

Form: polite honorific.

お断りなさっています。

"(you, he, she, they) refuse(s)."

Form: (present progressive) polite honorific.

adjectives

This final section is not about how classical adjectives inflect, but is actually about what happens when we pair modern verbal adjectives with certain special verbs, such as ござる and でる. While these very rarely get used on their own, there are certain set uses for them, where they pair up with specific adverbs, derived from verbal adjectives. In these cases, the adverbial form of the verbal adjective actually undergoes a sound change, the 連用形 く becoming a う instead, and leading to four possible classical pronunciation changes (meaning they will potentially change the pronunciation of the adjective with blatant disregard of their kanji):

  • If the syllable preceding the 連用形 く is an あ row syllable, the adverb gets an —おう sound instead:

はやい becomes はや[く→う], which contracts to はよう.

ありがたい becomes ありがた[く→う], which contracts to ありがとう.

  • If the syllable preceding the 連用形 く is an い row syllable, the adverb gets an う-glide instead:

おおきい becomes 大き[く→う], which contracts to 大きゅう

おい美味しい becomes 美味し[く→う], which contacts to 美味しゅう

  • If the syllable preceding the 連用形 く is an う row syllable, the adverb gets a long う:

やすい becomes 安[く→う], which does not contract and so stays 安う

  • If the syllable preceding the 連用形 く is an お row syllable, the adverb gets a long お by virtue of the お—row syllable + う already being a long お sound:

おもしろ面白い becomes 面白[く→う], which does not contract and so stays 面白う

And hopefully you noticed the first two entries, which are precisely the ones you may know from the phrases おあようございます, translating to "good morning", and ありがとうございます, translating to "thank you very much".