Japanese verbs are easy. You see there are five vowels in Japanese, あ い う え お And all verbs end on the う-row kana In order to conjugate any of these verbs,
you simply shift the う into a different row For example 飲む meaning drink can be 飲ま、飲み、飲め、or 飲も However, unlike English conjugations
that directly change the verb's meaning the main purpose of conjugations in Japanese is to allow
you to attach helper verbs and helper adjectives For example, shifting the verb 飲む into its い-stem, 飲み allows you to attach the helper verb ます
to make the word formal or the helper adjective たい
to imply desire This means that the entirety of 飲みます
should not be seen as a single conjugation Instead 飲み is the conjugation,
while ます is simply another helper verb this means that in reality,
Japanese only has FIVE conjugations four of which we'll cover in this video and before we progress any further if anyone has any doubts about this
being the way verbs work in Japanese a simple Google search of 国語動詞活用
will show you plenty of examples of how Japanese people really learn about verb conjugations To start us off, let's take a look at
the most important conjugation, the い-stem as with every other stem, there are a handful of helper verbs and adjectives that only the い-stem can take however, unlike every other stem, the い-stem can also
attach to basically every other word This power of the い-stem is also why
it's known as 連用形 in Japanese (connective use form) and this is the most important stem
because we see it so often in daily life For example, if I wanted to say that I "want to do something",
I would use the helper adjective, たい Since たい can only attach to the い-stem, every single Godan verb would follow the exact same rule 飲む, to drink,
would become 飲み + たい, want to drink 使う, to use,
would become 使い + たい, want to use 話す, to speak ,
becomes 話し + たい, want to speak okay but with the verb 食べる,
why do we say 食べたい, not 食べ り たい well that's because 食べる is
an Ichidan verb, not a Godan verb If you don't know how to tell the difference yet,
click on this video to learn how now The い-stem can also attach to regular words
that aren't helper verbs and adjectives For example, 飲み物. 飲み the い-stem of 飲む, while 物 is the noun meaning "thing" so "drink thing", in other words, a beverage 使い方。使い the い-stem of 使う, use;
方, a noun meaning "way" altogether it's, "the way of
using something" 話し合う。話し the い-stem of 話す, talk;
while 合う is another verb that means "to meet" so to talk and meet together
means to discuss there is one final use of the い-stem
and that is to nominalize a word in other words,
to turn a verb into a noun For example, the verb 休む meaning the action "to rest",
changing it into its い-stem gives us 休み, which means "a rest" and if you've ever watched any school related anime you would have surely heard the term 「夏休み」 meaning summer break or summer vacation as you can see,
it is through and through, a noun Oh and by the way, the tool that I'm using here automatically
underlines all the words that I don't know which in this case is just 2% I can batch create Anki cards with all these words including the definition, reading, pitch, sentence and audio, and screenshot all within a few minutes just by using
the sponsor of this video: Migaku click this video up here to learn how to use Migaku or
scan this QR code to get your second month off Migaku for free next let's take a look at the あ-stem fortunately it's a lot easier because it only takes
a handful of helper adjectives and verbs Starting with anything negative,
you can simply attach ない、ず or ぬ For example, 知る means to know If I wanted to say I "do not know", I would change 知る into its
あ-stem, 知ら, then add ない, 知らない and to say "without knowing", I would add ず so, 知らず and a very old fashioned way of saying 知らない is 知らぬ, that's the same thing the aforementioned 飲む becomes 飲まない (don't drink), 飲まず (without drinking), or 飲まぬ (same as 飲まない) Ichidan verbs do what they always do, simply drop the る so you would get 食べない, 食べず, or 食べぬ Oh one more thing, if the verb ends on an う, you do not change it into a あ, you change it into a わ The reason it's like this is just because it's
an ancient relic of old Japanese This by the way is the one and single
only exception in this entire system onto the あ-stem you can also attach the receptive helper verb れる・られる as well as the helper causitive verb せる・させる both of these deserve a video of their own which I'll link up here once it's done but the main gist of it is that, the receptive れる・られるindicates that the subject is receiving a certain action to say that "the dog drank water" where the dog is the subject, we can say... 犬が 水を 飲んだ。
飲んだ being the past tense of 飲む However, we can also say "the water got drunk by the dog"
in this case water is the subject and it is getting drunk so because it is receiving an action, we have to use the receptive れる・られる 水が 犬に 飲まれた。 In this case, 水 is the subject because it is marked by が, and the main engine of the sentence is the verb れた, which is the past tense of れる Because it is a verb ending sentence, this is an "A does B" sentence where "the water" does "get" What does it get? It gets drunk by the dog For 一段 verbs instead of attaching れる, we will attach られる so to say that you got eaten, you would not say 食べれた, you would say 食べられた The causitive せる・させる is also very similar.
The short of it is... If I want to say that I make someone do something, or let someone do something, or in any way
allow or cause someone to do something I will use せる・させる For example, 薬を飲む simply means to drink medicine,
but 薬を飲ませる means to MAKE someone drink medicine Obviously for 一段 verbs you would させる instead of せる, so...
食べさせる instead of 食べせる If that's still a bit confusing, don't worry about it for now This video is a wide overview of all the tools in the workshop not necessarily how to use each tool in detail Next let's take a look at the え-stem. The first use of the え-stem is
to turn something into a command So for example, if we turn 飲む into 飲め,
飲め is the command to drink Similarly turning 使う (use) into 使え,
you are commanding someone to use something and in anime you hear this a lot, 死ぬ(die), turns into 死ね, "go die!" or the command to die For 一段 verbs it's a little bit different,
you can't just leave it blank you either have to attach よ,
or more commonly ろ So for example 起きる becomes 起きろ,
as in the command to tell someone to wake up The え-stem has one more use and that is
to turn the verb into a hypothetical There are two ways to do this, and the
first way is to use the particle ば this creates a conditional statement So for example if I say 飲めば, I'm saying "if drink" 使えば, if use
話せば, if speak 一段 verbs are again a little bit different,
you have to use れば instead of just ば So 食べれば is "if eat",
起きれば is "if wake up" the second way to create a hypothetical
is to use the helper verb る Yes, the single kana る is in fact a verb
as can be backed up with the Japanese dictionaries when you attach a る to the end of an
え-stem, it becomes the potential form basically saying that you can do something For example, 飲める, "can drink" or "is drinkable" 使える "can use" or "is usable"
話せる "can speak" or "is speakable" 一段 verbs being a little bit special as always
do not take る, it takes られる which if you've been paying attention causes a problem
because that's exactly the same as the receptive られる this means that 食べられる can either mean the receptive "got eaten", or the potential "can eat" or "is edible" this is not really as confusing as it sounds because it's similar in English, you don't really get confused between to, too, and two Furthermore there has been a recent phenomenon that affects only 一段 verbs called ら抜き or ら removal this is particularly common with young people and it basically removes the ら from the potential form so now instead of 食べられる having two meanings,
this now strictly means the receptive form while 食べれる is now strictly the potential form and finally we get to the last stem, the お-stem fortunately the お-stem is very easy as it only takes the helper verb う Yes, う by itself is also a verb Doing this turns the verb into its volitional form, in other words, when you want to say let's do something For example, "let's drink" is 飲もう, "let's use" is 使おう,
"let's talk" is 話そう 一段 verbs want to take よう instead of just う so "let's eat" is not 食べう it's 食べよう okay so now that we've gone over every single stem I feel that it is imperative to explain why I said we should
not treat this entire thing as one single conjugation but instead learn that THIS is the conjugation, and THIS is a separate verb or adjective and there are two reasons for this the first being when we start to combine different
forms together this makes a lot more sense for example if I wanted to say that I was
"not made to drink something" I would first have to start with the verb 飲む, then change it into causitive because I was made to do something then change it into receptive because
I'm the one receiving that order then change it into negative because it was
NOT made to do something then change it into past tense because
that's the tense I chose now it sounds like a mouthful but it can actually be accomplished pretty easily so first we start off with the plain form, next we need to attach
the causitive せる, and how do we do this? That's right we have to turn this into its あ-stem.
So we can simply change this into ま then add せる This gives us 飲ませる.
But how do we turn THIS into receptive? well if we treat せる as an individual verb, which it is, by the way, according to the Japanese dictionaries... then we can also understand that せるis an 一段 verb because it ends on eru As such, to turn せる into receptive,
we simply cut off the る so this gives us...られる, because remember,
一段 verbs don't just take れる it has to take られる Okay so now that we have another verb here, られる,
how do we turn this into negative? Well look again, how does this end? rERU,
meaning THIS is also an 一段 verb we can simply cut off the る and
add ない to turn it into negative and finally to turn the adjective ない into past tense, it's something that I haven't covered in this video but basically we just turn this into なかった as you can see we can simply break this down into
1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 steps it is 100% logical and shows the lego-like structure
of the Japanese language the second reason relates to this
ancient video that I made in the past explaining how Japanese only has
2 types of sentences and how the end of a sentence changes
what type of sentence it is so if we take a look at these two sentences,
"ビールを飲む" and "ビールが飲みたい" we can discover an oddity here you see in the first sentence it ends
on the verb 飲む, therefore it is an "A does B" sentence and the を particle is the direct object of the verb 飲む So "A does B" → "subject does verb", What is the subject?
Subject here is marked Øが so it is "it" "It" does "drink". What does it drink?
It drinks beer However, in the second sentence it ends on the adjective たい, meaning it is an "A is B" sentence and so in this scenario the を particle makes no sense because there is no verb to attach to that is unless you understand that the 飲み
and the たい are separated In this way, the を particle can attach to the 飲み,
while the たい stays as the engine of the sentence Which means that "ビールを飲みたい" IS an entirely valid grammatically correct sentence and is not an exception to any of the core rules it is simply said less commonly than "ビールが飲みたい" to learn more about the を particle, the adjective たい, and subjectivity in Japanese, click on this video up here Finally, if you've been doing your own research you would have also found this chart that Japanese people use this system wants to call both the お-stem
and the あ-stem as the 未然形 so if you ask someone "where do I put ない"
and they tell you "the 未然形" They are basically saying that you
can say "飲もない", but you cannot in other words this system is flawed
and we should stop using it to put everything you've learned into practice click on the video on the left to find out how to use this website called Don's Japanese conjugation drill and if you want to learn about the fifth
stem, the て-form, click on the video on the right
