Japanese verb forms

dictionary form, past, neg-forms, and stem (pre-masu form).

Leaning Japanese verb forms is one of the hardest thing in elementary learners. When I was teaching Japanese, this was a hard part. The list below shows the dictionary form, stem type, past form, negative form, and stem. I will explain how to extract the stem (pre-masu form) from the suffixes based on the table. There is a 3 types of verb stem types in Japanese: vowel-ending, consonant-ending, and irregulars. more info (wikipedia).

In some past forms such as  “yomu (to read)” have a phonological changes, /m/ -> /n/ before past suffix /ta/ and changes to voiced /da/. In the word /kawu/(to buy), the past form /katta/, the /w/ changes to /t/ to form past tense /katta/.

These phonological changes can be observed in many languages. The phonological changes occurs to ease and smoothen the speech by shortening, deleting, changing phonemes in phonetic naturalness.

I will go over more rules in Japanese phonology in the future post.

Language learners are often required to memorize all the tense forms such as “eat”, “ate”, “eaten” as in English example. However, at least knowing the stem of verbs, it might be easier to learn the different forms in Japanese verbs such as “causatives” and everyone’s favorite “-te form”.

Hopefully, this helps you to learn and understand Japanese better.

Japanese Causative form

Japanese causative form is a bit unique since Japanese language is very context-centered  language such as subject/object deletion. In Japanese, subjects and objects are shared by the context. In, English causative forms are “made/let “, and have different meaning by different verbs. In Japanese, causative from appears in one verb form and meanings are defined by the object particles.  Causatives are one of the great example of this phenomena. In this post I will go through basic grammer and some examples of Japanese causatives; moreover, causative forms + other grammatical forms such as passives.

Grammer:
Basic form:  Verb(pre-masuform) + saseru

Causative : make/let ~

1.Without direct object

1) make: causer make cause do V(without causee’s will)

先生は、   学生を    教えさせた。
causer     causee
The teacher made the student teach.

2) Let: causer let causee do V (with causee’s will)

先生は、　学生に　　教えさせた。
causer       causee
The teacher let the student do V

2.With direct object

先生は、   学生に 　 英語を     教えさせました。
causer       causee   direct obj
The teacher made/let the student teach English.

In this case, the context triggers the meaning let/make such as

太郎くんは、将来、英語の教師になりたいと言いました。
Taro said he want to be a English teacher in the future.
山田先生は、太郎くんに、１５分間　英語を教えさせました。
Mr.Yamada(teacher Yamada) let him teach English for 15 min.

3. More causative (combined to other forms)

1) Causative-passive | V-premasu + sase (causative form) + rareru(passive form)

私は、   両親に、勉強させられました。
causee   causer
I was made to study by my parents.

You can paraphrase this

両親は、私を、勉強させました。
causer causee
My parents made me study.

2) causative+receiving/giving verb

りゅうがくさせていただきました。
received a favor of letting me study abroad

大学に行かせてやりました。
giving a favor of letting him/her go to the collage.

Learning Japanese causative form is very important to gain your Japanese skills.

夢は「先代のどの火影をも超える火影になり、里の住民全員に自分の存在を認めさせること」。また、「真っ直ぐ自分の言葉は曲げないこと」を忍道として掲げている。後に九尾チャクラコントロールの修行で母クシナに会い両親に愛されて生まれたことを知った際には夢に「父よりカッコいい男になり、母より強い忍になること」を加えている。

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%86%E3%81%9A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%8D%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%83%88

About Naruto’s dream

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