Verbs

Japanese has both regular and irregular verbs (動詞). However, unlike English and its plethora of irregular verb conjugations (“read” -> “read”, “speak” -> “spoke”, etc), the majority of Japanese verbs are regular and follow a very strict set of pattern rules.

Japanese has two main categories of regular verbs: ichidan (一段) and godan (五段) and they conjugate differently. Ichidan means “one degree” (or “one step”) and godan means “five degrees” (or “five steps”). This terminology is important to understand how they conjugate.

Here's an example, using a ます (polite) form that we'll learn properly in Lesson 12. Don't bother memorizing this list.

見る／見ます, ichidan verb.
切る／切ります, godan verb, ending in る.
買う／買います, godan verb, ending in う.
死ぬ／死にます, godan verb, ending in ぬ.

Ichidan verbs always end in る, and just drop the る when they conjugate. The stuff leading up to that る is the verb's basic identity, and isn't changed. You can call it the “stem” of the verb. The verb itself, aside from the conjugation, has only "one form".

Godan verbs can end in one of several syllables, not just る. In the dictionary form, this syllable always ends in a u-sounding vowel, and different conjugations can change it to any of the other four vowels. This means that it can have any of five different vowels at the end. In other words, “five forms” or stems.

Godan verbs in the dictionary form can end in one of several different syllables, but it always ends in the (romaji) vowel "u". The following example verbs are all godan.

切る	殺す	死ぬ	選ぶ	読む	買う	動く	急ぐ	持つ

Ichidan verbs always end in る

食べる	負ける	変える

Japanese verb conjugation likes to pile words together, and you end up with long strings of verbs like 見られたくなかった. In future lessons, we start learning the logic behind these long piles of conjugations. It will become easier and easier to break them down the longer you get exposed to the language so don’t worry about it.

This lesson is just establishing the basics needed to understand what we're going to look at in later lessons.