Verbs conjugation - part 1

Verbs are one of the hardest part in every language, and Japanese is not exception. The conjunction rules can be tricky and the exceptions for these rules are hard to memorize and to apply. Luckily, the exceptions in Japanese are few and it will make the memorization way easier than in English.

Usually every Japanese study starts with the verbs in ~ます (masu) form. Which is affirmative polite present tense form. But I prefer to start the introduction with getting to know the "enemy". 

Firstly I have to say that learning Japanese verbs will be easier if you already know the kanji. Yes it's a paradox, but stay with me for a second. Japanese is a language full of homophones. And because hiragana is written exactly how it pronounced, many verbs are written the same in hiragana, but having different meanings. For example: おきます (okimasu). can be "to wake up" and "to put". More over, these two are belonging to different groups of verbs and conjugate differently. Confusing, right?

But here the spot were the kanji come into our rescue. All Japanese verbs have kanji in them and which is behaving like a root of the verb. It follows the verb through all the conjugation forms and helps identify it.

Here in our example: 起 きます- to wake up,  置 きます- to put.

So yes, kanji are hard and verbs conjugation is hard, but if we put them together, it can serve two purposes. You'll learn kanji faster and you'll know to tell apart the similar sounding verbs.

Also it might be helpful to study the verbs as a couple of dictionary form and the masu form. Why? You will ask me. Well, let's say you will thank me later if you will take my advice on this one.

Now lets look over the groups of verbs we have rules for. Japanese has three groups of verbs:

 

Ichidan verbs (one-level erbs)

These verbs are ending with る in the dictionary form but not all the verbs ending with る are ichidan verbs. Yes, a little logic here: every ihchidan verb ends with る, but not every verb which ends with る is ichidan.
Then how is it helps us? It will help us to identify the godan verbs. But in the meantime, the important part in these verbs that they are conjugate easily. Lets take for example the verb 食べる(たべる) - to eat.
In all the forms, the only part that changes is the る, meaning that the stem 食べ stays the same. That also the reason these verbs are called ichidan. They stay in the え column of the hiragana table, as the ending vowel in the stem indicate.

Godan verbs (five-level verbs)

These verbs are more complicated to conjugate. First of all we need to identify The godan verb. As you may expect from the information above, every verb in dict. form that doesn't end with る is a godan verb. For example: 聞く(きく) - to listen, 話す(はなす) - to speak, 読む (よむ) - to read, and so on.
But also the verbs which end with aru, oru or uru are also godan verbs. For example: 分かる(わかる) - to understated, 折る (おる) - to break, 作る (つくる) - to make.
Then what about the iro and eru endings, you will ask. Well, these you will have to memorize.
So why are they godan? Because in conjugation the last vowel changing, moving left and right on the hiragana chart:

a  聞かない - not to listen
i  聞きます - to listen (polite)
u  聞く- to listen (dict form)
e  聞ける- can listen
o  聞こう- let's listen

As you can see we have all the か, き, く, け, こ row while conjugating. 

Irregular verbs

In this group we have only two verbs:

来る(くる) - to come. In the masu form: 来ます
する- to do.  In the masu form: します

The last one is a very useful verb, because he turns nouns into verbs. For example:
せんたく-laundry, せんたくする - to do laundry.
テニス- tennis, テニスする - to play tennis.
べんきょう- study, べんきょうする - to study.
and so on.

It's it for now. In the next parts the types of conjugations and their practical usages will be discussed.