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How to tell if it's a godan verb or a ichidan verb?

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lonna_senpai
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How to tell if it's a godan verb or a ichidan verb?

Postby lonna_senpai » June 15th, 2009 2:50 pm

Is there a dictionary out there that let's you know what conjugation it is? I would like a all Japanese one if it exists. It's just I find new verbs then don't know how to conjugate them.
I have an all Romaji one but it is a pain....

Thanks!!

Psy
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Postby Psy » June 15th, 2009 5:17 pm

Information on verb conjugation is part almost any standard study method for learning Japanese. Tables/lessons are not difficult to find:

http://japanese.about.com/blvarchive.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugations
http://www.as.ua.edu/nihongo/verb_table_roomaji.htm
http://dumbotaku.com/2009/05/15/japanes ... n-te-form/ (nice intro from a new JPod101 forum member!)
http://www.timwerx.net/language/jpverbs/

Additionally, the podcasts/transcripts here cover an extensive number of different verb conjugations. Since they are largely regular, once you learn the basic ones the rest will fall into place naturally.

Good luck!
High time to finish what I've started. || Anki vocabulary drive: 5,000/10k. Restart coming soon. || Dig my Road to Katakana tutorial on the App store.

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lonna_senpai
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Postby lonna_senpai » June 15th, 2009 7:09 pm

I was really more talking about when it's a verb like taberu and you drop the ru to get the masu stem or it looks like you should drop the -ru but you don't you make it into -ri. That's what I'm having trouble finding. The irregular -iru and -eru verbs. Thanks Lonna

percent20
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Postby percent20 » June 15th, 2009 8:41 pm

I think I understand what you are talking about. Try reading these in this order and hopefully it will help. I tried to cover verb conjugation basics well.

http://dumbotaku.com/2009/05/11/understanding-u-verbs-and-ru-verbs/
http://dumbotaku.com/2009/05/12/japanese-verb-conjugation-present-and-future-tense/
http://dumbotaku.com/2009/05/13/japanese-verb-conjugation-past-tesne/
http://dumbotaku.com/2009/05/15/japanese-verb-conjugation-te-form/

Read through those and hopefully you will get it. I wrote a program on verb conjugation http://learn.dumbotaku.com and had to really learn to break verbs down which helped me to write those posts. If you still don't understand let please post back and maybe we can try to improve from there. I do specifically talk about irregular verbs too.

@psy thank you for linking to my site i was surprised because I wasn't sure my posts were good enough to link to besides me doing the linking :D :oops:

Psy
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Postby Psy » June 16th, 2009 2:52 am

Whoops, I'm sorry! I was in a hurry this morning and totally misread what it was you were asking for. There is a list of such verbs in Gene Nishi's Japanese Step By Step, but after doing a quick look around, I found a couple of listings online:

http://epochrypha.com/japanese/verbs/ve ... odans.html
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/verbs.html#part3

By and large, if it ends in iru/eru it's pretty safe to assume they're -ru verbs. There are some exceptions, but you'll pick up on them pretty quickly.

Hope that helps!
High time to finish what I've started. || Anki vocabulary drive: 5,000/10k. Restart coming soon. || Dig my Road to Katakana tutorial on the App store.

Bueller_007
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Re: How to tell if it's a godan verb or a ichidan verb?

Postby Bueller_007 » June 17th, 2009 3:33 am

lonna_senpai wrote:Is there a dictionary out there that let's you know what conjugation it is? I would like a all Japanese one if it exists. It's just I find new verbs then don't know how to conjugate them.
I have an all Romaji one but it is a pain....

Thanks!!

If a Japanese-English dictionary DOESN'T have this info, then don't buy it. It's either designed for Japanese people or it's complete and utter crap.

All Japanese dictionaries have the PoS, it's just a matter of learning how to read it.

おさ・える【押さえる・抑える・圧さえる】オサヘル
[他下一](文)おさ・ふ(下二)

他 means it's a transitive verb.
下一 means it's shimo-ichidan (-eru verb).

Notice that the historical kana (おさへる) and the classical part of speech (下二 = shimo-nidan) are also given in this case.


いき‐かえ・る【生き返る】‥カヘル
[自五]

自 means it's an intransitive verb.
五 means it's a go-dan verb (e.g. -u, -ku, -gu, -su, -tsu, -nu, -bu, -mu, -ru)


いる【居る】ヰル
[自上一]

自 means it's an intransitive verb.
上一 means it's kami-ichidan (-iru verb)


い・る【入る】
[自五]

自 means it's an intransitive verb.
五 means it's a go-dan verb (e.g. -u, -ku, -gu, -su, -tsu, -nu, -bu, -mu, -ru)


Entries for the free online dictionaries at Yahoo Japan (Daijisen and Daijirin) are similar. Learning how to read Japanese dictionaries is critical for advancing in the language.

http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/

lonna_senpai
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Postby lonna_senpai » June 29th, 2009 1:56 pm

Bueller_007 thank you soooo much!!! This information is so helpful!! Now I will buy an all Japanese dictionary! Thanks again!!

RebelDogg
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Postby RebelDogg » June 29th, 2009 10:44 pm

On a similar subject, I was wondering if someone could explain the iru/eru verbs that are godan doushi? Like for a most confusing example (切る) kiru and kiru (着る). I know the pronunciation is slightly different and the kanji is different (sorry, I can't read kanji yet! Got this from the dictionary.)

What is it about this word or kaeru, hairu, or shiru, etc that is different from other iru/eru verbs?

Is there any way to tell if it's godan or do you just have to kind of memorize these exceptions?

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