what do you think is easier?

[jkid]

Learning -te form from masu/desu or from plain. I myself have learnt from masu/desu but have noticed (JPOD101 incl) teach from plain. I personally think it is easier from masu/desu as there are only 7 verb exceptions, and from plain form there are 9.

Your thoughts?

[Jason]

I don't understand what you mean to learn the te-form from the masu form. Can you give me an example of how you learned to form it that way?

[Airth]

Well, I never dreamed of learning it from the 'masu' form. But I guess you are thinking of verbs like suru and kuru, which go to shimasu and kimasu, and then jump to shite and kite, right? Personally, I prefer working from the plain form, but when all is said and done you should go with whatever works for you. I'm a firm believer in there being no correct way to do anything as long as you end up communicating successfully.

[jkid]

Well.. the way I learnt it was that Group 1 verbs are the verbs with 3 syllabus or "e" e.g. 食べます so all you do for those verbs is cross off -ます and add -て. The others, what I call group 2’s e.g. 飲みます。I had a chart for that goes something like this.

い　ち　り　ーー＞て

み　に　び　ーー＞んで

いき　－－＞　って

ぎ　－－＞　いて

(I think the chart is right, I am tired)

From the chart, it was a simple cross off -ます and add the ending on the chart. 飲みますto 飲んで

[Jason]

Well, going from the plain form is even simpler. Change the た/だ to て/で.

[Bueller_007]

Yeah, there's no reason to conjugate your verbs to the -masu form and then reconjugate them to the -te form.

If you're just memorizing a chart for 2nd class verbs anyway, it's just as easy to remember this one:

う　ー＞　って
く　ー＞　いて
ぐ　ー＞　いで
す　ー＞　して
つ　ー＞　って
ぬ　ー＞　んで
ぶ　ー＞　んで
む　ー＞　んで
る　ー＞　って

[seanolan]

I think one of the most frustrating things about how Japanese is taught is that most institutions and books start with the "-masu" form. (the other is that they start with romaji, but that's a different story) The reason they do this is connected with the way language in general is taught - the goal is to get you speaking as quickly as possible in the language. In Japan, the kids learn the basic forms first, starting naturally with dictionary form and progressing from there. Of course, learning this way would result in 1st year Japanese students speaking "baby talk" for a while, but it has been shown in a couple of studies that learning from the base form first increases the learning curve substantially in more advanced studies (for instance, learning -te forms).

If you can, learn from the dictionary forms. Heck, if you come to Japan, the plain, dictionary form is going to be used a LOT more than the -masu form by the people you talk to in general, and when you read manga, you will almost never see a -masu verb. Same in movies, anime, TV shows (well, news and serious broadcasts you might hear -masu quite a bit) etc.

Sean

[Jason]

Personally, I think it's good to start with 丁寧語 (the -masu forms). Because they're very regular in how they conjugate, it gives people time to get used to other aspects of Japanese verbs without worrying about remembering more than 4 verb endings and without worrying about politeness level. That's one of the things I hated about Latin and Greek, so many endings.