Learn the top japanese verbs
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| Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I’m going to talk about some common Japanese verbs you can use in daily life. |
| Let’s get started! |
| Okay, let’s take a look at the key vocabulary for this lesson. For this lesson, there are 10 words that are very commonly used in everyday life in Japanese. Let’s take a look. |
| Okay, the first verb is たべます (tabemasu). |
| たべます (tabemasu) [enunciated] |
| たべます (tabemasu) |
| This means “eat.” |
| The next verb is のみます (nomimasu). |
| のみます (nomimasu) [enunciated] |
| のみます (nomimasu) |
| This means “drink.” |
| The next verb is みます (mimasu). |
| みます (mimasu) [enunciated] |
| みます (mimasu) |
| This verb means “look/watch/see.” So, in English, we can use look or watch or see according to the situation, but in Japanese, we don’t have this differentiation. We just use みます (mimasu) for all three. |
| The next verb is ききます (kikimasu). |
| ききます (kikimasu) [enunciated] |
| ききます (kikimasu) |
| This verb means “listen” or “hear.” So, just as with look or watch or see, we can use ききます (kikimasu) to mean “listen” or “hear.” We don’t have to worry about two separate verbs in Japanese. |
| Okay, the next verb is いきます (ikimasu). |
| いきます (ikimasu) |
| いきます (ikimasu) [enunciated] |
| いきます (ikimasu) |
| This means “go.” |
| Next is かいます (kaimasu). |
| かいます (kaimasu) [enunciated] |
| かいます (kaimasu) |
| This verb means “buy.” |
| The next verb is します (shimasu). |
| します (shimasu) [enunciated] |
| します (shimasu) |
| This verb means “do.” |
| Next is はなします (hanashimasu). |
| はなします (hanashimasu) [enunciated] |
| はなします (hanashimasu) |
| This verb means “speak” or “talk.” So, again, just as with いきます (ikimasu) and みます (mimasu), this verb can be used to mean two different things, to mean “speak” or to mean “talk.” In Japanese, we use はなします (hanashimasu) to express this. |
| Last two. |
| よみます (yomimasu) |
| よみます (yomimasu) [enunciated] |
| よみます (yomimasu) |
| This means “read.” |
| And finally, かきます (kakimasu). |
| かきます (kakimasu) [enunciated] |
| かきます (kakimasu) |
| This verb means “write.” |
| So, these are the key vocabulary words we’ll look at in more depth in this lesson. |
| Okay, let’s take a look at a dialogue that uses some of these verbs. |
| The first sentence here is: |
| しゅうまつ、 なにを しますか。 (Shūmatsu, nani o shimasu ka.) |
| しゅうまつ、 なにを しますか。 (Shūmatsu, nani o shimasu ka.) |
| Which means “What are you doing this weekend?” |
| The response is: |
| くるまを かいます。 (Kuruma o kaimasu.) |
| くるまを かいます。 (Kuruma o kaimasu.) |
| Which means “I’m buying a car.” |
| In these sentences, we see some of the verbs that we looked at earlier in this lesson. We see します (shimasu) here and かいます (kaimasu) here. At the end of this sentence, which ends in します (shimasu), we see か (ka), so this particle makes the sentence into a question. |
| “What are you doing this weekend?” |
| “I’m buying a car.” |
| Okay, let’s take a look at a couple more examples that use these verbs. |
| The first example sentence is: |
| テレビを みます。 (Terebi o mimasu.) |
| テレビを みます。 (Terebi o mimasu.) |
| Which means “I’m watching TV.” |
| The second example is: |
| うみへ いきます。 (Umi e ikimasu.) |
| うみへ いきます。 (Umi e ikimasu.) |
| Which means “I’m going to the beach.” |
| So, you’ll notice in these example sentences and in the dialogue, the verb comes at the end of the sentence, here and here. The particle changes according to the meaning of the sentence, but the verb is always at the end. |
| Let’s take a look at the basic grammar pattern we need to make sentences like this. |
| Okay, let’s take a look at the key grammar pattern that we’ve seen in this lesson. |
| First, we see here in parentheses, わたしは (watashi wa). So, わたしは (watashi wa) means “I am” or “I” as the subject of the sentence. It’s in parentheses here because it’s very common to drop this when the subject of the sentence is already known from context. |
| So, for example, when we saw this sentence, テレビを みます (terebi o mimasu), or this one, うみへ いきます (umi e ikimasu), the subject of the sentence is clear. I’m talking about my own actions, so we don’t have to say わたしは テレビを みます (watashi wa terebi o mimasu) or わたしは うみへ いきます (watashi wa umi e ikimasu). It’s already clear, so it’s very common to drop this. It’s not incorrect to use わたしは (watashi wa) at the beginning of the sentence, but it does make things a bit more efficient. |
| After this, we see some kind of information, depending on the verb use, followed by ~ ます (masu) here. So again, this uses the polite non-past form of the verb as we saw at the beginning of the lesson in the vocabulary list. So, according to the verb that you use, this part of the sentence will change. So, with each verb, there’s a different sound. So, that part of the sentence will be decided according to the verb. |
| Here is the basic pattern that you can follow when you want to make your own sentence: |
| I plus [object/destination] (depending on what you want to say) followed by [a particle] and then [the verb]. |
| Particle, again, will change according to the verb you want to use. |
| For example: |
| In this sentence, we saw へ (e) to indicate direction. |
| In this sentence, we saw を (o). |
| Same thing here and here. |
| This indicates an action of some kind. So, depending on your verb, depending on the information that you wanna communicate, your particle will change, but this is the basic pattern that you can use. |
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