new expressions

P&T notes – basic verbs

Japanese verbs are simpler that English or Spanish verbs. Japanese verbs don’t have person (1st- vs. 2nd- vs. 3rd person), gender (he vs. she vs. it) or number (singular vs plural); it’s a single conjugation for every possibility. In contrast, they come mainly in two flavors: a casual -or plain- form, that we use to speak to family and friends; and a formal -or polite- form, that we use to speak to superiors and strangers. The formal form is also called the ‘masu’ form; it is 100% regular with the sole exception of the copula. The verbs in casual form are also regular, falling in one of two patterns, with the exception of two verbs: する (to do) and くる (to come). Let’s see the non-past and past conjugations of some verbs that we use all the time.

the copula です – to be

The copula is a linking verb that says something ‘is’ (or ‘appears to be’, or ‘looks like’, or ‘sounds like’, etc.) something else. In English, the main copula is the verb ‘to be’, e.g., ‘He is my dad’, ‘John isn’t Japanese’, ‘yesterday was Sunday’, or ‘Mary wasn’t tall’. The formal です is a contraction of であります, while でした is a contraction of でありました; thus, if we disregard the contractions, the masu form would be 100% regular for all verbs; likewise, the original casual である became であ which became だ and the original past tense であった became だった.

We can now make the ‘probable’ conjugation, a.k.a. presumptive, of any verb appending だろう and でしょう. Above we are showing extreme casual and formal versions of the presumptive; since だろう and でしょう already indicate a casual and formal form, then saying じゃ ない でしょう would already be considered somewhat formal because of the use of でしょう.

Likewise we can vary the politeness level of the negatives by mixing the casual じゃ and ない with the formals では and ありません. In addition, we can follow the casual negative ない with a grammatically unnecessary です that raises the politeness level; since here です is working as a decoration, we don’t conjugate it into でした when adding it to the past form. We will hear all these all the time:

いる and ある – to exist

The existance verb would be the equivalent to the English ‘There is’, or ‘There exist’. The Japanese existance verbs いる and ある often replaces the English verb ‘to have’. For example, ‘I have a dog” would be “dog! there-is”, i.e., 犬が いる, with the verb いる, which we use to talk about the existence of things that move on their own and/or alive. Hence, we use いる with people and animals, but we would also use it for robots and zombies (mobile but not alive).

We use ある instead of いる to talk about the existance of non-mobile or non-alive things, like plants, rocks, or cars, e.g., ‘I have a car’ would be ‘car! there-is?’, i.e., 車が ある.

Of course, there is a fine line between when to use いる and ある, but this goes into the philosophical meaning of what it means to be alive, e.g., we use いる for bacteria while we use ある for viruses. In some cases, the noun actually may take either depending on the situation, e.g., さかながいます means ‘There are (live) fish”, say, in a pond, while さかながあります means “There are (dead) fish”, say, in the menu. However, if our Japanese is at the level of worrying about these issues, we are in great shape because even Japanese natives have trouble deciding whether to use います or あります for some pathological cases.

する – to do

The ‘to do’ verb is the main support verb is Japanese. Not only we can use it with other verbs, e.g., たべて して います (eating), but we can also use it with nouns to create new verbs, e.g., りょうりを する (‘to do’ cook, or ‘to cook’).

Although する is one of the two irregular verbs in Japanese, many of it’s conjugations are straightforward if we think of the original verb as しる or す instead of する.

其れ_ – それ_

There are many conjunctions, adverbs and expressions that start with それ but have a well-defined meaning; the most common of these compound words tend to have few syllables and, although we can write それ as 其れ, using a kanji, we most often find these compounds written in hiragana. The following are common ones [jisho]: