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Conjugations

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 14:46
by Mr1337
I having a little trouble on the inflections on some verbs. Could somebody please give me a list of some? (ex. The character ら is used instead of る).

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 14:51
by SonicTempest
Er, inflections? Could you be a little more specific?

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 15:42
by Mr1337
An inflection is where a word means another word but it is a different form (plural, past tense, etc.).

Some examples are: mouse/mice, write/wrote/written, and sing/sang/sung.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 16:38
by SonicTempest
OK, a few samples then.
There are 3 classes of verbs, and each has its own conjugation rules (Except class III which consists of irregular verbs with no fixed conjugation pattern). Conjugation is achieved by changing the vowel associated with the last character in the verb (for class I verbs) or changing the verb ending (class II verbs).

Class I verbs
--------------
入る - to enter
入らない - not to enter
入った - entered

聞く - to ask
聞かない - not to ask
聞いた - asked

Class II verbs
---------------
見る - to see
見ない - not to see
見た - saw

食べる - to eat
食べない - not to eat
食べた - ate

Class III verbs
----------------
する - to do
しない - not to do
した - did

くる - to come
こない - not to come
きた - came

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 21:10
by Perfect Stranger
zomg, an actual Japanese question!

I was about to type up a long ass expansion of SS's answer, but typing through Google reveals this:

http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/gra ... /index.htm

Very, very handy.

If you have any other questions after that, we'll try to answer them.

By the by, changed the title of the topic since conjugation is, I think, the more conventional name for what you're asking.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 21:11
by Mr1337
Thanks a bunch. You guys were a big help. :salute: