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My question is if there is a word for "studied", or you have to do "study + did" to say "studied". And if that applies to all other words. Like "to work" would be 仕事はする? Does everything work with する? Or there are some words that can be inflected without する?

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For any verbs that use する, yes, that is how you indicate an action in the past. Although you don't use は in the middle like that. It is just 勉強した。

Verbs are very regular in the Japanese language so in my opinion verbs in Japanese are quite straightforward to learn. There are about ~100 ways you can conjugate する but for a list of 50 most common was you can check out VerbSmash

(On a side note there are rare cases where you can use は like that for stylistic purposes, but that's a bit beyond your level this point.)

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  • What would be verbs that doesn't use する? Feb 1, 2016 at 3:16
  • words that use する as a verb are kind of special. Everything else is just a regular verb. Here is an example how to conjugate はなす (to speak) Feb 1, 2016 at 3:21
  • Oh, got it. So I just have to memorize the words that use する or there is any way to know without knowing the word? Feb 1, 2016 at 3:26
  • You don't really need to 'memorize' it as such because non-する verbs in Japanese are really obvious in that they end in either る、す、む、う、く、ぐor つ (did I miss one out?) where as words that can be turned into a verb using する are just nouns, so they sound complete different. For example べんきょう (study) or しごと (job) don't end in any of those sounds above, where as if you take the word はたらく (to work), you can recognize it's a verb because it ends in く. Especially when you see them in Kanji it becomes very clear. 勉強 (study) 仕事 (job)、働く (to work) you you see はたらく has the く as hiragana. Feb 1, 2016 at 3:40
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    @WillihamTotland That's Classical Japanese. 恥づ is 恥じる in the modern language.
    – user1478
    Feb 1, 2016 at 14:54
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仕事 is a noun and 仕事する is a verb. We have a lot of verbs like 仕事する where する is placed after a noun. And した is the past form of する. In addition, there are many verbs without する in Japanese.

"I work" is translated as "仕事する" and "仕事をする".
And "仕事はする" means "I work" and this "は" is used for emphasis and contrast. Same goes with 勉強する.

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