Hot answers tagged conjugations
19
と, ば: The main clause must be a constant non-volitional reaction to the conditional clause unless the conditional clause shows state or if the subjects of the two clauses differ.
お金を入れてボタンを押すと、切符が出ます。
'When you put in money and press the button, a ticket will come out.'
春になると、観光客が増えます。
'When spring arrives, tourists increase.'
...
18
しとく comes from しておく, which in turn comes from して置く. The literal translation of して置く would be, "do it, and then put [the results]". Basically it describes the act of doing something and storing the result of that so that when that result becomes useful, you can use it.
EDIT:
This literal meaning changed overtime (I presume) and しておく became to mean "do ...
14
行ったら - "if you (happen to) go" (simple possibility)
行くなら - "if you're going (anyway)" (often in the sense of while you're at it)
行けば - "if you('d) go" (emphasis on the condition that must be fulfilled before something happens)
行くと - "when you go" ("…you'll find that…", focuses on what happens when the condition is fulfilled)
行くんだったら - "if you're about to ...
14
The -ou/-you form does have a negative counterpart, but it's considered rather literary, and in any case never used in a cohortative meaning ("Let's X"). That form is the なかろう form, e.g.: 食べなかろう, which means "[He/I/etc.] probably wouldn't eat." and is equivalent to the more colloquial form "食べないだろう".
I think the most common simple way to express the meaning ...
14
Agglutinative languages are somewhat harder to understand than other categories. it's easy to see what the difference between synthetic fusional languages (like Latin or Russian) to isolating ones (such as Chinese or English): in isolating languages you only have words mixed with each other in various ways, but no morphology (or at least not very much of it, ...
12
According to Tae Kim, there is a negative volitional form, but it is archaic and formal, so you're better off using the modern expressions given by the other answers.
However, it does show up every now and then (トキ in 北斗の拳 seems to like using it), and it's a pretty simple conjugation, so it's worth knowing.
To form the negative volitional, you add まい to ...
11
In the modern form, ず is only used as an adverbial (食べずに出る leave without eating). ぬ can replace ない.
In 文語, the the grammar used in writing until the reformations after WWII and still in many forms of poetry, songs, and very formal documents, the use of ず and ぬ was/is grammatically constrained in a manner no longer present in modern Japanese. ぬ was used with ...
11
I will answer the two questions separately.
How to make the form of i-adjectives before ございます
Grammatically はよう, ありがとう, めでとう, たのしゅう, おいしゅう in these examples are called ウ音便 (うおんびん) of はやく, ありがたく, めでたく, たのしく, おいしく, respectively. 音便 (おんびん) means the form modified for easy pronunciation.
The actual form of ウ音便 of an i-adjective depends on the vowel before く ...
10
[See this question, which deals with the same pattern when used with verbs. I'll adapt my answer from that question to answer yours.]
-そう after the stem of a adjective means "looking/sounding as if ___." おいしそう means "it looks as if it will be delicious." It is similar to constructions like おいしいみたい or おいしいよう, but -そう emphasizes evidence of the senses rather ...
10
そう after the plain form of a verb indicates you are reporting secondhand information, rather than your own direct observations. 行けるそう means "it is said that it can go." The negative form is -ないそう: 降らないそうです "They say it won't rain."
-そう after the stem (-ます form) of a verb means "looking/sounding as if ___." 行けそう means "it looks as if it can go." It is ...
10
As phoenixheart6 wrote, suffix -さ makes a noun from an adjective. I am not sure if you have a problem with this. But it seems that you have a misunderstanding about the role of に. In a sentence
品揃えの多さについつい買い込んでしまった。
に means “because of.” 買い込む means “to buy many things.” Therefore, it means:
Because of the variety of goods they sell, I ended up ...
10
Your "usual rule" is incomplete. It should be:
drop -i
if resulting is a single mora in length, add -sa
add -sou.
Hence, nai:
na
na + sa
na + sa + sou --> nasasou.
atui:
atu
(not applicable)
atu + sou --> atusou.
10
Jikan wa deru koto desu
If it is written in Japanese, 「時間は出る事です」. We don't say it.
One, is this correct?
No. If you mean It's time to leave, 「もう出る時間です」 should be fine.
Two, when translating infinitives from English to Japanese is the proper conversion: to [verb] -> [verb] koto?
Not always. In addition to 名詞的用法, there are 形容詞的用法 and 副詞的用法. ...
9
1) Jikan wa deru koto desu means "Time is leaving". If you want to say "It's time to leave", just say 時間です. The "to leave" is kind of implied depending on your situation. But if you want to explicitly add it in, you can say
（もう）出る／出かける／帰る 時間 です／になった。 → (It's already (become)) time to leave/go/go out.
2) To translate infinitives, just use the ...
8
In fact, 同じく does come from 同じ. The key here is to look at the historical form of 同じ: it was originally a regular adjective, following the pattern of the shiku-type adjectives (シク活用形容詞). [1] If it followed the normal development of shiku-type adjectives, it would have become 同じい, which apparently does occur, if rarely. [2]
There are some other -ku adverbs ...
8
First, the ～てしまう construction can convey a sense of regret, which the 切る verb suffix cannot:
花瓶を落として割ってしまった。 I dropped the vase and [regrettably] broke it.
花瓶を落として割り切った。 (unnatural)
When used in constructions expressing the completion or finishing of an action, 切る tends to sound best with actions that can be measured on a scale, but there's a lot ...
8
From the Examples of agglutinative languages section of the Wikipedia page on Agglutination:
Japanese is also an agglutinating language, adding information such as negation, passive voice, past tense, honorific degree and causality in the verb form. Common examples would be hatarakaseraretara (働かせられたら), which combines causative, passive or potential, and ...
8
A short answer: the form 恐るる (おそるる) is the attributive form (連体形; れんたいけい) of the verb 恐る (おそる) in classical Japanese.
A long answer is as follows.
Classical Japanese has different conjugation rules from modern Japanese. The verb 恐れる (おそれる; to fear) in modern Japanese was 恐る (おそる) in classical Japanese, and its attributive form was 恐るる (おそるる).
If I ...
8
You can use these sentences in two ways. One is to use it as in "I don't want you to say x (literary)". Another is to use it as in "I resent what you already said".
So, what's the difference? In the first case, 言わないでほしい is an explicit request. 言ってほしくない merely states that you don't want the other guy to tell anybody, and the request is only implied. As a ...
8
In classical Japanese, 死ぬ is an irregular verb (ナ行変格活用動詞). Its principal parts are as follows:
Irrealis (未然形): 死な〜
Continuative (連用形): 死に〜
Predicative (終止形): 死ぬ
Attributive (連体形): 死ぬる
Realis (已然形): 死ぬれ〜
Imperative (命令形): 死ね
The difference between the predicative and attributive forms is roughly analogous to the difference between 〜だ and 〜な for the ...
8
~ませ is the imperative form of the polite auxiliary verb ~ます which connects to the conjunctive form of verbs. According to Daijirin it's used with the verbs いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, くださる, なさる, 申す and 召す etc (I've only seen いらっしゃいませ, くださいませ and なさいませ used myself though, so I'm not sure how common the other ones are).
It's used in modern Japanese, and I think it's ...
8
It's the joke that made you laugh...
The に of 冗談には indicates what made you laugh, but you can't say
冗談が私を笑わせた。
since 冗談 can't make people laugh actively. (Which is different from English. Compare this answer of mine about the difference of usage of the passive in Japanese and English.)
In some sense, the sentence above would be more complete as
...
8
Teachers and intermediate language learners regularly tell beginners that Japanese has only two irregular verbs (kuru and suru). This is not, strictly speaking, true.
As you've noted, 行く has the irregular formations 行った and 行って.
The negative of ある is ない... which is quite irregular
Imperatives often seem to have irregular forms, most notably くれ from くれる.
...
7
As others have said, this is probably really ～やしない, which is transmutation of ～はしない. What this suffix does is usually one of two things:
It makes the verb a topic (with は) and then negate it. This is used to bring up the event described by the verb and then saying it won't happen (or isn't happening, have never happened - you get the point). From the ...
7
It's the strongest, tersest form of negative. It always follows a plain form verb.
I have no idea of the origin; it's pretty old though:)
Regarding the origin, it goes back to at least the 8th century in this form:
活用語の終止形に付いて、「～するな」と禁止する意をあらわす。現代口語に継承されている。
大和道は雲隠れたりしかれども吾が振る袖をなめしと思ふ*な*（万葉集、筑紫娘子）
こちふかば匂ひおこせよ梅の花あるじなしとて春を忘る*な*（拾遺集、菅原道真）
Source: ...
7
Neither of the current answers sit well with me at the moment, so I'm going to risk adding to the confusion by posting another.
Question 1 (grammar)
First, let's clarify the two verbs in question:
解く solve (a problem)
解ける resolve (itself)
(These are not the only definitions, but for the sake of brevity and on-topic-ness we'll go with these.)
...
7
I think you're just misreading the the sentence slightly - it should be split as:
無視は しちゃ いけませんな
It's bad to ignore it, right?
しちゃ is a shortened form of しては, as far as I remember. In this particular case it seems to me an odd sentence, purely because of the emphasis placed on the 無視 by the は. The sentence that I'd usually expect would be something ...
7
We can process this confusing construction if we first realize that "try" is (more often than not, I would say,) a poor substitution for the ～てみる form. This is because "try" conjures up the connotation of "attempt", which implies a possibility of failure. For this particular meaning, the ～ようとする form is more suitable.
A better explanation of ～てみる, then, is ...
7
飲んでましょう is a colloquial form for 飲んでいましょう. In general, abbreviating ～ている to ～てる is common in colloquial speech. Whether you count colloquial expressions as “legal” or not is up to you.
Now what is the difference between 飲んで(い)ましょう and 飲みましょう? As I understand it, the former implies that the suggested action of drinking is temporary.
I think that ...
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