Verb Suffixes in Japanese That a Japanese Learner Must Know

 

Japanese is an agglutinative language which mean in Japanese there are affixes that can modify the meaning of a word. In this post, we will discuss the some suffixes that can be attached to the Japanese verb that Japanese learner must know. 

Basic Verb Form

In Japanese basic verbs can be categorized into three.

-Ichidan Verbs

    The verbs that end in -eru or -iru. Example: 食べる (taberu) and 居る(iru)

-Godan Verbs

    Any other verbs other than the Ichidan and irregular verbs. Example: 行く(iku) and 泳ぐ (oyogu)

-Irregular Verb

    Consist of する(suru) and 来る(kuru)

Depending on the context, basic verb form can be used for something similar to simple present tense or future tense. To make the basic verb polite, we can change the ending into -masu for ichidan verbs, and -(i)masu for godan verb. For suru it will be shimasu and for kuru it will 来ます/kimasu.

Example:

ichidan verb

食べる 🠆 食べます

taberu 🠆 tabemasu

godan verb

泳ぐ 🠆 泳ぎます

oyogu 🠆 oyogimasu 

suru verbs

勉強する 🠆 勉強します

benkyou suru 🠆 benkyou shimasu

To make it into negative, you just need to change -ru into -nai for ichidan verbs, make the ending into -(a)nai for godan verbs. For suru it will be shinai and for kuru it will be 来ない/konai.

Example:

食べる 🠆 食べない

taberu 🠆 tabenai

泳ぐ 🠆  泳がない

oyogu🠆 oyoganai

勉強する 🠆 勉強しない

benkyou suru 🠆 benkyou shinai

To make it formal you can change the ending to -masen for ichidan verbs and -(i)masen for godan verbs. For suru it will be shimasen and for kuru it will be kimasen.

Example:

Te-iru form

In a Japanese sentence, if we want to say something that is still happening or processing right now, we can use te-iru form. This suffixes is similar to present continuous tense in English. The suffixes -te (which is also used in other grammars other than te-iru will have different kind of sound depending on the consonant of the last syllable. If it is used in ichidan verb, you can just add it directly after removing the ending -ru. Bellow we will discuss the variety of te-iru form. 

endings	changes	Example
-su	-shiteiru	話す	話している
-ku	-iteiru	書く	書いている
-gu	-ideiru	泳ぐ	泳いでいる
-mu -bu -nu	-ndeiru	頼む 叫ぶ 死ぬ	頼んでいる 叫んでいる 死んでいる
-ru -u -tsu	-tteiru	作る 買う 立つ	作っている 買っている 立っている

endings	changes
suru	shiteiru
kuru	kiteiru
iku	itteiru

To make it into negative, we can just simply change into te-inai for the casual sentence and te-imasen for the formal sentence.

Example:

ラーメンを食ていない

Raamen wo tabeteinai

ラーメンを食ていません

Raamen wo tabeteimasen

I am not eating ramen

(the particle "wo" is needed if you want to use a verb in that kind of construction)

今、本を読んでいない

Ima, hon wo yondeinai

今、本を読んでいません

Ima, hon wo yondeimasen

I am not reading a book right now 

Ta form

In Japanese, if we want to say something that happened in the past, we can use the ta form to do that. Basically ta form is the past tense in Japanese. Similar to the ones in te-iru form, the suffixes used for each kind of verbs is also depending on the consonant of the last syllable. For the ichidan verbs, you just need to add directly after removing the ending -ru. Bellow, we will discuss the variety of ta form.

endings	changes	Example
-su	-shita	話す	話した
-ku	-ita	書く	書いた
-gu	-ida	泳ぐ	泳いだ
-mu -bu -nu	-nda	頼む 叫ぶ 死ぬ	頼んだ 叫んだ 死んだ
-ru -u -tsu	-tta	作る 買う 立つ	作った 買った 立った

endings	changes
suru	shita
kuru	kita
iku	itta

The table above shows the sound changes from the non ta form to the ta form. 

To make it into negative, we have to make the verb into -nai form and change the -i into katta. Basically it will be -nakatta. To make it formal we have to change it into -masen deshita

Example:

ラーメンを食なかった

Raamen wo tabenakatta

ラーメンを食ませんでした

Raamen wo tabemasen deshita

I ate ramen.

That is all for our discussion today. To make you remember all of them, you should try making some sentences using the forms we just learned today.

Imperative form

To make the verbs into imperative, you can simply change the ending into -ro/yo for ichidan verbs and change the vowel ending into -e for godan verbs. For suru it will be shiro/seyo and for kuru it wil be /koi.

Example:

ichidan verb

食べる 🠆 食べろ

taberu 🠆 tabero

(to)eat 🠆 eat!

godan verb

泳ぐ 🠆 泳げ 

oyogu  🠆  oyoge

(to)swim 🠆 swim!

suru verb

勉強する 🠆 勉強しろ

benkyou suru 🠆 benkyou shiro

That is all for our discussion today. To make you remember all of them, you should try making some sentences using the forms we just learned today.