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You're somehow comparing 3 verb conjugations in English vs. 186 for "kuru". Well, I hate to break it to you, but there aren't 186 conjugations for "kuru". There

You're somehow comparing 3 verb conjugations in English vs. 186 for "kuru". Well, I hate to break it to you, but there aren't 186 conjugations for "kuru". There are, exactly, 6. 9 if you count the formal/archaic forms[1]. There may be 186 forms you can build with auxiliaries, but then, you'd have to compare to all the variants you can have in english with may, can, shall, etc. 1. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6%A0%BC%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6... Edit: > Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]". 'tanishiideshita' is the kind of mistake you make when you're not taught that, in japanese, adjectives conjugate. Sadly, a lot of material glosses over that fact. Similarly, most material for non-natives like to talk about the -masu form, then describe things as "-masu form without masu" (sigh). Cumulating "knowledge" from such material, you end up with simplified rules like in GP, which work in some cases, but don't in many others. Then when you dive more into the language, you either encounter new forms and consider them as such, and are crushed under the sheer number of forms, or have to basically start over, deconstruct what you learned and realize that, in fact, it's all much simpler and structured than what you thought, and what made it all more complex is all the learning material for beginners. In some ways, it's like maths. Coming back to the 186 forms for "kuru", I'm sure you only end up with that because of that same learning material "limitations". So you probably end up counting "konai", "konakatta", "konakute", "konakereba", and many other forms as forms of "kuru", when, in fact, they are one form of "kuru" with variants of "nai". The same material will e.g. also tell you about "-kunai" for the negative form of "-i adjectives", but fail to mention that it's actually "-ku+nai", which explains why you will find forms like "-ku ha nai" or "-ku mo nai". I've never seen those explained in textbooks, but that I'm sure it's not pretty.

Grue3 10y ago
No, that's not counting auxiliaries (except "-masu"). The "explosion" comes from the fact that many conjugations can themselves be conjugated (e.g. "konai" can be conjugated as an i-adjective). I don't think katsuyōkei should be counted as conjugations because they're not words by themselves. Like, obviously a godan verb has 5 possible root endings but that doesn't mean it has 5 conjugations. If we're counting auxiliary verbs, my system can recognize more than 4000 verb/adjective endings.
ue_ 10y ago
>Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? I learned this quite early on, but I'm still a little confused for exactly when to conjugate desu instead.
- chousuke 10y ago
  For me, it helps to think of verbal ("-i") adjectives as the same thing as a verb. Or rather, that they're both just predicates about the topic. tanoshikatta is literally a predicate stating "was-fun", and desu is just a formality afterwards to make it polite. this differs from the other kind of adjective ("noun adjectives"), which can't conjugate themselves, so you need desu to change instead. Of course, the even more polite form is "tanoshuu gozaimashita" (which comes from tanoshiku gozaimashita), but even then it seems to me to be the same form as tanoshikatta if you accept that the latter could've derived from "tanoshiku atta". I'm not a linguist though, so I do not know if the above ideas are correct, but it's the way I understand Japanese verbs.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  The main problem beginning Japanese learners often face is that they are taught polite form before plain form. Polite form is a natural extension of plain form, but if you start with that, it's actually quite mind bending to back track to plain form. The secret is to abandon polite form entirely until you are relatively fluent with plain form and then add polite form back in. For example, "tanoshii" is present/future tense. "tanoshikatta" is past tense. If you want to make it polite, then you just add "desu". Super easy. While it is grammatically incorrect, it is completely acceptable in normal conversation to do the same with the negation. "tanoshikunai" is the negation. Past tense negation is "tanoshikunakatta" (ye gods, I can't read romaji...). You can do exactly the same thing to make it polite -- just jam "desu" on the end. That's what every child will do. The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku arimasen". For "na" adjectives, it works differently. "suki" is present tense. To make it polite: "suki desu". Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is "suki de wa arimasen" (though you can very much get away with the mistake of saying "suki de wa nai desu" -- again, every single child speaks this way). Past tense negation is "suki de wa nakatta". Polite is "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (but again, the easy way is "suki de wa nakatta desu"). So, why is it like this? The reason is that "i" adjectives were originally verbs that had a different set of inflections/conjugations. Very obscure piece of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is that "ohayou gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's actually "(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending mixes with "de" to produce the "ou" ending. Anyway, the point is that you have to inflect it because it is literally a verb that is modifying a noun. "na" adjectives on the other hand are actually adjectives. They are called "na" adjectives because you have to add "na" when modifying the noun. For example, "suki na hito". The "na" is actually a contraction of "ni aru" -- because in Japanese you can only modify nouns with verb phrases. So this is why there is a difference between the negation of "i" adjectives and "na" adjectives. "ku" is the verb combining form of the old style "i" verbs (like "te" is on modern verbs). So "tanoshikunai" is really "tanoshiku nai" -- you are combining the "tanoshi" verb with the "nai" verb. On the other hand "suki" is actually an adjective, not a verb, so you have to say "suki de wa nai" -- you can't combine them. Past tense is exactly the same. In "tanoshikunakatta", it's really combining 2 verbs and conjugating the last one (as per the rules" -- "tanoshiku nakatta"). If you want to make it polite, the polite past tense of "nai" is "arimasen deshita" (but you can get away with "nakatta desu" in virtually every situation). With "na" adjectives -- "suki de wa nakatta", we've conjugated the only verb. Again to make it polite you can say "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (or "suki de wa nakatta desu" if you want to sound like an uneducated bumpkin like me). Hope this helps! Avoid polite form until you can handle plain form and it's almost all completely logical ;-) Edit: Fix past tense in the examples of incorrect, but acceptable polite forms.

Grue3 10y ago

No, that's not counting auxiliaries (except "-masu"). The "explosion" comes from the fact that many conjugations can themselves be conjugated (e.g. "konai" can be conjugated as an i-adjective). I don't think katsuyōkei should be counted as conjugations because they're not words by themselves. Like, obviously a godan verb has 5 possible root endings but that doesn't mean it has 5 conjugations. If we're counting auxiliary verbs, my system can recognize more than 4000 verb/adjective endings.

ue_ 10y ago

>Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? I learned this quite early on, but I'm still a little confused for exactly when to conjugate desu instead.

chousuke 10y ago
For me, it helps to think of verbal ("-i") adjectives as the same thing as a verb. Or rather, that they're both just predicates about the topic. tanoshikatta is literally a predicate stating "was-fun", and desu is just a formality afterwards to make it polite. this differs from the other kind of adjective ("noun adjectives"), which can't conjugate themselves, so you need desu to change instead. Of course, the even more polite form is "tanoshuu gozaimashita" (which comes from tanoshiku gozaimashita), but even then it seems to me to be the same form as tanoshikatta if you accept that the latter could've derived from "tanoshiku atta". I'm not a linguist though, so I do not know if the above ideas are correct, but it's the way I understand Japanese verbs.
mikekchar 10y ago
The main problem beginning Japanese learners often face is that they are taught polite form before plain form. Polite form is a natural extension of plain form, but if you start with that, it's actually quite mind bending to back track to plain form. The secret is to abandon polite form entirely until you are relatively fluent with plain form and then add polite form back in. For example, "tanoshii" is present/future tense. "tanoshikatta" is past tense. If you want to make it polite, then you just add "desu". Super easy. While it is grammatically incorrect, it is completely acceptable in normal conversation to do the same with the negation. "tanoshikunai" is the negation. Past tense negation is "tanoshikunakatta" (ye gods, I can't read romaji...). You can do exactly the same thing to make it polite -- just jam "desu" on the end. That's what every child will do. The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku arimasen". For "na" adjectives, it works differently. "suki" is present tense. To make it polite: "suki desu". Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is "suki de wa arimasen" (though you can very much get away with the mistake of saying "suki de wa nai desu" -- again, every single child speaks this way). Past tense negation is "suki de wa nakatta". Polite is "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (but again, the easy way is "suki de wa nakatta desu"). So, why is it like this? The reason is that "i" adjectives were originally verbs that had a different set of inflections/conjugations. Very obscure piece of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is that "ohayou gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's actually "(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending mixes with "de" to produce the "ou" ending. Anyway, the point is that you have to inflect it because it is literally a verb that is modifying a noun. "na" adjectives on the other hand are actually adjectives. They are called "na" adjectives because you have to add "na" when modifying the noun. For example, "suki na hito". The "na" is actually a contraction of "ni aru" -- because in Japanese you can only modify nouns with verb phrases. So this is why there is a difference between the negation of "i" adjectives and "na" adjectives. "ku" is the verb combining form of the old style "i" verbs (like "te" is on modern verbs). So "tanoshikunai" is really "tanoshiku nai" -- you are combining the "tanoshi" verb with the "nai" verb. On the other hand "suki" is actually an adjective, not a verb, so you have to say "suki de wa nai" -- you can't combine them. Past tense is exactly the same. In "tanoshikunakatta", it's really combining 2 verbs and conjugating the last one (as per the rules" -- "tanoshiku nakatta"). If you want to make it polite, the polite past tense of "nai" is "arimasen deshita" (but you can get away with "nakatta desu" in virtually every situation). With "na" adjectives -- "suki de wa nakatta", we've conjugated the only verb. Again to make it polite you can say "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (or "suki de wa nakatta desu" if you want to sound like an uneducated bumpkin like me). Hope this helps! Avoid polite form until you can handle plain form and it's almost all completely logical ;-) Edit: Fix past tense in the examples of incorrect, but acceptable polite forms.