Verb Basics - Ru

Verb Basics - Ru

Conveys a habitual or future action

Japanese verbs play a crucial role in the structure of sentences, conveying actions, states, or occurrences. Unlike many Indo-European languages, such as English, French, or Spanish, Japanese verbs exhibit unique characteristics in terms of "conjugation" and structure.

conjugation

In Japanese, verbs do not change their forms based on the subject's person (I, you, he/she, etc.) or number (singular or plural) as extensively as in many other languages. For example, in English:

Instead, the same few verb conjugations are used over and over, while the particles and context ultimately convey the nuanced information about the subject. This lack of subject-verb agreement simplifies verb conjugation in Japanese.

As you can see in this sentence, one of the important fundamentals of Japanese is that verbs appear at the end of a clause.

Special Note

A clause is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate that forms a part of a complex sentence. The sentence When it rained they went inside consists of two clauses: when it rained and they went inside.

And for those asking what the heck is a predicate?, a predicate is simply part of a sentence or clause that states something about the subject. In the sentence The dog sat on the grass, sat on the grass is the predicate.

tense

Verbs in Japanese are a bit different from verbs in, say, English. Japanese does not have a dedicated future tense, and all verbs in their dictionary form can express an action, a habitual action, or the future tense!

As is so often the case, the context is the key factor that points to an intended meaning.

To make our lives easier when it comes to conjugations, we categorize verbs into three groups: u-verbs, ru-verbs and the irregulars. In this specific lesson we will cover ru-verbs.

In contrast to u-verbs, ru-verbs always end with る. The general rule is that the vowel preceding る is either an i or e vowel, as you can see with these two examples.

For this reason, these verbs are also sometimes referred to as iru/eru-verbs.

Some common exceptions include: 要(い)る​ to need、帰(かえ)る​ to go home、切(き)る​ to cut、しゃべる​ to talk、知(し)る​ to know、入(はい)る​ to enter、走(はし)る​ to run, and 減(へ)る​ to decrease. Despite all of these ending in an iru or eru sound, they are still u-verbs and conjugate as such.

You do not need to memorize these exceptions. Over time, through exposure, you will naturally remember how each verb is conjugated.

Special Note

Depending on the source, this group of verbs is sometimes also referred to as Ichidan verbs (一段動詞(いちだんどうし)).