If you want to improve the speed of a second language, you need to stop translating in your head. Sure, you can watch a TV show in Japanese and then pause it every few seconds to take in what people say, but you’re going to be pretty useless in an actual conversation.
I’ll show you some examples of words to use to better understand verbs, nouns and adjectives.
Plain Form Verbs to ます Form
Remembering how to change the plain or dictionary verb form into the masu form is tricky. The rule requires about a paragraph of explanation.
But if you remember 4 words, this will enable you to remember how the rule works.
The four words are
- たべる ↔ たべます
- いく ↔ いきます
It is also important to remember that the first word pair is our RU verb example, and the second word pair is the U verb example. See here if you don’t understand what RU U verbs are, it’s my playlist on YouTube explaining these concepts.
So how do you use these words to help you?
If you remember that a RU verb like たべる goes to たべます, it’s natural to drop the る and add ます.
However if you think of いく and いきます, you will see that after removing the ます, all you’re left with is いく and いき, and that should prompt you to remember that you jump across the hiragana row from the U sound to the I sound.
So for example, just say you have a verb that you want to put into the ます form but you have it in the plain form. Let’s take よむ as an example.
First you consider whether it is a RU verb or U verb. よむ is clearly an U verb. If you can’t make this determination quickly, you need to practice the concepts I talk about in the video above.
So because よむ is an U Verb, we remember our U verb pairs, いく いきます. We need to think of going from the U sound to the I sound. く き as applied to our word, む み.
We then have よみ. Then, add ます to get よみます, which is our answer.
Adjectives and Nouns into the negative
With adjectives it is again another 2 pairs of words. This is because nouns follow the same rules as なadjectives.
If you don’t know about the two types of adjectives in Japanese, watch these two videos from my beginner playlist:
- さむい ↔ さむくない
- だいじょうぶ ↔ だいじょうぶじゃない
So how do you use these words to help you?
If you remember that the い is dropped from いadjectives and replaced with くない, you’ve remembered the rule for every single いadjective. Likewise if you remember that you put じゃない on for なadjectives, and by extension, nouns.
So for example, just say you have a word which you suspect is an adjective that you want to put into the negative form but you have it in the present tense. Let’s take たのしい as an example.
First determine if it is a an いadjective, なadjective or noun. It ends in an い so best candidate is likely いadjective.
Remember that さむい さむくない means たのしい たのしくない.
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