I've had it! I have no idea how I'm ever going to learn how to conjugate verbs in Japanese. I read the conjugation rules a million times. It never sticks and I always end up resorting to guessing or pure memorization.

How do you tell the difference between ru-verbs and u-verbs that end in ru? This seems to be the root of a lot of my problems. How can I effectively remember how to conjugate these verbs besides just memorizing?

Please, help me!

There is no way to distinguish them. You have to memorize it, or else have a ton of exposure to the language and learn it passively.

I never bothered to learn the rules, it was too much effort for a rule that never stuck anyway.

My solution was to memorize including conjugation on my flashcards (well, more like a word sheet, I was lazy so I just covered one side of the book's vocab page with my hand and used the other part, but it's the same idea). You should know how う verbs conjugate of course, so all you need to identify is if it's an う verb and conjugate it appropriately. When I saw the word I would memorize it as: dictionary (short) form-> masu (ます) form (long form) -> and eventually て form as well, although I don't think you're there yet. The actual conjugation mechanism isnt so hard, it's just identifying which family it belongs to. So for example

hajimaru- (something) begins // I would say something like: はじまる -> はじまります　(hajimarimasu)

hajimeru- to begin (something) // I would say something like: はじめる　->　はじめます (hajimemasu)

I just go through it conjugated, so when I need to recall the word the conjugation is almost instantaneous and painless. At this point I feel like I can pick out the pattern between う and る verbs without checking, although it's not a perfect feeling. But when I was first learning verbs it was really helpful to the verbs properly conjugated and ingrained in my head. I still forget every now and then, but usually I have a pretty good feel for it these days

I'm not sure if this is a hard and fast rule but...
ラ行五段 verbs will normally only have "ru" or "-aru" as okurigana (hiragana after the kanji) while 一段 verbs will always have "-eru" or "-iru".

Compare these two かえる for example:
帰る（五段）(just ru)
変える（一段）(eru)

or とまる and とめる:
止まる（五段）(-aru)
止める（一段）(-eru)
etc.

I think this works for most verbs?
五段：上がる、改まる、弄る、訝る、曇る... all "-aru" or just "ru" after the kanji.
一段：用いる、食べる、始める、浮かべる、錆びる、述べる... all "-iru" or "-eru" after the kanji.

The big exception I can think of is all the 2 syllable 一段 verbs:
経る　出る　寝る　見る etc.

EDIT: though I'll add that I never bothered with anything like this when I was learning. This is just me thinking about the verbs now.

Yes, it seems it's not worth the effort to try to make a rule or set of rules. It would be too complicated to be able to actually use the rule when actually speaking Japanese. I've noticed through repetition I have a vague feeling of what is the right conjugation and what is the wrong conjugation. But I still fail to conjugate correctly all the time.

I will try the method of learning the dictionary and long form together. Hopefully that will help develop my conjugation skill.

zatarra Wrote:Yes, it seems it's not worth the effort to try to make a rule or set of rules. It would be too complicated to be able to actually use the rule when actually speaking Japanese. I've noticed through repetition I have a vague feeling of what is the right conjugation and what is the wrong conjugation. But I still fail to conjugate correctly all the time.

I will try the method of learning the dictionary and long form together. Hopefully that will help develop my conjugation skill.

Kids don't learn conjugation by rule, they learn it by saying whatever feels right until people stop correcting them. Honestly I learned the same way; I've never once studied conjugation and don't really stress it. As long as you keep speaking you'll eventually work it out. I have the benefit of teaching Japanese kids: one simple error and they'll laugh at you for five minutes--talk about learning from your mistakes!

Yeah, don't worry about it.
If you study from sentences (particularly natural sentences, not textbook sentences) you'll just pick it up as you go without needing to put in any particular effort. I think it's one of those things that should be picked up rather than memorised.

zatarra Wrote:How can I effectively remember how to conjugate these verbs besides just memorizing?

Just memorize them. Until you brain can process them effectively for you just treat them all as separate words.

zatarra Wrote:I've had it! I have no idea how I'm ever going to learn how to conjugate verbs in Japanese. I read the conjugation rules a million times. It never sticks and I always end up resorting to guessing or pure memorization.

How do you tell the difference between ru-verbs and u-verbs that end in ru? This seems to be the root of a lot of my problems. How can I effectively remember how to conjugate these verbs besides just memorizing?

Please, help me!

Here's how I look at grammar: if I need to know a rule to understand what a Japanese person is saying, then that's a useful rule to know (particles, tenses, conditionals, polite forms etc., etc. ).

If not, it's not. I refuse to use grammar rules to help me produce correct Japanese. Grammar won't help me sound natural (because if you have to think about grammar, you can't sound natural, not even in writing). Listening to enough Japanese will. There's no shortcut around that, you can't produce or study your way into sounding natural.

Even in my sentence deck, I pay no attention to verb conjugations for instance (or even the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, for that matter - even that, you can guess from context 99% of the time when hearing someone speak; the 1% that is the exception isn't worth bothering with the concept transitive/intransitive). I don't need any of it to understand or read Japanese. When a verb is the part of the sentence that is missing, I am satisfied if I get it roughly right (and use the appropriate form of course - that part IS important).

For instance, I wouldn't accept arukimas instead of aruite imasu, because they mean different things, but I would accept let's say arutte imasu (because it's not a mistake that will stop me from understanding what aruite imasu means). Obviously, this is a silly example, I'm far enough along for that to sound wrong. Just wanted to use an accessible example.

P.S. Btw, I don't try to remember conjugation rules, and I definitely don't try to memorize conjugations either. I think that's the way to go. But, if I was trying to learn the conjugations (because perhaps I was in Japan, and I had no choice but use my broken Japanese, but wanted to at least get conjugations right), I would definitely figure out and learn the rules, and then try and apply them on the go, rather than actively try and memorize each verb.

Stansfield123 Wrote:If not, it's not. I refuse to use grammar rules to help me produce correct Japanese. Grammar won't help me sound natural (because if you have to think about grammar, you can't sound natural, not even in writing). Listening to enough Japanese will. There's no shortcut around that, you can't produce or study your way into sounding natural.

This is a common objection to studying grammar on this forum, but it makes no more sense to me than objecting to RTK because using it alone won't let you read Japanese.

The question is not whether studying grammar alone (or spending most of your study time on grammar) will let you produce correct Japanese. That's not a serious suggestion made by anyone. The question is whether spending some of your study time on grammar will help you produce correct Japanese. In my case, it absolutely did -- it was necessary for me. I couldn't do it without.

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is a common objection to studying grammar on this forum, but it makes no more sense to me than objecting to RTK because using it alone won't let you read Japanese.

The question is not whether studying grammar alone (or spending most of your study time on grammar) will let you produce correct Japanese. That's not a serious suggestion made by anyone. The question is whether spending some of your study time on grammar will help you produce correct Japanese. In my case, it absolutely did -- it was necessary for me. I couldn't do it without.

I wasn't talking about grammar in general, I was talking about grammar rules that don't convey meaning (like organizing verbs into groups based on how they are conjugated).

What's an example of such a rule, that you found helpful in sounding natural? Are the two I named such examples?

As far as your statement that "grammar was necessary for you", I prefer to base my views on what is and what isn't necessary for language learning on empirical evidence, rather than anecdotal. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that grammar isn't NECESSARY for humans to learn to sound natural in a language. And you are, by all accounts, a human, so I hereby (for what it's worth) reject this assertion.

P.S. I don't dispute that grammar is helpful in learning a language. I do dispute that it's helpful in taking that last step, from understanding a language well to sounding natural in it. I seriously doubt that studying grammar would help with that, at all.

That is why I'm suggesting that (unless speaking as correctly as possible, early on, is a priority) language learners should stick with rules that help them better understand written and spoken materials, but not bother with rules that don't.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Here's how I look at grammar: if I need to know a rule to understand what a Japanese person is saying, then that's a useful rule to know (particles, tenses, conditionals, polite forms etc., etc. ).

If not, it's not. I refuse to use grammar rules to help me produce correct Japanese. Grammar won't help me sound natural (because if you have to think about grammar, you can't sound natural, not even in writing). Listening to enough Japanese will. There's no shortcut around that, you can't produce or study your way into sounding natural.

I kind of know what you mean.. I was never good at remembering the rules and terms for english grammar. For example I'm not 100% sure exactly what participials or clauses are. I know a clause is a part of a sentence, but when I start seeing main, subordinate and independent clauses... It just completely goes over my head. To me it's dry and useless to know. Then when I start seeing rules involving clauses it makes my head spin more. So when I start to see grammar rules and terms in Japanese like that, why would I even try to understand it.

The grammar you learn in school or textbooks is at best a crutch or a matter of intellectual interest. The grammar that is happening inside your head when you listen or speak naturally is something entirely different.

If it's important for you to sound better at speaking than you actually are, then study some grammar and try to conform to it when speaking. If comprehension is more important to you then just look up grammatical features that consistently confuse you as they pop up as dictated by necessity.

I think that, beyond learning an alphabet like say hiragana, the idea of divide and conquer is really bad when it comes to language learning, because the data sets are huge. You can't pre-learn all the patterns anymore than you can all the vocabulary. Just learn it as you go and when necessary. It has been my experience that I learned how to speak quite naturally without ever having to memorize things like verb conjugation or particle rules.