Hi,
I'm just getting started with Core 6K, and looked around for some resources. The best I found was a link to a spreadsheet containing all the Core 6K words with useful info, example sentences, ect. However, I want to learn the words groupped by their role in the sentence (nouns, adjectives, ect.), and as I noticed the spreadsheet does not contain info if a verb is a "ru" verb or an "u" verb, same goes for "na" and "I" adjectives. So my question would be, is there an improved spreadsheet / source for this with the aforementioned info included for every word, or should I even bother learning them that way (for instance I was going to subgroup the adjectives into "i" and "na" adjectives), or is there a rule of thumb in the japanese language I'm not aware of yet, by which you could ballpark pretty closely if a verb is "u" or "ru" or an adjective is "i" or "na", ect.
Thoughts?

Here's my rules of thumb, but they're kind of ugly.

A verb is a "ru" verb only if it ends in
-eru eg. 食べる
-iru eg. 見る (good catch below..whoops)
Anything else is an "u" verb. がんばる、うる、こおる
Exceptions probably exist, but I think serves me pretty well.

"i" adjectives end in "i" and "na" adjectives don't. 優しい vs 豊か(な）
"i" adjectives end "outside" the kanji. 難しい vs 得意（な）(とくい has an い, but it's -in- the kanji, so it's -na)
Of course, exceptions abound, eg 嫌い , but I can't think of anything off the top of my head to get around them.

Asriel Wrote:Here's my rules of thumb, but they're kind of ugly.

A verb is a "ru" verb only if it ends in
-eru eg. 食べる
-iru eg. はしる
Anything else is an "u" verb. がんばる、うる、こおる
Exceptions probably exist, but I think serves me pretty well.

走る（はしる） is an "u" verb... 見る would probably be a better example of a "ru" verb that ends in iru. Also 帰る(かえる） is an "u" verb.

Generally, it's pretty clear if written in kanji. If there are 2 okurigana characters and the ending is iru or eru, you have a "ru" verb. Otherwise it's an "u" verb. Hence 帰る（かえる） is an "u" verb but 変える（かえる） is a "ru" verb. There are then a few exceptions like 見る　and 居る（いる） that are "ru" verbs. I believe the rule to these exceptions is if the hiragana of the verb is only 2 characters, and the ending is iru, then its a ru verb (so 見る is "ru" but ある is "u").

There are really only two rules and two exceptions.

Rule 1 - If the verb ends in anything but -eru or -iru, it is an -u verb.
Rule 2 - If the verb ends in -eru or -iru, it could be either; you have to look it up to find out.

Exception 1 - Irregular verbs suru/kuru
Exception 2 - The five "special polite" verbs that end in -aru but have some irregular forms (nasaru, irassharu, ossharu, kudasaru, and *gozaru)

For the adjectives there is no hard and fast rule other than the obvious one that if it doesn't end in "i" it can't be an -i adjective.

Raschaverak Wrote:I noticed the spreadsheet does not contain info if a verb is a "ru" verb or an "u" verb, same goes for "na" and "I" adjectives. So my question would be, is there an improved spreadsheet / source for this with the aforementioned info included for every word

core 6000 includes part-of-speech data, but only noun, verb, etc, nothing more detailed than that

kore is a dump of core 6000 (pretty much everything except the pictures) with some extra info added, including a dictionary lookup of the sentence. from that you can see the type of verb and adjective etc, but it's not in a form you could sort on

Raschaverak Wrote:or should I even bother learning them that way (for instance I was going to subgroup the adjectives into "i" and "na" adjectives)

probably not. learning them in kanji order or by jlpt level might be more useful...

yudantaiteki Wrote:Rule 2 - If the verb ends in -eru or -iru, it could be either; you have to look it up to find out.

Look at this list on wikipedia, it has all of the ~u verbs that end in ~eru or ~iru:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_co...owel_verbs