All About Japanese Verbs

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ALL ABOUT JAPANESE VERBS PART 1

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Transcript of All About Japanese Verbs

  • 1. ALL ABOUT JAPANESE VERBS
    PART 1

2. A. What is a verb?
Verbs are words that describe an action, a process, or state of being.
Verbs have different forms which enable you to express time, intention, feelings, politeness, etc.
Japanese verbs express these things too, but in different ways than the English language.
The main verb of a Japanese sentence always goes at the end of the sentence, since the Japanese word order is (SOV) subject/object/verb, where as the English sentence word order is (SVO) subject/verb/object.
3. Japanese sentence word order.
(subject)(object) (verb)
1. Okaasangapanwokaimashita. verb is at the end.
(Mother breadbought.)
English sentence word order
(Subject)(verb)(object)
2.Mother bought bread. verb is not at the end.
4. B. Agreement
In English a verb must agree with its subject in person and number. In the present tense, for example, a subject in the first person takes a different verb form from a subject in the third person, and a plural subject in the third person takes a different verb form from a singular subject.
5. 6. In Japanese, agreement is not an issue. Verbs do not have different forms to indicate person, number,or gender. The same verb form is used no matter what the subject. This is true for all tenses.
7. 8. (TIP)
This principle is easy to understand if you remember the following : If the meaning is clear from the context in a japanese sentence, a pronoun is not necessary. Therefore, ikimasu is both a verb and a sentence.

  • In English, except for the imperative, or command form, a sentence consisting of a verb alone is not possible.