4.16 The plain form — and why you need it now — Epoché
What you will be able to do Produce the plain form of any verb from its polite form, and the reverse. Look a verb up in a dictionary, which needs the plain form and accepts no other. Say what you like doing, by turning a verb into a noun. Say what you are able to do and what you intend to do. Prerequisites : lesson 4.15 — comparison, whose advice construction already used a plain form. Everything you have said so far has ended in the polite form, and that was the right place to start: it is what you will speak, and it is regular. But it is not the form the language is built on. Two things make the plain form urgent rather than optional. The first is practical — a dictionary lists it and nothing else, so a verb you have only ever met in the polite form is a verb you cannot look up. The second is grammatical: every subordinate clause in Japanese uses the plain form , however polite the sentence is. Three of the constructions in this lesson show it, and from here on you will meet it in every reading text. Making it from the polite form Take off ます and you have the stem. What happens next depends on the class, and for class 1 it is a single operation: the stem ends in an i-sound, and you move that sound to the u-sound of the same row of the kana table you learned in volume 0. Class Example Rule Class 2 たべます → たべる Add る to the stem. Always. Class 3 します → する / きます → くる The two irregular verbs, as usual. Class 1 — み のみます → のむ The stem ends in an i-sound; move it to the u-sound of the same row. Class 1 — き ききます → きく Same rule. Class 1 — り とります → とる Same rule. Class 1 — い かいます → かう The i-row of the vowel line is い , and its u-sound is う . Class 1 — ち まちます → まつ The u-sound of that row is つ , not ちゅ . Class 1 — し はなします → はなす Likewise す , not しゅ . This is the first time the kana table has done real grammatical work, and it is worth noticing: the rows of the table are not an alphabetical accident but the consonants of the language, and Japanese conjugation moves a verb up and down a row. Every form you have learned — the polite form, the joining form of 4.14, the plain negative — is the same stem with a different vowel. The ambiguity, and how to resolve it. Going the other way is easy; coming back is not always. A polite form ending in ります might come from a class 1 verb in る or from a class 2 verb — かえります could be かえる (class 1) or かえる (class 2), and both exist. There is no rule. You learn which class a verb belongs to when you learn the verb, and the dictionary tells you. This is the one genuinely irreducible piece of memory work in Japanese verbs, and it is much smaller than the irregular verb list of any European language. Looking a verb up A Japanese dictionary — paper, electronic or an app — is arranged by the plain form. Type or look up the polite form and a paper dictionary gives you nothing; a good app will guess, and a bad one will not. So the skill this lesson gives you is immediately practical: hear a verb in the polite form, convert it, look it up. The conversion you will use most is the one that is not in the table: many verbs reach you in the joining form of 4.14 rather than the polite form, because that is how they appear in the middle of sentences. Going from the joining form back to the plain form is harder , because several plain endings collapse into one joining form — とって could come from とる , とう or とつ . When you cannot work it out, look up all three; only one will be a real word. The vocabulary lists in this course give the plain form as the headword for exactly this reason, and the reading volume will give it too. Get into the habit of storing verbs that way. Turning a verb into a noun Put の after a plain form and the whole clause becomes a noun, which can then take any particle. The commonest use is saying what you like: うたうのがすきです — I like singing . Literally the singing is liked , because the word for liking is an adjective in Japanese and not a verb, so what is liked takes the subject particle and the liker is the topic. The clause must be plain even when the sentence is polite. This is the rule to take away. うたうのがすきです has a polite ending on the sentence and a plain form inside it, and putting the polite form inside instead is wrong. Every subordinate clause in Japanese behaves this way. Politeness is marked once, at the end. The negative is formed on the adjective, not on the verb: うそをつくのがすきじゃない , I do not like lying. The verb inside stays as it is. Being able, and intending Two more constructions, both built on the plain form and both worth having before the phase ends. Ability. Plain form plus the noun meaning thing plus the verb meaning to be possible : ここでべんきょうすることができます , you can study here. It is long, and there is a shorter potential form that belongs to the second phase, but this one is built from pieces you already have and is never wrong. Intention. Plain form plus a noun meaning intention : あしたはいえにいるつもりだ , I intend to stay home tomorrow. It is stronger than the English I am going to — it states a decision — and it is what you will be asked when somebody wants to know your plans. Both of these take the plain form and neither will accept the polite one. That is three constructions in one lesson making the same point. How English does it English has no politeness in its verb forms, so it has no equivalent of this split at all. The nearest thing is the English contrast between am not and ain't , which is a matter of register and does not change where the form may appear. In Japanese the plain form is not simply the casual version of the polite one: it is the grammatical default, and the polite form is a dress put on the last verb of a sentence. Everything inside is plain, always. English turns verbs into nouns with an ending; Japanese uses a separate word. Singing is one word doing two jobs; Japanese keeps the verb and adds a nominaliser after it. The practical difference is that the Japanese version can swallow a whole clause — my grandfather reading books , playing bas