う-Verb (Negative-Past)う - Verbs (Negative-past tense)

Most Recent Replies (15 in total)

• 

  Daru

  う - Verbs (negative-past tense)

  Structures:

  Casual

  座る + らなかった
  歌う + わなかった
  歩く + かなかった
  話す + さなかった
  打つ + たなかった
  死ぬ + ななかった
  飛ぶ + ばなかった
  休む + まなかった
  泳ぐ + がなかった

  Exceptions:
  ある ￫ なかった

  Formal

  座る + りませんでした
  座る + らなかった です

  歌う + いませんでした
  歌う + わなかった です

  歩く + きませんでした
  歩く + かなかった です

  話す + しませんでした
  話す + さ

• 

  Marcus

  Hi, I have a question about this if I may:

  The grammar explanation says: “you will need to change the last kana of the verb into the あ sound kana”. So that’s what I did. I took ねむるand changed it to ねむら, and then added ませんでした. But it got marked wrong. Any ideas why?

  Thank you for any help anyone can offer!

• 

  Marcus

  Ah, just seen the ‘formal’ drop-down examples! So, you change to the あ sound for casual, and the い sound for formal! That’s it, isn’t it?

• 

  Daru

  ねむる changes into its stem ねむり, and then you just add ~ませんでした！

  It’s not so much about wether its casual or formal, but more about what form of the verb you’re using. Since ねむる is a Godan verb, its stem form is ねむり.

  Hope this helps!

• 

  Marcus

  Thank you! My problem is that when I think about grammar my brain goes all foggy. I looked up the different forms of 眠る (how I’d like to 眠る right now!) and this is what I found:

  Sometimes it’s ら (眠らない, 眠らなかった), and sometimes it’s り (眠りません, 眠りませんでした) and it looks to me like the difference is that it’s ら for casual and り for polite. Is that not the case? I’m sorry, I’m deeply confused.

• 

  Daru

  Hey no worries! Let’s take it from the top.

  Remember that verbs in general, fall in 3 categories: う-verbs or godan (5 step, or 五段), る-verbs or ichidan (single step, or 一段), and irregular verbs (くる、する）.

  Depending on what category the verb is in, its conjugation pattern will change. For example, no matter what you conjugate it into, you always just remove the る with ichidan verbs. A godan verb can change into 5 different forms, and depending on what you’re trying to conjugate into it will change.

  食べる is an ichidan verb, so to conjugate it you just remove る。

  • 食べ～

  切る is a godan verb, so to get its stem you just “change” the final う vowel sound at the end into one of the other 4 japanese vowels, making ru change into any of the following:

  • 切ら～ (あ sound base)
  • 切り～ (い sound base)
  • 切れ～ (え sound base)
  • 切ろ～ (お sound base)

  Those are the verb

• 

  Marcus

  Wow, thank you so much for such an amazing reply! Really clear and really comprehensive, I am really grateful. Thank you.

  Now to copy it down and study it like crazy! Thank you so much @Daru

• 

  EdBunpro

  A useful thing I’ve learned over the years is whenever I see a super helpful comment in the forums (or, really anywhere) is to copy and paste the explanations into the Notes section on the grammar point. That way if there’s ever any info I need on a particular point, it’s all in one place. I used to have all my stuff in note pads/documents/etc. but when I started using Bunpro I realized it made a lot more sense just to keep everything centralized.

  Pluuuuuuuuus, to plug the app currently in development LOL, it’s nice to have the notes always quickly available on-the-go

• 

  Marcus

  Nice idea! Thank you so much! I’ll do that from now on!

• 

  Daru

  No prob! Glad to be of help.

  Also, have you unlocked any of the Self-Study badges? Judging from your profile picture, you might like them.

• 

  Daru

  200 IQ, this man is smarter than he lets on

• 

  Marcus

  Oh yes! LOL! Now I’m determined to make some sentences! Thank you!

• 

  Marcus

  
  

• 

  homa

  I struggle with the way bunpro gives me a solution here.
  
• 

  discopatrick

  For me, at the beginning at least, I think this is fine if you view the card as teaching you that there is a pattern between the three ways of saying it.

  However, as my understanding progresses, I would expect to be challenged to recall each style individually without having the hint of the others being present. If there are no cards where BunPro does this, then that sounds like a gap in the curriculum to me.

• 

  homa

  Ye, after posting this I realized that it’s not that big of a deal if you go beyond first ~50-100 topics as you see this latter everywhere, a lot of conjugations are based on it. So the only problem is to remember exceptions for い and え rule