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Hi guys,
Going through Season 5 now and learning about converting the ます form verbs to dictionary form. That is all nice and clear, but most new verbs I see in the wild (and Wanikani) are in their dictionary form and I would like to know how you guys go about making them into the ます form. Any tricks?
Group one are probably the easiest for me as long as they don’t end with る
For example:
とまる － とまります
とめる － とめますIs this correct? I was thinking, if the second last kana ends with え sound, I would just drop る at the end. There will probably exceptions to this rule, but it helps. I was hoping you guys have some other tips.
The big rule in Japanese is that all rules have exceptions – including this one.
There ain’t no hard-and-fast way of telling which verb is in which group, save that you’ll simply get the feel for it after a while. But yeah, if you go ～る to ～ます, you’ll be right most of the time. One trick I find is that if you change the ～る to ～ます and the resultant combination sounds weird, then you did it wrong. For example, はしる -> はします sounds odd. (Though, in all fairness, that could simply be because I’m expecting はしります.)
Generally, it works kinda like this:
止まる【とまる】= To stop → 止まります【とまります】
Because this word is read tomaru (the sound before the る part is not an え sound) you can expect to be able change the る part to り and then add ます.止める【とめる】 = To stop (something) → 止めます【とめます】
Because this word is read tomeru (the sound before the る part is an え sound) you can expect to be able to remove the る and add ます.Similar to what Joel wrote, I found this explanation on Tae Kim’s website:
All ru-verbs end in 「る」 while u-verbs can end in a number of u-vowel sounds including 「る」. Therefore, if a verb does not end in 「る」, it will always be an u-verb. For verbs ending in 「る」, if the vowel sound preceding the 「る」 is an /a/, /u/ or /o/ vowel sound, it will always be an u-verb. Otherwise, if the preceding sound is an /i/ or /e/ vowel sound, it will be a ru-verb in most cases.
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