In college, I used to study Japanese using the Genki textbooks which categorized verbs as u-verbs, ru-verbs, and exceptions like kuru/suru. I recently started attending a language school that uses a textbook called Daichi which seems to use the same verb categorization as Minna no Nihongo (Group 1, Group 2, Group 3).
Essentially, how do the Genki categorizations translate into the Daichi/Minna no Nihongo categorizations? I understand that group 3 is the exception verbs but keep confusing groups 1 and 2. Also I am aware of the concept of godan and ichidan verbs (I know that u-verbs are godan and ru-verbs are ichidan) so if you could use those terms to explain it to me, that would be helpful.
Ah, boy. Numbering verb groups is dumb, when there’s two perfectly good naming schemes you can already use which are actually descriptive of the members of the group.
Maybe you could give us an example of one verb that Daichi considers group 1, and one verb that it considers group 2, and we can tell you which group is which.
Google tells me that Minna no Nihongo calls godan verbs (う-verbs in Genki terminlogy) group 1 and ichidan verbs (る-verbs in Genki terminology) group 2. These are the most common numbers, but they are something textbooks made up, so don’t automatically assume textbooks are consistent in the numbers they assign
Yeah, I learnt with Nakama, which also used group 1 and group 2 designations. I don’t remember which was which (I never did, and in class we just used う- and る-verbs), but I do remember discovering that TextFugu (which also numbered them, back in the day) numbered the groups the other way around. That’s most of the reason why I was hoping for examples rather than just relying on Google.
You should ditch that and use the proper terms : ichidan and godan verbs (一段動詞、五段動詞); not only are they unambiguous, but once you understand what they mean, you can no longer forget it nor confuse them.
Even the “u verb” and “ru verb” are ambiguous. There are lots of verbs ending in ru that are not “ru verbs”…
But all the verbs that have a single form stem are “1 step verbs”, while all the verbs that have stem forms that the last kana of the stem spans across the five vowels are “5 steps verbs”.
No confusion at all.
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve only heard/seen 似てる to the point that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it in its dictionary form. That looks really weird to me right now.
Yeah, but it’s about 99% less ambiguous than “group 1” and “group 2”. I can deal with “sometimes a verb ending in る is an う-verb”. Like, I get a feel for which ones are the exceptions.
Yeah, I think that might be a big part of why I never managed to get the hang of which was which in Nakama.
Edit: Wait, I remembered things wrong. Just checked my Nakama, and it uses う and る. So maybe it was just TextFugu getting me confused with group 1 and group 2. Though, Japanese for Busy People uses “regular I” and “regular II”.
The most accurate way to describe them (from a linguistic standpoint) would be “consonant stem” (u verbs), “vowel stem” (ru verbs), and “irregular.” The Japanese writing system is really poorly-suited to Japanese verb conjugation and makes a simple thing complicated.
That seems nice when you look at romaji forms, but it is not how Japanese conjugation works.
nomimasu, nomanai, nomou,… it is not nom-imasu, nom-anai, nom-ou, because the conjugation sufixes are masu, nai, u.
That is, the different stem forms do not end in a consonant.
All verb stems are “vowel stems”.
it can be just one (1dan) or five (5dan).
In order to make it fit the writing system, the vowel gets moved into the stem, which is why godan verbs are treated as having five stems. But that’s not really how it works from a linguistic standpoint. This is more obvious in the classical Japanese than in modern Japanese.
No, the sufixes are た、て、ます、ない、…
What comes before the sufix may have phonetic changes, but the sufix does not (the most it can have is rendaku).
So, if you take out the ending vowel from the stem, and if it is not part of the suffix, what is it?
ad why don’t do the same with all verbs then, like tab-e-ta ?
The Japanese grammar model applies much better.
There are, for each conjugatable word (which, in Japanese, include also adjectives) a precise series of stems (you may already heard of rmizenkei, renyoukei,…). The suffix being used mandates the stem to use..
You are used to think of a single invariable verb stem because that is how it is in your language (and most European ones).
But there are languages where verbs may have different stems.
In Walloon for example, all verbs have three stems, well sometimes (often) two, or even the three, are identiqual. But the general model is with three stems, with that model suddenly there are no “irregular” verbs anymore only two irregulars, instead of about 40-50% of “regularly irregular” verbs, as on the old model that tried to fit the grammar of another language.
Not confusing at all!