How to remember adjective/verb forms

Japanese Language Grammar
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How do you remember all of the verb and adjective conjugated forms? I know that I’ll come across a lot when I’m reading other materials, but I actually need to know a bunch for class now. I can easily look them up while writing or reading, but while speaking out loud, it is difficult. Any suggestions or links are appreciated. Thank you :cherry_blossom:

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Speaking out loud is challenging like that. “Read a set of sentences with them outloud, repeatedly” would be my suggestion. Otherwise you just have to do enough talking that eventually they stick

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I know in class when I was learning the conjugation forms there would be something like a chart to fill in the ます form the dictionary form, the て form, casual past, the formal past form etc for a bunch of verbs and adjectives and we would have to fill in the blanks here and there. I don’t have any links but typing in Verb conjugation chart or Adj conjugation chart Japanese should bring something up. You could print one out, laminate it and cover the forms you’re having difficulty with different sticky notes or something?

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If it would help you to practice producing the forms and get better at conjugating on the spot, you might find a tool like this conjugation practice website useful. In my experience raw drilling does a lot to take a form from “think a bit before I remember” to “conjugate instinctively”.

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Yeah, it’s hard to get them into your head enough to be able to freely produce them when speaking. Some things that worked for me:

  • Don’t try to memorise too many at once. Your class probably has gone through the ones you need to learn right now; stick to those for the moment and ignore some of the other ones you can find on online verb conjugation charts. It’ll be easier to add more later once you have the more basic forms memorised.

  • Look at the patterns, i.e. what the groups of verbs are and how they inflect. Write out a chart yourself in whatever way makes most sense to you. The idea here is to get to a point where you can logically work through in your head from the verb to the right form by knowing the patterns intellectually (“oh, this verb works like that other one, and I know the て form of that, so it must be…”). I found this helpful because at least in class you can get to the right answer eventually even if it’s “(three second pause) …泳いで” :slight_smile:

  • Drill through the patterns with whatever one verb you want to use as the example for each type. Repeat, repeat, repeat so you have at least one verb solid in your mind that you can use as the pattern to extend to other verbs in the class.

The rest is just practice and getting enough experience of both producing the right forms and seeing and hearing them in input. Eventually you get from “I had to think about that verb form” to “I’ve seen this so many times that the right form just felt right”.

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Thank you everyone :slight_smile: I’ve taken notes on all of these suggestions and will try them out.

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