is there a way to tell which of the う kana are going to be used to make the base verb of a kanji?
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You mean, like you learn a kanji 動 – is there a way to guess what the corresponding verb would end with, before you learn the verbs 動く and 動ける？
I don’t think there is – especially as same kanji can be the base of several verbs – not just intransitive / transitive pair like in the example above, but also there are 食べる and 食う、which are both transitive and mean pretty much the same thing, only with different levels of formality.
Then again, I might have misunderstood you and in any case I’m just a small clumsy cat 
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Yep, and conversely you can have a single verb that you can write multiple ways, e.g. you can write みる “to see” as 見る, 観る or 視る. (Languages being what they are, the different ways to write it have acquired different nuances, but it’s all the same verb when you say it.)
The way I think works best to think about this is to consider the main thing here to be the words, in this case the verbs. These are are multisyllable words often originating from Japanese words that pre-date the introduction of kanji, and you can think of them as spoken words originally. Then the kanji are just a way to write the words that got added on later. Given that, it’s natural that there’s no way to guess the whole verb starting from just the kanji.
(This isn’t quite historically accurate, since words change over time, and it’s not as if the writing system has had zero effect on the spoken language. But as an initial rough mental model I think “words are the most important thing to learn, and kanji are just how you write them” is better than “kanji are primary”.)
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I’m genuinely confused as to what the question is. It sounds like you’re asking “I’ve just learnt about the concept of consuming food with my mouth, is there any way I can guess how the verb for that is spelt?”
The answer to that is no, you’re just gonna have to learn the words manually.
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It’s also probably worth pointing out the opposite can happen too - the same kanji with different kana can make different words. e.g.
着く - “to arrive”
着る - “to wear”
Basically, it’s important to point out that kanji are still an alphabet of sorts, just a very large one. They’re not words in and of themselves (though there are some words spelled with one kanji)
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If you know of a verb, aren’t you already looking at a form that should give you an idea of the base form?
I know there are exceptions, like 行って could be formed from 行く or 行う, but most of the time you can see something that would give you a clue.
It would probably help to expand the question with examples of what you’re having an issue with.
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for example, we know the kanji for see is 見 and the verb to see is 見る. the kanji for meet is 会 the verb to meet is 会う the kanji for study is 学 and the verb to study is 学ぶ. the question i was asking was is there a way to tell what kana; う、く、る、す、ふ、that is going to be used for making the verb form of the kanji
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Unfortunately there’s no predictable pattern that connects kanji with their okurigana endings, so no, you can’t look at a kanji and go “yeah, this forms a verb like that”.
This is largely because the verbs came first, and the kanji were added later. The みる reading of 見る began as a wholly Japanese word, to which the Chinese character 見 was appended so that they’d have a way of writing it down.
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Maybe it just helps to think of it this way. The verb for “to see” is みる and then when it’s written with kanji, the kanji that is used is 見, so it looks like 見る. The words come first and they can be written with kanji optionally.
Having to identify a full verb based on only a kanji sounds like something you only have to do on quiz shows (or potentially in very condensed text like signs or headlines that beginners don’t have to worry about).
(押す and 引く)
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i guess it just depends on what the context of the sentence is and what you are trying to imply/what has all really been found out/discovered/talked about before, ya know?
what this guy said, basically. ww
I think your misunderstanding comes from the fact you are thinking 漢字 are linguistically part of the Japanese language.
They are not. They are Chinese (as the writing explicitly tells so).
When you you think about “to learn is 学 plus ぶ” you are missing the fact that “to learn” in Japanese is not ガクぶ but まなぶ.
学 does have a reading ガク, from Chinese, but it does NOT have a reading まな！It has flexional reading まな .ぶ. The last part, that changes according to grammar, is often written in kana alongside the kanji, but it cannot be dissociated, it is the whole まなぶ that you need to mentally associate with 学.
Once you see that Japanese verb flexion is not a feature of Chinese characters, but of Japanese verbs, you can paraphrase your question as “how do I know a Japanese verb ends in くぐすつぬむぶるう?” (I think they are all there).
Well, basically you can’t, a verb is of one kind or the other (and all dictionaries will tell you which one it is), but without knowing the verb, you can’t, from a foreign translation, deduce the Japanese ending (which, even if it would be the case, won’t help you much … if you know that “to learn” in Japanese is a “5 forms verb of the BA column”, you just have the ending -ぶ and not まなぶ).
There are some endings more common than others however.
ぬ only appears once, in しぬ
All the “1 form verbs” (一段動詞) end in a kana of the E or I row plus る (like みる、たべる. But the inverse is not necessarily true かえる is godan verb. Then there are the two いる : 居る (most often in kana alone) which is ichidan, and 要る which is godan.
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ok, thank you for that explanation.
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