I have come across in reading words that look like verbs but end in ず. An example this morning お金かけずに手間かけて. Please can someone explain what this means. I feel there is some grammar I am missing (well I’m missing loads and this is just part of the list!)
Ah! Think I solved it myself. I thought perhaps ずに was a phrase added to the verb stem and looking in the dictionary is said that it means not doing and you add it to the nai stem. Same for ず
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http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=zu%2C+zuni
https://japanesetest4you.com/flashcard/learn-jlpt-n3-grammar-ずに-zuni/
I‘ve learned this one recently as „without“, without doing something
So maybe in your example something doesn’t need/cost any money?
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ず is a classical grammar form for negation. It doesn’t need to appear with に, but when it does it works like you said.
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A couple of irregular conjugations exist for the usual suspects, namely 来る→こず and する→せず
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By the way, congratulations on reaching 60. At one stage you were about 15 levels ahead of me but looks like you kept up the pace whilst I seem to have hit a barrier, which I hope is temporary but not sure as a lot happening in my life at the moment (in the process of emigrating to NZ from the UK).
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To be fair this is his second time
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It means to “put in effort without spending money.”
金をかける to spend money (or to take money in the sense of “it takes money to start a business.
ずに old fashioned ないで meaning “without doing”
手間をかける to put in effort
Ending with the te-form indicates a simple, but not so forceful, command.
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In fact, in modern Japanese, ず acts mostly like a suffix “without ~ing” that results in an quasi-noun (you could call it a “no-adjective” I guess), which can be adverbialised with に or directly without, but you’ll sometimes (rarely) find it with の or で, etc.
It also has a dual life as a literary/classical form of ぬ, and modern usage is a bit confused between the two. Sometimes (written only), you’ll find ず/ぬ used in its literary syntax (see for example the Imabi page on ず for more syntax). It’s similar to べき in that sense, if you know about that one: most of the time it’s treated as a (quasi-)noun, but sometimes you’ll see it as an adjective, following the literary syntax.
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