Despite finishing the grammar in the first book, I have to admit that I fell behind because I played too much Idolmaster 2 instead of studying Japanese. Since the spring semester started about three weeks ago, I’m playing catch up and hopefully I can cover lost ground. Either way, this self-study progress will only focus on the short/casual forms.
If you have taken a course on Japanese, most teachers focus their efforts on the polite forms to speed things up. In reality, informal conversations and various Japanese media like music, video games, etc. most often use the short forms in addition to the latter. This makes it difficult for some learners to conjugate the verbs from the dictionary forms, read quotations or anything that doesn’t use polite form. Therefore, it’s very important for learners to learn and know the dictionary forms before conjugating them so you won’t fall in this trap.
As you expect, the short form is different from polite form, not because it’s shorter, but it’s mostly used in casual speak. In short form, です becomes だ 1, questions end with a question mark opposed to adding か and verbs in the present tense keeps it’s dictionary forms. In the list below, it will show how verbs and adjectives in the short form look like:
る- verbs
始める- to begin
- Present – 始める
- Present Negative – 始めない
- Past – 始めた
- Past Negative –始めなかった
う verbs
歌う- to sing
- Present –歌う
- Present Negative – 歌わない
- Past – 歌った
- Past Negative –歌わなかった
なadj
親切な – kind
- Present –親切だ
- Present Negative –親切じゃない
- Past – 親切だった
- Past Negative –親切じゃなかった
い adj
痛い – painful
- Present –痛い
- Present Negative – 痛くない
- Past – 痛かった
- Past Negative –痛くなかった
The congregations for the short forms were easy since it’s just adding ない to る verbs and for うverbs, cutting off the うat the end and adding あない 2. The past tense conjugates like the て form, but you add た instead.
Aside from casual speak, short forms has many uses as shown in few of the examples below:
Refraining someone from doing something:
ここで食べ物を食べないでください。
Please don’t eat food here.
Quotation:
（私は）美希はハーニーが好きだと思います。
I think Miki likes Honey.
私の妹は、あしたケーキーが要ると言っていました。
My litter sister said that she needs a cake tomorrow.
Because (から、ので – casual)
雨が降るから、今日公園に行きません。
I won’t go to the park today, because it’s raining.
Aside from the sentences above, there are other uses for the short form I have learned, but won’t explain because there are other sources that explains it better. I just want to show everyone who is currently learning the language that casual forms are just as important as the polite forms. Knowing their existence and learning them will make life easier if you decide to converse with other people, experience Japanese media or study abroad.
Some Notes
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Nice to see you moving up to the casual forms of verbs and adjectives. Like you said, a lot of teachers focus on the polite forms too much, which is okay at first but makes things confusing later on if you don’t have a foundation in the short forms as well. This happened to me with my first Japanese teacher in junior college, so I sort of had to learn casual forms on my own for a while until my teachers at my university taught them.
Your sentences look pretty good. But I think 雨が降っているから is better because it means “because it’s raining” whereas 雨が降るから sounds more like “because it will rain.”
Good job keeping up with your studies (I need to get back on track with memorizing my last few kanji before I hit 500!) And as always, let me know if you need any help or want to practice together.
To me, Japanese grammar is pretty straight forward compared to English (although I make a few mistakes when I check my answers on the worksheets)… Even though I have improved my writing since high school, it’s still a mess. The only difficulty I need to over come is the vocabulary and kanji even though the honorifics is another thing to worry about. Even with the flash cards, I tend to not retain some of it because I don’t use them at all. For those I remember well, it’s because I use them a bit more often. I think practice will eventually get those words in my mind and stay there so I’ll have an easier time reading the text in video games.