Rules of the game
RED means move word
BLUE means don’t-move word
Every word links to a jisho.org page. Just click the word!
I will go quite deep into the movement concept in this lesson. You now have enough knowledge about japanese to understand it completely. First, I’ll detail what is a move word in japanese, and then I’ll introduce you to what is called “Transitive/Intransitive” in grammar books. These terms are flawed. I’m pretty sure you already have an idea why, but I’ll explain it a bit more in details in this lessons. Brace yourself, this lesson will be long as I have a lot of things to explain.
But for now… Let’s sum up what we know about move words.
Move words
Move words are words that create a relationship between don’t-move words. As I said before, unless it’s a very particular sentence as those using an arsenal of stylistic weapons, move words don’t move move words… Okay let’s put it differently. You cannot create a relationship directly between 2 move-words. So what are these move words :
Verbs and adjectives.
Wait! Didn’t you say verbs, adjectives and some particles last time? – You would ask me. And you’re right, I lied to you. In fact, particles that are move-words are composed of a don’t-move word : a particle, and a move word : a verb. Example : にある ==> な.
You may have heard that だ is a verb that means “to be” in usual grammar books. But this is in fact a composition of the particle で that we’ll see next lesson, and the verb ある that means “to exist”. And this composition still exists in usual japanese, which is why it makes no sense for books not to teach it. It even still exists for です which I’m 100% sure you heard once. It comes from the で particle, the verb ござる meaning “to exist” but is a word from old japanese, and the helper verb ます which sort of means “Do respectfully” (wiktionary explanation of ます). You can see one example here :
(当社の無人島移住) パッケージの特徴は、(四季の流れる環境で [の is attached to 環境] 季節の変化を楽しんでいただける) こと でございます ==> The specificity of our package (to move to an inhabitated island) is the fact (to be able to enjoy the change of seasons in an environment where seasons cycle). The でございます here is your です in its original, long form.
So, verbs and adjectives. How to recognize them? It’s simple. I translated 用言 as “move-words”, but you should know the common way to refer to them in books is “inflective words”, meaning they can change form.
Japanese conjugation
What is very specific about japanese conjugation is that it’s extremely simple. It’s easy as hell. We change… only the last vowel of the move word. Yes, I’m not kidding.
But it’s simple because it works differently from our western conjugation. Japanese move-words are very often given what is called a helper verb, or auxiliary verb (助動詞 in japanese), to express action order, respect, or to bring a nuance in meaning… These helper verbs are attached to a conjugated form of the original verb.
But… You said two move words couldn’t be attached together? – You would ask me. That’s very keen of you to ask such a great question. The answer is : only the う form of verbs and the い form of adjectives are TRULY move words. Any conjugation other than the dictionary form makes the move-word lose its movement. The conjugations あ, い, え and お of verbs and か, く, け, こ of adjectives don’t have movement anymore. We then go back to a don’t-move/move association, problem fixed. Auxiliary verbs brings back movement to the verb!
It’s important to notice that, while conjugated forms lose their movement, they are still originally move words, so they still work with particles normally. I put move words that lost their movements in PINK or in YELLOW instead of BLUE which are for those who didn’t have one at all.
Going back to conjugations, conjugated move words are composed of :
- A radical, which is a don’t-move word if completely alone ;
- For radical of verbs ending with a consonant (KIK- from 聞く for example) and adjectives, a vowel is added to the end of the radical.
- If the last sound is a vowel, there is no conjugation, but instead the helper word will sometimes be modified.
The basic form of move words is the only form where the word TRULY moves. As a result, it is the default usage of the word, for… very basic uses, of the type “I eat”. This conjugation is obtained by adding at the end of the radical :
- う for verbs, or る if their last sound is a vowel : 死ぬ : radical is SHIN- 、聞く : radical KIK, 食べる radical TABE-, 見る : radical MI-.
When move words lose their movement
There is another conjugation that I need you to remember. This is basically the only conjugation you will be able to see without a helper verb.
To pray a prayer. To confess a confession. To smile a smile. The い form is the name of the created action. This is what this conjugation is all about, the only difference is that it’s a standardized form in japanese. To build this form, add :
- for verbs : add い to the radical if the radical ends with a consonant. If it ends with a vowel, don’t add anything. As I said, the only time where you add anything for a radical ending with a vowel is if it’s the basic form (When you add る). 買い : radical is KA-, 好き : Radical is SUK-, 食べ : radical is TABE-.
From now on, I’ll note this form in PINK or YELLOW in sentences, as any other conjugation which has lost its movement.
The books lied to you. Your teachers lied to you. I lied to you. I fix everything.
First, you may have noticed that 買う‘s radical seems to end with a vowel (KA-) yet still takes a い. This is because… originally, this wasn’t a vowel.
In ancient japanese, verbs used the W column instead of the no-consonant column. As a result, the radical of 買う is not KA-, but it’s KAW-. This changes a few things in current japanese, for example the conjugation of 買う with the A vowel is 買わ. Since the rest of the W line doesn’t exist anymore, it has been replaced with the no-consonant. Tewi, a Touhou character, can be found in a lot of games with the furigana てい instead of てゐ, for example.
Second, the adjectives’s conjugations end with a K as a consonant except the basic form. That’s because… き ending used to be the norm until it was changed from き to い. It still exists in modern japanese, you can see it for example here :
The title is 素晴らしき日々, translated as Wonderful Everyday. It’s using the old conjugation of き instead of い for the adjective 素晴らしい. Because of this, it makes sense to say the radical contains the consonant K in adjectives, it’s simply removed in the basic dictionary form 素晴らしい. Here the radical would be SUBARASHIK-
Then, you may have read in your typical japanese book that the sentence コーヒーが好きだ (Read as すき) means “I like coffee”. You now see that this is wrong. 好く is a verb, “to like”, that is no longer used much in modern japanese, at least in this form. But its い form works exactly the same way : To like a liked object. As a result, 好き means “liked object” :
Then why is it written as “Coffee is a liked object”??? You already have part of the answer since I told you about は and も particles. Japanese tends to give importance to the words which have the biggest meaning in what people want to say. As a result, putting them in a subject position makes a lot of sense for japanese. Subjects are important, aren’t they?
Last confession but not least, is that move-words can always have particles linked to them, even if they lose their movement. This is the reason why you can hear 「何をしに行く？」 (する is an exception in conjugations, I’ll talk about it in a Patchwork lesson. For now, consider しに行く as “Go to do”), that means “What are you going to do?”.
If you remove しに, it now becomes 何を行く, which roughly means “What are you walking?”. This doesn’t mean anything. As such, you can deduce the を particle is instead linked to the する ‘s い form : 何をする means “Do what?”, which now makes sense.
Here, you can see 今日は何をしに？ The verb is ommited, because it’s obviously 行く. Yes, verbs too are ommited in japanese. So that means “What are you going to do today?”, as the last example.
Okay, that’s all for the confessions. But that’s not the end of the lesson yet. There is one last concept I want to introduce you in this lesson.
Self-move/Other-move
Simply put, a self-move word acts on itself, an other-move word acts on others. On the theory… that’s about it.
There is one thing to remember here. If a self-move word acts on itself, が and を are the same element. As usual, japanese doesn’t like useless informations, so only が remains, the を is implicit.
バグが集結し(ていく)！ (The verb is made of 集結 and する, refer to the lesson “What is a japanese sentence”)
集結する means “to gather”. It’s a self-move word : “gather ITSELF”, so there is only が shown, since を shows the same element. The sentence means “The bugs are going to gather THEMSELVES”. を is ommited because 集結する is a self-move word.
It’s as you can see quite different from our english concept of transitive/intransitive. The question we ask ourselves in english is “Does this verb take an object?”, and we have things like “Look AT the sky” as a result. But in japanese, the question we ask ourselves is “Does it act on itself?”, so we have 「空を見る」instead, literally “look THE sky”. We ACT on the sky.
As you may have guessed, adjectives are always describing themselves, therefore they are always self-move. Please bully me if you ever find an adjective in purple on this website. And sue me if you find a を particle linked to an adjective.
The master of the other-move words is する : to do. The master of the self-move words is ある : to exist. You will meet them again later. A lot. Trust me.
It’s important to understand this concept to understand the difference between 物 and 事, a difficulty for a lot of japanese learners.
- 事 is by definition the thing that cannot act on others. It cannot be the cause of anything. It can only BE CAUSED by something else. As a result, 事がする is IMPOSSIBLE. 事 can only be the subject of other-move words.
- 物 is by definition the thing that can cause other things to move. It can act on others, be a reason for events happening. By the way, after a verb, it’s often contracted as の. This is NOT a particle. It’s the contracted form of 物. As a result の can also be a person 者, with the same contraction, depending on context.
You now know EVERYTHING about movement in japanese. Well done! From now on in the subsequent lessons, I’ll permanently change the colors of move words :
BLUE means don’t-move words.
ORANGE means self-move words.
PURPLE means other-move words.
YELLOW means self-move words that lost their movements.
PINK means other-move words that lost their movements.
(Don’t hesitate to message me on Twitter if there is any colorblind issue with this. I am not competent in this field.)
With the next lesson about で and に, you will have more knowledge about the japanese language than most people after a whole year of learning japanese. You’re doing well! After the next one, everything will be much easier, you can’t give up when you’re this close!