Lesson two. Japanese verbs, and verb tenses.
The Japanese language has three types of verbs. U verbs, ru verbs, and irregular. U verbs end in u, ru verbs end in ru, and irregular verbs are irregular. Lucky for us, there are only two irregular verbs in their entire language: kuru (to come) and suru (to do).
Now, I know you people are smart so you most definitely should have noticed that ru ends in u. Some words that end in ru are ru verbs, and some words that end in ru are u verbs.
For example: taberu (to eat) is a ru verb, but naoru (to be healed) is an u verb. There is an easy way to learn this, and a hard way. The easy way is this. You look at the vowel immediately before the ru, in this case e or o. If it is e or i (taberu, kiru, etc etc), that means it is a ru verb. If it is any other vowel, o, u or a, it is a u verb. The hard way involves kanji and would blow your mind right now. There are about 15-20 words that have e or i and are u verbs, like kaeru (to return), but those are super rare. Do not think that means they are irregular: you could identify them with the kanji method.
You may be wondering why the ru and u matter. That is because they are conjugated differently when the tenses change. The Japanese language only has two grammatical tenses. They are past tense, and not-past tense. It is very easy to change verbs between tenses.
The ending of the verb changes, just like in English. However, how it changes depends upon what the last syllable in the verb is. It goes like this.
ru verbs are super duper easy: you take the ru, and turn it into ta. Taberu becomes tabeta. Kiru becomes kita.
u verbs are a lot trickier. It goes like this.
su: hanasu -> hanashita (speak -> spoke)
ku: kiku -> kiita (listen-> listened)
gu: oyogu -> oyoida (swim -> swam)
bu/mu/nu: asobu -> asonda (play, played) or yomu -> yonda (read -> read) or shinu -> shinda (die, died)
tsu/ru/u: matsu -> matta (wait, waited) or kaoru -> kaotta or tou -> totta (ask, asked)
Thus: john wa ringo wo tabeta is John ate an apple
Now try
1. I read a book
2. I listened to music
3. I swam
book = hon
music = ongaku
