Intermediate Japanese

The beginner course taught every verb in its ます form, which is polite, correct, and unable to appear anywhere in a sentence except right at the end. That single restriction is what stops a learner at the end of a beginner course from saying anything longer than one clause, and lifting it is the entire business of this lesson.

What ます cannot do

ます is not part of the verb. It is a suffix bolted on to mark politeness towards the person you are speaking to, and Japanese attaches it exactly once, to the last verb of the sentence. You have already seen this and may not have noticed. In 朝あさごはんを食たべて、学校がっこうに行いきます, there are two verbs and only one of them is polite. The first is in the て form, which carries no politeness and no tense, and the second decides both for the whole sentence.

Every other structure in Japanese behaves the same way, and this is where the beginner's vocabulary runs out. To say "the book I bought", "before I eat", "because it rained", "I think he came", "if you go", each of those inner verbs sits inside the sentence rather than at the end of it, so none of them can wear ます. They all take the plain form, and until you can build it on demand none of those sentences is available to you. 「買かいました本ほん」 is not a slightly informal way of saying "the book I bought". It is not Japanese at all.

This is why the plain form deserves a lesson of its own rather than a paragraph in a chapter on casual speech. Textbooks that introduce it as "the casual form" mislead badly, because they suggest it is an alternative you may decline. It is the base form of the verb, the shape everything else is built from, and the fact that it also serves as casual speech when it happens to land at the end of a sentence is a second job it does on the side. That second job is real, and the last lesson of this course is about it. For the next fourteen lessons the plain form is grammar, not register, and you can build every structure ahead of you while speaking as politely as you like.

There is one number worth holding on to. Written Japanese defaults to plain: novels, newspapers, academic papers, most signage and the great majority of what is on the internet end their sentences in the plain form, and reserve ます for dialogue and letters. A reader who knows only ます can speak politely and read almost nothing.

The dictionary form

The dictionary form is the headword, the shape a verb is listed under, and it is the one you build everything else from. You already know the ます form of a few dozen verbs, so the fastest route is to convert.

Group 2 verbs, the ones whose ます form has an え or い sound belonging to the stem, simply take る. 食たべます becomes 食たべる, 見みます becomes 見みる, 起おきます becomes 起おきる, 教おしえます becomes 教おしえる.

Group 3 has its two members and they are irregular as always. します becomes する, and 来きます becomes 来くる, which is worth saying aloud a few times because the reading of the character changes with the form.

Group 1 is the interesting one. Strip ます and you are left with a stem whose last kana is always in the い row: かい, まち, かえり, のみ, あそび, きき, いそぎ, はなし. Move that kana one step to the う row of the same column and you have the dictionary form.

Nine rows, and they are all of them. Every group 1 verb in the language ends its dictionary form in one of う, つ, る, む, ぶ, ぬ, く, ぐ or す, which is why the て form you drilled last course needed only five rules: う, つ and る collapse into って, む, ぶ and ぬ collapse into んで, and く, ぐ and す take one row each. Three plus three plus one plus one plus one accounts for all nine. 死しぬ is worth a note of its own, because it is the only ぬ verb in ordinary modern Japanese, which means the んで row is carried almost entirely by む and ぶ.

Now the honest limit. Converting from ます to dictionary form always works, because the ます form tells you the group by construction. Converting the other way does not. 食たべる is group 2 and 帰かえる is group 1, and nothing in the written shape distinguishes them. Verbs that end in いる or える and are nonetheless group 1 are a small but very common set: 帰かえる, 切きる, 入はいる, 走はしる, 知しる, 要いる, 限かぎる. Learn a verb with its group attached, exactly as you learn a noun with its counter.

Example. Give the dictionary forms of 持もちます (group 1), 降ふります (group 1), 借かります (group 2) and 呼よびます (group 1).

Take the group 1 verbs first and move the stem's last kana to the う row. 持もちます has stem 持もち, so ち goes to つ: 持もつ. 降ふります has stem 降ふり, so り goes to る: 降ふる. 呼よびます has stem 呼よび, so び goes to ぶ: 呼よぶ. 借かります is the trap and the reason it was included: its stem also ends in り, but it is group 2, so it takes る directly and gives 借かりる, not 借かる. The written result differs by one kana and the group is the only thing that decides it.

Now you. Give the dictionary forms of 立たちます (group 1), 開あけます (group 2), 泳およぎます (group 1) and 走はしります (group 1).

The ない form

The plain negative ends in ない, and the rule is stated most cleanly from the dictionary form: replace the final う-row kana with the あ-row kana in the same column, then add ない.

飲のむ gives 飲のまない. 待まつ gives 待またない. 帰かえる gives 帰かえらない. 聞きく gives 聞きかない. 急いそぐ gives 急いそがない. 話はなす gives 話はなさない. 遊あそぶ gives 遊あそばない.

There is one exception, and it is systematic rather than random. Verbs ending in う do not go to あ but to わ, so 買かう gives 買かわない and not 買かあない. The historical reason is that the わ was there all along: these verbs ended in an old は-row consonant that survived only before あ. The practical reason to remember it is that う verbs are extremely common, so getting it wrong is expensive: 言いわない, 使つかわない, 歌うたわない, 会あわない.

Group 2 drops る and adds ない: 食たべない, 見みない, 起おきない. Group 3 gives しない and 来こない, and note again that the reading of 来くる shifts, to こ this time.

Then there is ある, to exist for inanimate things, whose plain negative is not あらない but simply ない. This is the single most irregular thing in the ordinary verb system and it is unavoidable, because ある is one of the commonest verbs in the language. 時間じかんがない means there is no time. Its polite form, ありません, is perfectly regular, which is why beginners never meet the problem.

The plain past, free of charge

The plain past is the one place where a course can hand you a whole tense for nothing. Take the て form and change て to た, or で to だ. That is the entire rule, for all three groups, with no exceptions at all.

買かって becomes 買かった. 飲のんで becomes 飲のんだ. 聞きいて becomes 聞きいた. 急いそいで becomes 急いそいだ. 話はなして becomes 話はなした. 食たべて becomes 食たべた. して becomes した. 来きて becomes 来きた. And 行いく, which was the one exception in the て form, keeps the same exception: 行いって gives 行いった.

If your て forms are automatic, your past forms are already automatic. If they are not, the た form gives you a second reason to fix that today, and the same five rows do both jobs.

The plain negative past is equally cheap. Every ない form is an い adjective in disguise: it ends in い, it takes くて to join clauses, and it makes its past the way 高たかい makes 高たかかった. So drop the い of ない and add かった.

買かわない gives 買かわなかった. 食たべない gives 食たべなかった. 来こない gives 来こなかった. ない itself gives なかった, so 時間じかんがなかった means there was no time.

Example. Give all four plain forms of 書かく.

The dictionary form is 書かく, given. The negative replaces く with か and adds ない: 書かかない. The past comes from the て form, and く takes the いて row, so 書かいて gives 書かいた. The negative past takes the negative and swaps い for かった: 書かかなかった. Set against the polite four, 書かきます, 書かきません, 書かきました, 書かきませんでした, the pairing is exact: four plain forms, four polite ones, the same four meanings.

Now you. Give all four plain forms of 待まつ, and all four of 来くる.

Adjectives, nouns and だ

Verbs are not the only thing that has to shed です in the middle of a sentence, and adjectives turn out to be the easy half.

An い adjective was never polite to begin with. 高たかい is already plain, and its four forms are the ones you learned last course with the です simply removed: 高たかい, 高たかくない, 高たかかった, 高たかくなかった. The one irregular member is いい, good, which borrows every form except the plain present from its older shape よい: いい, よくない, よかった, よくなかった. There is no such word as いくない, and よかった, said on its own, is one of the most useful things in the language, meaning roughly "oh good, I'm relieved".

Nouns and な adjectives take だ, the plain counterpart of です. 学生がくせいだ, 静しずかだ. The negative is じゃない, the past だった, the negative past じゃなかった. So 学生がくせいじゃない, 学生がくせいだった, 学生がくせいじゃなかった. In careful writing the fuller ではない and ではなかった appear instead, and mean exactly the same thing.

Two warnings about だ, because it is less symmetrical than it looks. First, it is dropped far more often than です is. In casual speech 学生がくせい? with a rising tone is an ordinary question, and きれい said on its own is a complete exclamation, where きれいだ sounds oddly emphatic rather than more complete. Second, when a noun or な adjective sits inside a sentence rather than ending it, だ is often replaced by な or by である depending on what follows. You will meet this from the next lesson onwards: 学生がくせいなので, but 学生がくせいだと思おもう. The verb forms have no such complication, which is the main reason this lesson leads with them.

The four plain forms, drilled

Here is the shape of the whole system in one place, one verb from each group and the same four slots.

The drill that pays is a column at a time, out loud, against a clock. Write twenty verbs you know in their ます forms, produce all four plain forms of each without looking anything up, and check. A learner who can do that list in three minutes has bought the next fourteen lessons at a discount, because every one of them attaches something to the top row or the bottom two of this table.

Example. Rewrite 昨日きのう友ともだちに会あいましたが、映画えいがは見みませんでした in the plain form throughout.

Two verbs, both polite, both at the end of a clause. 会あいました is the polite past of 会あう, a group 1 う verb, so its て form is 会あって and its plain past is 会あった. 見みませんでした is the polite negative past of 見みる, group 2, giving 見みなかった. The result is 昨日きのう友ともだちに会あったが、映画えいがは見みなかった. Nothing else in the sentence changes: the particles, the word order and the が joining the clauses are all untouched, because politeness lives only on the verb.

Now you. Rewrite 今日きょうは寒さむかったですから、どこにも行いきませんでした in the plain form throughout.

Where the plain form is the whole sentence

One point of register before moving on, so that you do not use this lesson to be accidentally rude. When a plain form lands at the end of a spoken sentence, it marks the speech as casual, and casual in Japanese means specifically that you are speaking to a friend, a family member, someone clearly junior to you, or yourself. Used to a shopkeeper, a colleague you do not know well, or anyone older, it reads as either intimacy you have not earned or carelessness.

Written Japanese is different, and the difference is not politeness but genre. A newspaper article, a novel, a scientific paper and a Wikipedia entry are all written in plain form, and no reader takes offence, because there is no listener present to be polite to. Letters, emails and anything addressed to a named person go back to ます. This is why the same sentence, 雨あめが降ふった, is completely neutral in a weather report and pointedly casual said to your boss.

For the rest of this course the examples end in whichever form makes the pattern clearest, and you should assume you may switch the final verb to ます at will. The last lesson comes back to casual speech properly, with its contractions and its sentence-final particles, once there is enough grammar to be casual about.

Vocabulary

Everything from here builds on the top row of that four-way table. The next lesson takes a plain clause and puts a noun immediately after it, which is how Japanese says "the book I bought" without any word corresponding to "which" or "that", and it is the largest single structural gap between a beginner and someone who can read.

English builds "the book that I bought yesterday" out of a relative pronoun, a change of word order and a comma habit, and Japanese does the whole job by putting the clause in front of the noun and stopping. There is no word for "that", "which" or "who", nothing is moved, and the only requirement is the one the previous lesson supplied: the verb inside the clause must be in the plain form.

The slot in front of a noun

Japanese has one rule about modification and it has no exceptions: whatever describes a noun comes before it. You already rely on this without noticing. 高たかい本ほん is an expensive book, 静しずかな町まち is a quiet town, 日本語にほんごの本ほん is a Japanese book. Adjective before noun, な adjective before noun, noun plus の before noun: three different kinds of modifier, one slot.

A clause goes in exactly that same slot. Nothing new is added to the grammar; a bigger object is simply dropped into a hole that was already there.

買かった本ほん katta hon the book I bought

That is a complete noun phrase, and it can now be used anywhere a noun can. 買かった本ほんを読よむ, I read the book I bought. 買かった本ほんは高たかかった, the book I bought was expensive. The clause has not become a sentence of its own; it is doing the work an adjective does.

The cost of the rule is real and worth naming early, because it is what makes intermediate Japanese hard to listen to. The modifier can be as long as you like, and the noun it belongs to arrives only at the end. In きのう駅えきの前まえで友ともだちと話はなしていた人ひと, "the person who was talking with a friend in front of the station yesterday", sixteen characters of clause go by before 人ひと tells you what the whole thing is about. English gets to say "the person" second, out of fourteen words, and then fill in the details. Japanese makes you hold everything in memory until the head noun lands. That is a listening skill, and it is trained by hearing long sentences rather than by learning another rule.

Building a modifying clause

Take any sentence, put its verb in the plain form, and place it in front of the noun. All four plain forms work, so the modifier carries tense and polarity of its own, independent of the main sentence.

母ははが作つくった料理りょうりはおいしかった haha ga tsukutta ryouri wa oishikatta the food my mother made was delicious

まだ読よんでいない本ほんが三さん冊さつある mada yonde inai hon ga sansatsu aru there are three books I have not read yet

田中たなかさんが住すんでいる町まちは静しずかだ Tanaka-san ga sunde iru machi wa shizuka da the town Tanaka lives in is quiet

Look at what happened to the particle in each case. In the first, the underlying sentence is 母ははが料理りょうりを作つくった, and when 料理りょうり is pulled out to be the head noun, its を simply disappears. In the third, the underlying sentence is 田中たなかさんが町まちに住すんでいる, and に disappears the same way. The head noun leaves a gap inside the clause, and the particle that marked the gap is not written anywhere. English does the same thing with "the town Tanaka lives in", except that English strands the preposition at the end, and Japanese has nothing to strand.

Any role can be the gap. 本ほんを買かった人ひと is the person who bought the book, with the subject as the gap. 本ほんを買かった店みせ is the shop where I bought the book, with a place as the gap. 本ほんを買かった日ひ is the day I bought the book. The clause is identical each time and only the head noun changes, which is a useful thing to drill, because it forces you to read the clause as a unit rather than as a sentence that has gone wrong.

Example. Turn these two sentences into one noun phrase meaning "the letter Tanaka wrote": 田中たなかさんが手紙てがみを書かいた.

The head noun is 手紙てがみ, so pull it out of the clause, and its を goes with it. What is left is 田中たなかさんが書かいた, whose verb is already in the plain past. Put the clause in front of the head and you have 田中たなかさんが書かいた手紙てがみ. Nothing is reordered and nothing is inserted. Used in a sentence: 田中たなかさんが書かいた手紙てがみを読よんだ, I read the letter Tanaka wrote.

Now you. Turn 山田やまださんが京都きょうとで写真しゃしんを撮とった into a noun phrase meaning "the photograph Yamada took in Kyoto", and then into one meaning "the city where Yamada took photographs".

The particle that changes

There is one substitution to learn and it catches everybody. は cannot appear inside a noun-modifying clause. は marks the topic of a sentence, and a clause sitting in front of a noun is not a sentence and has no topic of its own to mark. Its subject takes が instead.

So 父ちちは新聞しんぶんを読よんでいる, my father is reading the newspaper, becomes 新聞しんぶんを読よんでいる父ちち when 父ちち is the head, and becomes 父ちちが読よんでいる新聞しんぶん when the newspaper is. The moment a clause goes into the modifier slot, any は inside it turns into が. Writing 父ちちは読よんでいる新聞しんぶん is one of the most recognisable intermediate mistakes there is.

A second substitution is optional and worth recognising when you read it. In a short clause, が may be replaced by の with no change of meaning: 私わたしの作つくった料理りょうり is the same as 私わたしが作つくった料理りょうり. This works only when the clause is short and its subject is a simple noun, it is more common in writing than in speech, and it never applies to the が of a main clause. Produce が and understand の.

Modifiers that leave no gap

Here is where Japanese does something English cannot, and where translation stops helping.

電車でんしゃが遅おくれた理由りゆう densha ga okureta riyuu the reason the train was late

魚さかなを焼やくにおい sakana o yaku nioi the smell of grilling fish

In neither of these does the head noun play any role inside the clause. 理由りゆう is not the subject or object of 遅おくれる, and no particle has been deleted: the underlying sentence 電車でんしゃが遅おくれた is complete on its own. The clause simply states the situation, and the head noun names some aspect of it. Japanese allows this freely with nouns like 理由りゆう (reason), 音おと (sound), におい (smell), 話はなし (story), 約束やくそく (promise) and 写真しゃしん (photograph). English has to insert a preposition or a whole clause, "the reason why", "the smell of ... doing", which is why literal translation produces monsters.

The practical consequence is that you should stop testing modifier clauses by asking which word was removed. The test that actually works is simpler: is there a plain-form predicate immediately in front of a noun? If so, everything from the start of that clause up to the noun is describing it, whatever the internal relationship.

Turning a clause into a noun

The same construction, with a nearly empty head noun, converts a clause into a noun. The two empty nouns are の and こと.

毎日まいにち漢字かんじを書かくのは大変たいへんだ mainichi kanji o kaku no wa taihen da writing kanji every day is hard work

私わたしの趣味しゅみは本ほんを読よむことです watashi no shumi wa hon o yomu koto desu my hobby is reading books

Once nominalised, the clause takes particles like any other noun: は in the first, and in the second it is sitting where a noun would sit after です. This is what lets you make a whole event the subject or object of another sentence, and it is the last structural piece a B1 speaker is missing.

The choice between の and こと is genuinely fuzzy, and much of the time either is acceptable. Three tendencies do most of the work. の is preferred for a concrete event that the speaker directly perceives or is directly involved in, which is why verbs of perception demand it: 子こどもが道みちを渡わたるのを見みた, I saw the child cross the road, where ことを見みた is simply wrong. こと is preferred for something abstract, reported or general, which is why it appears with できる, 約束やくそくする and ある: 日本にほんに行いったことがある, I have been to Japan. And こと is required after です in a definition, as in the hobby sentence above, where 読よむのです would instead be the explaining んです of the next section and would mean something else entirely.

Example. Which of の and こと fits each blank, and why? (1) となりの部屋へやで誰だれかが歌うたっている＿が聞きこえる. (2) 毎朝まいあさ走はしる＿にした.

The first is a perception verb, 聞きこえる, reporting a concrete event happening now in the next room, so it takes の: 歌うたっているのが聞きこえる. The second is a decision about a general practice rather than a perceived event, and it is the fixed pattern ことにする, so it takes こと: 毎朝まいあさ走はしることにした, I have decided to run every morning. That pattern gets a lesson of its own later, and it never accepts の.

Now you. Which fits each blank? (1) 日本語にほんごを毎日まいにち勉強べんきょうする＿は難むずかしい. (2) 雪ゆきが降ふっている＿を見みた.

んです, and the explaining mood

Now the payoff. Take a plain clause, add の, and add です, and you have the single most common sentence ending in spoken Japanese after ます itself. In speech の contracts to ん, giving んです, and in writing the full のです is usual.

The construction is not a politeness level and not a tense. It marks the sentence as an account of the situation rather than a bare report of a fact. Something is on the table, visible or already mentioned, and this sentence explains it.

どうして来こなかったんですか doushite konakatta n desu ka why didn't you come?

電車でんしゃが遅おくれたんです densha ga okureta n desu the train was late (that's the explanation)

頭あたまが痛いたいんです atama ga itai n desu I've got a headache (that's why I'm like this)

Attachment follows the rule you already have, with one wrinkle. Verbs and い adjectives attach the plain form directly: 行いくんです, 行いかなかったんです, 痛いたいんです. Nouns and な adjectives cannot use だ here and take な instead, giving 学生がくせいなんです and 静しずかなんです. That な is the same な you already put between a な adjective and a noun, and it is here for the same reason: の is a noun.

Two things learners get wrong with it. The first is using it for a plain statement of fact. Asked 仕事しごとは何なんですか, answer 教師きょうしです; answering 教師きょうしなんです implies that being a teacher accounts for something the listener has just noticed. The second is that the question form can be blunt. どうして来こなかったんですか demands an explanation and can sound like an accusation, where 来こませんでしたか merely asks. Used well, though, んですが is the politest opening in the language for a request: ちょっと聞ききたいことがあるんですが, "there's something I wanted to ask", trailing off and leaving the listener to offer.

Example. You arrive at a friend's flat and they are holding a suitcase. What do you ask, and why is the plain question wrong?

どこかへ行いくんですか, "are you going somewhere?". The suitcase is the situation on the table, and your question asks them to account for it, which is exactly what んです marks. どこかへ行いきますか is grammatical but reads as an out-of-nowhere enquiry about their travel plans, as though you had not seen the suitcase at all. This is the clearest single test of the form: if something in front of you prompted the sentence, it wants んです.

Now you. Rewrite 明日あした試験しけんがあります as an explanation of why you cannot go out tonight, and rewrite 学生がくせいです as an explanation of why you have no money.

Vocabulary

A clause can now describe a noun, be a noun, or explain a situation. What it still cannot do is say when it happened relative to anything else. The next lesson takes the construction you have just built, puts a time noun such as 時とき or 前まえ in the head slot, and gets the whole apparatus of before, after, while and during out of it for almost nothing.

A learner who can build a clause in front of a noun already owns every time expression in Japanese, because 時とき, 前まえ, 後あと and 間あいだ are ordinary nouns and a time clause is just a clause modifying one of them. The only genuinely new thing in this lesson is a rule about tense, and that rule turns out to explain three constructions at once.

A time clause is a noun-modifying clause

時とき means "time" or "occasion". Put a plain clause in front of it, exactly as the previous lesson did with 本ほん and 人ひと, and you get "the time when that happened", which is what English calls a when-clause.

国くにに帰かえる時とき、空港くうこうで電話でんわする kuni ni kaeru toki, kuukou de denwa suru when I go back to my country, I'll ring from the airport

Because 時とき is a noun, everything that can modify a noun can modify it. Verbs use the plain form, い adjectives attach directly, な adjectives take な and nouns take の.

子こどもの時とき、よく川かわで遊あそんだ kodomo no toki, yoku kawa de asonda when I was a child, I often played in the river

暇ひまな時ときは何なにをしますか hima na toki wa nani o shimasu ka what do you do when you're free?

若わかい時ときによく旅行りょこうをした wakai toki ni yoku ryokou o shita I travelled a lot when I was young

That is the whole construction. The particle after 時とき follows the ordinary rules: に pins it to a point, は contrasts it with other occasions, and bare 時とき followed by a comma is the commonest of all.

The tense inside a time clause is relative

Now the part that surprises everyone. The verb in front of 時とき is not marked for whether the event is in the past. It is marked for whether the event has already happened at the moment the main clause describes. Compare these two, which differ by a single kana and describe different holidays.

日本にほんに行いく時とき、カメラを買かった nihon ni iku toki, kamera o katta when I went to Japan, I bought a camera (before setting off, or on the way)

日本にほんに行いった時とき、カメラを買かった nihon ni itta toki, kamera o katta when I went to Japan, I bought a camera (once I was there)

Both are in the past overall, and the main verb 買かった says so in both. The 時とき clause says something else. In the first, at the moment of buying, the going to Japan had not yet happened, so it stands in the nonpast; the camera was bought at home or in the departure lounge. In the second, at the moment of buying, the going had happened, so it stands in the past; the camera was bought in Japan.

This is why English translations of Japanese textbooks so often gloss both as "when I went". English tense is anchored to the moment of speaking. Japanese subordinate tense is anchored to the main clause. Once you accept that single difference the rest of this lesson costs nothing, because the other constructions are the same rule with the freedom taken away.

Example. Choose the right form: 家いえを（出でる／出でた）時とき、かぎをかけた, meaning "I locked the door when I left the house".

You lock a door from the outside, after leaving, so at the moment of locking the leaving has already happened: 出でた時とき. Choosing 出でる時とき is not ungrammatical, but it describes locking something while still inside, which would be a different door. This pair is the standard classroom demonstration precisely because both versions are possible sentences about the real world and the grammar picks out which one you meant.

Now you. Choose the right form and say what the other one would mean: ごはんを（食たべる／食たべた）時とき、「いただきます」と言いう.

まえに and あとで are the same rule

前まえ means "the front" or "before", 後あと means "after". Both are nouns, both take clauses in front of them, and both look at first like exceptions because their tense is fixed. They are not exceptions. They are the 時とき rule with no choice left.

まえに always takes the dictionary form, whatever the tense of the main clause.

寝ねる前まえに歯はを磨みがいた neru mae ni ha o migaita I brushed my teeth before going to bed

Ask why, and the answer writes itself: at the moment of brushing, the going to bed had not happened. That is exactly what "before" means. A past form there would be a contradiction, which is why 寝ねた前まえに is not a stylistic slip but nonsense.

あとで always takes the past form, again whatever the main clause does.

晩ばんごはんを食たべた後あとで、映画えいがを見みます bangohan o tabeta ato de, eiga o mimasu I'll watch a film after eating dinner

The main verb is nonpast, and the meal is still in the future at the moment of speaking, yet 食たべた is past, because at the moment of watching the film the meal will be over. One rule, two constructions, no memorisation.

Nouns work with both, joined by の: 食事しょくじの前まえに, before the meal; 授業じゅぎょうの後あとで, after the lesson.

てから, and counting time since

てから is built from the て form you already have, plus から, and it does two jobs that are worth keeping apart.

The first is sequence with a sense of prerequisite. 手てを洗あらってから食たべてください, wash your hands and then eat, presents the washing as something that has to be got out of the way first. たあとで simply reports the order; てから implies the first event enables or licenses the second. The difference is small and native speakers often use either, but it shows up in a case like 大学だいがくを卒業そつぎょうしてから働はたらき始はじめた, which is natural, against the flatter 卒業そつぎょうした後あとで.

The second job has no equivalent in たあとで at all: てから plus a length of time plus になる measures how long it has been since something happened.

日本にほんに来きてから三年さんねんになります nihon ni kite kara sannen ni narimasu it's been three years since I came to Japan

Example. You arrived in Japan on 1 April 2019 and are speaking on 20 August 2026. What do you say?

Count the elapsed time first, because the sentence needs a number. From 1 April 2019 to 1 April 2026 is seven years; from there to 20 August 2026 is four months and nineteen days, so the total is seven years and four months, or 2698 days. Japanese rounds this the way English does, and you say 日本にほんに来きてから七年ななねんになります. If you want to be exact, 七年ななねん四よんか月げつになります. Note that the verb is 来きて, the て form of 来くる, and that になります rather than です is what makes it a duration reached rather than a fact stated.

Now you. You started studying Japanese in September 2021 and are speaking in August 2026. Say how long it has been, and say the same thing using 間あいだ instead.

ながら, and the rule about subjects

ながら joins two things happening at once. It attaches to the ます stem, the part left when ます comes off, so 聞ききます gives 聞ききながら and 食たべます gives 食たべながら.

音楽おんがくを聞ききながら勉強べんきょうする ongaku o kikinagara benkyou suru I study while listening to music

Two restrictions make ながら narrower than English "while", and both are absolute. First, both actions must have the same subject. You cannot say "while my brother watched television, I studied" with ながら; that needs 間あいだ, below. Second, the ながら clause is the background and the main clause is the point. The sentence above is about studying, with music in the background. Reverse them and 勉強べんきょうしながら音楽おんがくを聞きく is about listening to music, which is a different claim about how you spent the evening.

There is also a concessive ながら, used with states rather than actions, which means "although": 知しっていながら教おしえてくれなかった, they knew and still didn't tell me. It is much less common and belongs with the contrast patterns of the next lesson, but it is worth recognising so that you do not read it as simultaneity.

うちに, あいだ and あいだに

These three all cover a stretch of time, and the differences between them are sharp enough to be worth getting right.

あいだ is the whole stretch, and the main clause fills all of it.

夏休なつやすみの間あいだ、ずっと働はたらいていた natsuyasumi no aida, zutto hataraite ita I worked right through the summer holiday

あいだに adds に, which as always pins things to a point, so the main clause happens at some moment inside the stretch rather than across the whole of it.

夏休なつやすみの間あいだに旅行りょこうに行いった natsuyasumi no aida ni ryokou ni itta I went on a trip at some point during the summer holiday

That is a single kana carrying the entire difference between forty days of work and one trip inside forty days, which is a good illustration of how much load Japanese particles take. Note also that あいだ is free of the same-subject rule, so 兄あにがテレビを見みている間あいだに勉強べんきょうした is fine where ながら was not.

うちに also means "while", but it carries an implication that あいだに does not: the state described will not last, so act now.

熱あついうちに食たべてください atsui uchi ni tabete kudasai eat it while it's hot

若わかいうちにいろいろな国くにに行いきたい wakai uchi ni iroiro na kuni ni ikitai I want to visit lots of countries while I'm young

The negative version is where うちに earns its place, because あいだに cannot do it at all: 忘わすれないうちに書かいておきます, I'll write it down before I forget. Literally "while I have not yet forgotten", it is the ordinary way to say "before I forget", and it is far commoner than 忘わすれる前まえに.

Example. Which of 間あいだ, 間あいだに and うちに fits: 雨あめが降ふらない＿帰かえりましょう?

うちに. The sentence means "let's go home before it starts raining", and the three tests all point the same way: the clause is negative, describing a state that is expected to end; the main clause is a single event rather than something filling the whole period; and there is an implied urgency. 降ふらない間あいだに is not impossible but sounds like a neutral report of scheduling, and 降ふらない間あいだ would mean you stay home for the entire dry period, which is not what anyone means.

Now you. Choose between 間あいだ and 間あいだに, and explain: 先生せんせいが話はなしている＿、みんな静しずかに聞きいていた.

Vocabulary

Events can now be placed against each other in time. What they still cannot do is explain each other: nothing so far says that one thing happened because another did, or despite it. That pair of moves is what turns a run of sentences into an argument, and it is next.

A run of true sentences is not a paragraph, and the difference is made almost entirely by the handful of connectives in this lesson. Everything here attaches to the plain form built in the first lesson, so the grammar is already paid for; the work is in choosing between connectives that translate into the same English word and are not interchangeable in Japanese.

から, the plain reason

から is the basic word for "because", and it is the one to reach for when you are unsure. It goes on the end of the reason, and the reason comes first.

今日きょうは日曜日にちようびだから、銀行ぎんこうは休やすみだ kyou wa nichiyoubi da kara, ginkou wa yasumi da today is Sunday, so the bank is closed

から is unusual among these connectives in that it attaches happily to either register. 日曜日にちようびだから and 日曜日にちようびですから are both fine, and in polite speech you will hear both, since から does not care what is underneath it. Nouns and な adjectives take だ before it, which is worth flagging because the next connective takes な instead.

It also works in reverse order, as an afterthought, and on its own as an answer.

どうして行いかないんですか。 お金おかねがないからです。 doushite ikanai n desu ka. okane ga nai kara desu. why aren't you going? because I have no money.

からです is the standard way to answer a どうして question in full, and it is where the んです of two lessons ago and the から of this one meet: the question asks for an account of a situation, and the answer supplies one.

ので, and what makes it softer

ので covers the same ground and feels different. Two mechanical facts first, because they are what people get wrong. It attaches to the plain form, and nouns and な adjectives take な rather than だ: 学生がくせいなので, 静しずかなので. That な is the same one as in 学生がくせいなんです, and for the same reason.

頭あたまが痛いたいので、早はやく帰かえってもいいですか atama ga itai node, hayaku kaette mo ii desu ka I have a headache, so may I go home early?

Now the difference, which is real but softer than most textbooks make it. から presents the reason as the speaker's own claim: I am telling you why. ので presents it as a circumstance that happens to obtain, leaving the speaker less visible. The consequence is that ので sounds more deferential, so it is the safer choice when you are asking a favour, apologising, or explaining yourself to someone senior. Compare the headache sentence with 頭あたまが痛いたいから帰かえります, which is closer to "I've got a headache, I'm off".

The limits worth knowing. When the reason is unmistakably a personal judgement rather than a circumstance, から is preferred: この映画えいがは面白おもしろいから見みてください. When the sentence ends on the reason, only からです works, since のでです does not exist. And in very polite speech ので does attach to the polite form after all, as ですので and ますので, which is common in announcements: 工事こうじ中ちゅうですので、ご注意ちゅういください. Anyone who tells you ので never follows です has overstated a good rule.

For written and formal Japanese there is also ため and ためです, which is the newspaper and notice register of the same idea: 事故じこのため、電車でんしゃが遅おくれています. Recognise it; you rarely need to produce it.

Example. You are asking your professor to let you hand an essay in late because you were ill. Which connective, and why?

ので, giving 病気びょうきだったので、レポートを明日あした出だしてもいいでしょうか. Two reasons converge. The main clause is a request, and a request to a superior wants the reason presented as circumstance rather than as your own case-making. And 病気びょうき is a noun, so it takes な before ので, giving 病気びょうきなので in the present, or だった for the past as here. 病気びょうきだったから would not be wrong, exactly, but it puts your reason forward as an argument, which is the wrong posture for asking a favour.

Now you. Give the reason "the train was late" for the result "I was late", once with から to a friend and once with ので to your manager.

し, for stacking reasons

し lists reasons, and it carries an implication that there are others you have not bothered to give. It attaches to the plain form, and it usually appears at least twice.

この店みせは安やすいし、おいしいし、よく行いきます kono mise wa yasui shi, oishii shi, yoku ikimasu this place is cheap, and the food's good, so I go there a lot

雨あめが降ふっているし、寒さむいし、今日きょうは出でかけたくない ame ga futte iru shi, samui shi, kyou wa dekaketaku nai it's raining, and it's cold, so I don't want to go out today

The difference from て, which also joins clauses, is that て merely sequences them while し presents each as evidence for the conclusion. The difference from から is the open-endedness: a single し at the end of a sentence, trailing off, means "and there are other reasons too", which is a very common softener. 今日きょうはちょっと。 忙いそがしいし。 "Not today. I'm busy, among other things."

A single reason with し is not a mistake, and it is heard often. What it is not is a neutral way to give one reason: 安やすいし買かった implies that cheapness was one consideration among several.

が and けど, the turn that is not always a turn

が and けど both mean "but", and both attach to whatever precedes them without changing it, polite or plain. が is the formal and written member, けど the conversational one, with けれど and けれども sitting between them in formality and length.

この本ほんは高たかいですけど、いいと思おもいます kono hon wa takai desu kedo, ii to omoimasu this book is expensive, but I think it's good

The trap is that neither word necessarily marks a contrast. Very often が and けど are pure prefaces, buying a moment and setting the scene, in the way that English "so" and "well" do. すみませんが、今いま時間じかんがありますか contains no contrast at all: it means "excuse me, do you have a moment?". Translating that が as "but" produces gibberish, and the habit of doing so is what makes intermediate translations read strangely.

The same construction lets a sentence trail off deliberately. あのう、電話でんわしたいんですけど…, "um, I'd like to make a phone call...", is a complete and highly idiomatic request. Japanese leaves the actual asking unsaid, and the listener supplies it. If you learn one thing from this section, learn to stop after けど and wait.

Example. A colleague asks why you always go to that one café. Give two reasons and imply there are others.

駅えきから近ちかいし、静しずかだし、よく行いきます. Both reasons attach to the plain form, which is why the な adjective appears as 静しずかだ before し rather than as 静しずかな. The two し are what make this an answer rather than a list: each clause is offered as support, and the fact that there are two of them tells the listener you could go on. Giving a single reason with から would have answered the question more narrowly, which is sometimes what you want and here is not.

Now you. You want a table for tomorrow evening. Make the request indirectly, using けど and stopping.

のに, and the complaint built into it

のに also means "but" or "although", and it is not a synonym for が. のに says that what followed was contrary to what should reasonably have happened, and it carries the speaker's dissatisfaction, surprise or regret. It attaches to the plain form, with な after nouns and な adjectives.

薬くすりを飲のんだのに、熱ねつが下さがらない kusuri o nonda noni, netsu ga sagaranai I took the medicine, and yet my temperature won't come down

毎日まいにち練習れんしゅうしたのに、試合しあいに負まけた mainichi renshuu shita noni, shiai ni maketa I practised every day, and still lost the match

Because the emotion is built in, のに can end a sentence on its own and leave the rest to be inferred: せっかく作つくったのに…, "and after I went to the trouble of making it...". This is a complaint, and it will be heard as one, so do not use のに where you merely mean が.

There is a hard grammatical restriction that follows from the same fact. The main clause of a のに sentence must state something that happened. It cannot be a request, a command, an invitation or a statement of intention, because those are not things that can already have turned out contrary to expectation. 高たかいのに買かってください is not Japanese. 高たかいですが買かってください is fine.

ても, for the condition that does not help

ても is built from the て form plus も, and it covers both "even if" and "even though". Where のに reports something that actually happened, ても is general or hypothetical.

雨あめが降ふっても、行いきます ame ga futte mo, ikimasu I'll go even if it rains

Adjectives use くても, and nouns and な adjectives use でも: 高たかくても買かいます, I'll buy it even if it's expensive; 日曜日にちようびでも働はたらきます, I work even on Sundays. That でも is the same one you meet as a standalone word meaning "even" and "or something", and the overlap is not a coincidence.

Combined with a question word, ても gives "no matter what", which is one of the highest-value patterns in this lesson.

何なにを言いっても、彼かれは聞きかない nani o itte mo, kare wa kikanai no matter what I say, he doesn't listen

いくら高たかくても買かいます ikura takakute mo kaimasu however expensive it is, I'll buy it

Unlike のに, ても is perfectly comfortable with a request or a command in the main clause, because nothing has happened yet: 雨あめが降ふっても来きてください.

Which connective tolerates a request

The restrictions above are not arbitrary, and they line up into a small grid worth committing to memory, because it catches most of the errors a B1 speaker still makes. The question in each case is whether the second clause may be a request, a command, an invitation or a statement of will.

Only のに is barred, and the reason is semantic rather than a rule to memorise: everything else in the list is compatible with the future being open.

Example. Which of のに and ても fits: 日本にほんに三年さんねん住すんでいた＿、あまり話はなせない?

のに. The three years are a fact, they have already happened, and the speaker is expressing that the outcome is worse than it should have been, which is exactly what のに is for. 住すんでいても would shift the sentence into the general and hypothetical, closer to "even if you live there three years, you don't necessarily learn to speak", which is a claim about people in general rather than a complaint about oneself. Both are grammatical; they say different things.

Now you. Choose between のに and ても for each, and say why. (1) 約束やくそくした＿、来こなかった. (2) 明日あした雨あめが降ふっ＿、試合しあいをします.

Vocabulary

Reasons say why something did happen and contrasts say why it did not stop happening. Neither of them can talk about what would happen under conditions that have not arisen. Japanese splits that job four separate ways, and choosing between them is the next lesson.

English does the whole of conditional grammar with one word, and Japanese splits the job four ways, which is why "if" is the point where a competent beginner starts sounding wrong rather than merely simple. The good news is that between them the four cost exactly one new conjugation.

Four words, one new form

Take stock of what each of these actually demands of you.

と attaches to the plain form as it stands. 行いく gives 行いくと, 行いかない gives 行いかないと. Nouns and な adjectives insert だ: 学生がくせいだと. Nothing to learn.

たら is the た form plus ら, and you built the た form for free in the first lesson. 行いった gives 行いったら, 行いかなかった gives 行いかなかったら, 高たかかった gives 高たかかったら, 学生がくせいだった gives 学生がくせいだったら. Nothing to learn.

なら attaches to a plain verb or straight onto a noun with nothing between: 行いくなら, 学生がくせいなら, 安やすいなら. Nothing to learn.

ば is the only new conjugation in the lesson, and it is one vowel shift. For a group 1 verb, take the same final kana of the dictionary form that has now decided three other things for you, and move it to the え row, then add ば.

All nine endings, no exceptions, which is unusual enough in Japanese to be worth noticing. Group 2 replaces る with れば: 食たべれば, 見みれば. The two irregulars give すれば and 来くれば. Negatives use なければ, since every ない form is an い adjective: 行いかなければ. And い adjectives themselves swap い for ければ: 高たかければ, よければ. Nouns and な adjectives use なら, or the stiffer であれば, which is why なら and ば are historically the same word.

Example. Give all four conditional forms of 行いく and of 高たかい.

For 行いく: 行いくと, 行いけば, 行いったら, 行いくなら. The と form is the dictionary form untouched; the ば form moves く to け; the たら form comes off 行いった, which is the irregular て form 行いって with た; and なら sits on the dictionary form.

For 高たかい: 高たかいと, 高たかければ, 高たかかったら, 高たかいなら. Adjectives do all four as readily as verbs, which is easy to forget, and 高たかければ and 高たかかったら in particular are both very common.

Now you. Give all four conditional forms of 飲のむ, and the ば and たら forms of する and 来くる.

と: the automatic consequence

と says that whenever the first thing holds, the second follows. It is the conditional of natural law, machinery, arithmetic, road directions and habits, and it carries no sense of choice at all.

春はるになると、桜さくらが咲さく haru ni naru to, sakura ga saku when spring comes, the cherry trees blossom

このボタンを押おすと、切符きっぷが出でます kono botan o osu to, kippu ga demasu if you press this button, a ticket comes out

右みぎに曲まがると、駅えきがあります migi ni magaru to, eki ga arimasu if you turn right, there's the station

From that meaning follows the hardest restriction in the lesson, and it is genuinely absolute: the main clause of a と sentence cannot be a request, a command, an invitation or a statement of intention. An automatic consequence is not something anybody decides to do. このボタンを押おすと、切符きっぷを買かってください is not Japanese, and the fix is たら.

There is one further use of と that surprises learners. With a past main clause, と reports a discovery: 部屋へやに入はいると、電話でんわが鳴なっていた, "when I went into the room, the phone was ringing". Nothing is conditional about this. The と marks that the second thing was found to be the case on doing the first, which is the same automatic feel viewed from afterwards.

ば: the sufficient condition

ば puts the weight on the condition itself: provided this, that follows. It is the conditional of generalisations, proverbs and advice, and it is much commoner in writing than in casual speech.

安やすければ買かいます yasukereba kaimasu I'll buy it if it's cheap

練習れんしゅうすればするほど上手じょうずになる renshuu sureba suru hodo jouzu ni naru the more you practise, the better you get

That second pattern, ば plus the dictionary form plus ほど, is the standard way of saying "the more X, the more Y", and it is worth learning as a unit.

ば has a restriction of its own, weaker than と's and easy to state. If the ば clause is an action by the same person as the main clause, the main clause cannot be a request or command: 東京とうきょうに行いけば、電話でんわしてください is odd. If the ば clause is a state, an adjective, ある, a negative or a potential, the restriction lifts entirely: 時間じかんがあれば、手伝てつだってください is perfectly natural. Unlike the と rule, this one has exceptions that native speakers produce without hesitation, so treat it as a strong tendency rather than a law.

たら: the safe default

たら is the general-purpose conditional, and if you are ever unsure, it is the one to use. It covers "if" and "when" alike, it takes any kind of main clause including commands and requests, and it deals in particular occasions rather than general truths.

東京とうきょうに着ついたら、電話でんわしてください Tokyo ni tsuitara, denwa shite kudasai ring me when you get to Tokyo

雨あめが降ふったら、試合しあいは中止ちゅうしです ame ga futtara, shiai wa chuushi desu if it rains, the match is off

The one thing たら insists on is order: the main clause happens after the condition is satisfied. You arrive, then you ring. It rains, then the match is cancelled.

Like と, たら with a past main clause reports something found out, usually with a flavour of surprise: 家いえに帰かえったら、誰だれもいなかった, "when I got home there was nobody there". This is one of the highest-frequency uses of たら in ordinary conversation and it has nothing conditional about it at all.

Example. Correct this: 駅えきに着つくと、電話でんわしてください.

The main clause is a request, which と absolutely forbids, so replace it with たら: 駅えきに着ついたら、電話でんわしてください. Note that the fix is not a matter of politeness or nuance. と would make the sentence claim that arriving at the station automatically causes a phone call, and then attach an instruction to that claim, which is incoherent rather than merely unidiomatic. ば is also poor here, since arriving is an action by the same person, leaving たら as the only comfortable choice.

Now you. Which conditionals are possible in each, and which is best? (1) このボタンを押おす＿、音おとが出でます. (2) 時間じかんが＿、手伝てつだってください.

なら: somebody else's premise

なら is the odd one out and the one that most repays learning properly. It does not describe a condition being fulfilled. It picks up something already on the table, usually something the other person has just said, and builds on it: "if that's the case, then...".

日本にほんに行いくなら、京都きょうとがいいですよ nihon ni iku nara, Kyoto ga ii desu yo if you're going to Japan, Kyoto is worth it

The speaker is not wondering whether you will go. You said you were going, and なら takes that as given. This is why なら so often begins a reply, and why それなら, "in that case", is a complete conversational move.

Then comes the property that separates なら from the other three cleanly, and it is the single most useful test in this lesson. With なら, the main clause may happen before the condition. The other three all require the condition first.

日本にほんに行いくなら、ガイドブックを買かった方ほうがいい nihon ni iku nara, gaidobukku o katta hou ga ii if you're going to Japan, you should buy a guidebook (before you go)

日本にほんに行いったら、お土産みやげを買かってきてください nihon ni ittara, omiyage o katte kite kudasai when you go to Japan, buy me a souvenir (once you're there)

Same verb, same main-clause type, and the guidebook is bought in London while the souvenir is bought in Kyoto. Nothing but the choice of conditional carries that. If you can produce this pair reliably you have the distinction, and 方ほうがいい, "it would be better to", is a useful piece of advice-giving to pick up alongside it.

Example. Your friend says 来週らいしゅう大阪おおさかに行いきます. Tell them they should buy the ticket early.

大阪おおさかに行いくなら、早はやく切符きっぷを買かった方ほうがいいですよ. Two things force なら here and neither is optional. The trip is not in doubt: your friend has just announced it, so なら picks it up as given rather than treating it as a condition to be met. And the buying happens before the going, which rules out the other three outright. 行いったら切符きっぷを買かった方ほうがいい would advise buying a ticket after arriving in Osaka, which helps nobody.

Now you. Same friend, same trip. Ask them to try takoyaki, and say why the conditional has to change.

Choosing, and where the choice runs out

Four questions, asked in order, will get you the right conditional almost every time.

Is the condition something the other person just put on the table, or a premise you are adopting for the sake of argument? Use なら, and remember that it alone allows the main clause to come first in time.

Is the consequence automatic, invariable, mechanical or a matter of natural law? Use と, and check that the main clause is not a request, command, invitation or statement of will, because と refuses all four.

Are you making a generalisation, or stressing that the condition is enough on its own? Use ば, and if the condition is an action rather than a state, keep commands out of the main clause.

Otherwise use たら. It is the default for particular occasions, it takes any main clause, and it is what you will hear most in speech.

Now the honest part. These four overlap heavily, and in a great many sentences two or three are acceptable with only a shading of difference. Native speakers do not run a decision procedure; they have absorbed the tendencies. Regional variation is real, with Kansai speech leaning on たら noticeably more than Tokyo speech does. And the と restriction is the only rule here that is genuinely inviolable. Learn that one as a law, learn なら's independence from time order as the second most valuable fact, and treat the rest as preferences to be tuned by listening.

Vocabulary

Every sentence so far has been the speaker's own. The next lesson lets a clause belong to somebody else: what they said, what you think, and what you are not sure enough about to say outright.

Every sentence so far has been the speaker's own claim, and a conversation in which nobody can report what anybody else said is a very short one. Japanese does the whole of quotation with a single particle, と, and the striking thing about it is how little it changes the quoted words compared with what English does to them.

と, the quotation particle

Put a clause in the plain form, add と, and follow it with a verb of saying or thinking. The clause is then that verb's content.

田中たなかさんは明日あした来くると言いいました Tanaka-san wa ashita kuru to iimashita Tanaka said he would come tomorrow

The verbs that take と are the ones you would expect: 言いう (say), 思おもう (think), 考かんがえる (consider), 聞きく (ask, hear), 書かく (write), 答こたえる (answer), 決きめる (decide). All of them work the same way, and と never changes shape.

Two mechanical points before the interesting ones. The clause must be plain, since it is not the final verb of the sentence, which is the rule from the first lesson doing its work again. And nouns and な adjectives take だ before と, not な: 学生がくせいだと思おもいます, 静しずかだと思おもいます. This is worth pausing on, because ので and のに wanted な in exactly the same position two lessons ago. There is no unifying rule to learn; と takes だ, ので and のに and んです take な, and the two sets have to be kept apart by drilling.

Direct and indirect, and how little changes

Japanese has direct quotation, written between 「 and 」, which reproduces the original words exactly, politeness and all.

田中たなかさんは「明日あした来きます」と言いいました Tanaka-san wa "ashita kimasu" to iimashita Tanaka said, "I'll come tomorrow"

It also has indirect quotation, which reports the content. Now count what has to change to convert one into the other, in each language.

Converting the English "I'll come tomorrow" into "he said he would come tomorrow" changes three things: the pronoun, from I to he; the tense, from will to would; and, if the report is made on a later day, the adverb, from tomorrow to the next day. Converting the Japanese changes exactly one: 来きます becomes 来くる, because a non-final verb takes the plain form. There is no pronoun to shift, because Japanese did not have one in the first place. There is no tense shift, for reasons in the next section. The adverb does shift if the day has changed, giving その日ひ for 明日あした, but that is a fact about the world rather than about grammar.

The practical result is that Japanese indirect quotation is much closer to the original than English indirect quotation. What it strips is politeness, honorifics and sentence-final particles: 「行いきますよ」 becomes 行いくと, losing both the ます and the よ, because those belong to the act of speaking rather than to the content.

Example. Convert 山田やまださんは「映画えいがを見みませんでした」と言いいました into indirect quotation.

Only the quoted verb changes, from the polite negative past to the plain negative past: 山田やまださんは映画えいがを見みなかったと言いいました. The brackets go, the ます frame goes, and everything else, including the particle を and the word order, stays where it was. In English the same conversion produces "Yamada said she hadn't seen the film", with a pronoun invented and the tense pushed one step further back; Japanese does neither.

Now you. Convert 先生せんせいは「この問題もんだいは難むずかしいですね」と言いいました into indirect quotation, and say what is lost.

The tense that does not shift

Japanese tense inside a quotation is fixed relative to the moment the words were said or the thought was had, not to the moment of reporting. This is the same relative-tense principle that governed 時とき three lessons ago, and it is one of the tidiest generalisations in the language.

田中たなかさんは明日あした来くると言いいました means that on the day Tanaka spoke, the coming was still in the future, so it stands in the nonpast, and it stays there no matter how long ago the conversation was. English cannot leave it alone: "he said he will come" and "he said he would come" differ, and choosing between them is a decision about the reporter's standpoint. Japanese never makes that decision, and so never gets it wrong.

The mirror case is equally clean. 田中たなかさんはもう来きたと言いいました reports that Tanaka, at the time of speaking, said the coming had already happened. Only the final verb, 言いいました, places the whole event in the past relative to now.

Whose thought is it

思おもう has a restriction that catches almost every learner, and it is the same restriction you may have met with ほしい at the end of the beginner course. You cannot flatly assert somebody else's inner state. 私わたしは行いきたいと思おもいます is fine. 田中たなかさんは行いきたいと思おもいます is not, because it claims direct access to Tanaka's mind.

The repair is ている, which reframes the thought as an observable ongoing state rather than a claim about the inside of someone's head.

田中たなかさんは日本にほんに帰かえりたいと思おもっています Tanaka-san wa nihon ni kaeritai to omotte imasu Tanaka wants to go back to Japan

So 思おもう for yourself, 思おもっている for anyone else. The same pattern is why you will see 思おもっている used of yourself too, where it suggests a settled view held over time rather than an opinion formed on the spot.

One further use is worth flagging now and gets a lesson later: the volitional form plus と思おもう, as in 行いこうと思おもいます, which expresses an intention rather than an opinion. It is the same と doing the same job, with a different form of the verb in front of it.

って, in speech

In conversation, と is very often replaced by って, which is shorter and completely standard in casual speech. It does the same work.

田中たなかさん、来こないって Tanaka-san, konai tte Tanaka says he's not coming

って does three related jobs, and they run together in practice. It quotes, as above. It reports hearsay when the following verb is dropped entirely, which is how the sentence above works: nothing follows って and the listener supplies "he says". And it introduces a topic for definition, standing in for という or とは, as in 納豆なっとうって何なんですか, "what's this natto?".

That last job connects to という, which is not casual at all and is used constantly in ordinary speech and writing to attach a name to a thing.

「田中たなか」という人ひとから電話でんわがありました "Tanaka" to iu hito kara denwa ga arimashita there was a call from a person called Tanaka

Note that という is a modifying clause of the kind built four lessons ago, sitting in front of the noun 人ひと. Nothing new is going on: と言いう is quoting the name, and the whole thing describes the person.

One more distinction belongs here, because it is the commonest reporting verb of all and learners routinely pick the wrong one. と言いいました reports the act of saying, on one occasion. と言いっていました reports the standing content of what somebody said, and it is what you want when you are relaying a message. 田中たなかさんは来こないと言いっていました, "Tanaka said he isn't coming", is the natural way to pass that on; 言いいました draws attention to the moment of speech, which is usually not the point. The same ている that fixed 思おもう for third persons is doing similar work here.

Example. A caller gave the name Yamada. Report the call to a colleague, and then ask what an unfamiliar word means, using って.

「山田やまだ」という方かたからお電話でんわがありました, and 「たてまえ」って何なんですか. The first uses という to attach a name to a person you cannot otherwise identify, with 方かた as the polite word for 人ひと. The second uses って in its topic-introducing job, which is the ordinary way to ask about a word: you quote it and then ask. Beginners reach for 「たてまえ」の意味いみは何なんですか, which is correct and sounds like a dictionary.

Now you. Suzuki has told you the meeting has moved to three. Pass that on casually with って, then formally.

Embedding a question

To put a question inside a sentence, keep its か and add どうか if the question was yes-or-no.

明日あした雨あめが降ふるかどうか分わかりません ashita ame ga furu ka dou ka wakarimasen I don't know whether it will rain tomorrow

どうか is optional and its presence is a matter of emphasis rather than grammar: 降ふるか分わかりません is also correct. With a question word already present, どうか is not used at all.

誰だれが来くるか知しっていますか dare ga kuru ka shitte imasu ka do you know who's coming?

何なにを買かうかまだ決きめていません nani o kau ka mada kimete imasen I haven't decided what to buy yet

One detail traps people. Before か, a noun or な adjective drops だ altogether: 学生がくせいか分わかりません, not 学生がくせいだか. So the same slot has now demanded three different things, な before ので, だ before と, and nothing before か, which is exactly the kind of thing that has to be drilled rather than reasoned about.

Example. Report that you asked the teacher whether there is an exam tomorrow.

先生せんせいに明日あした試験しけんがあるかどうか聞ききました. The embedded question keeps its own か, the yes-or-no shape licenses どうか, and the verb of asking takes に for the person asked, not を. Notice that this is not a と quotation: with an embedded question the か does the work that と does elsewhere, and adding both, as in あるかどうかと聞ききました, is wrong.

Now you. Say that you do not know whether Tanaka is a student, and that you have not decided where to go.

Vocabulary

A clause can now be attributed to somebody. What it cannot yet do is be held at arm's length: everything reported so far has been reported as fact. The next lesson supplies the whole apparatus for saying how far you are standing behind a claim, from a near certainty down to something you overheard.

Japanese has seven or eight ways of not quite asserting something, and every textbook lays them out as a ladder of probability, which is the wrong picture and makes them impossible to choose between. They are not degrees of doubt. They are kinds of evidence, and once you sort them that way the choices mostly make themselves.

Not degrees of doubt but kinds of evidence

Ask, of any hedged claim, where it came from. Japanese has a form for each answer.

I worked it out from something I know: はず. I am as good as certain: にちがいない. It is my guess, with nothing much behind it: でしょう or だろう. It is one possibility among others: かもしれない. I can see signs of it: ようだ or みたい. Somebody told me, or I picked it up somewhere: らしい. I was told this specifically and am passing it on: そうだ. It looks that way from here: the other そう.

Two of those pairs are close enough to blur, and the last two are one kana apart in writing and completely different in meaning. Everything else in this lesson is a consequence of the list above.

The reason the probability picture fails is easy to demonstrate. 田中たなかさんは来くるはずです and 田中たなかさんはたぶん来くるでしょう can both be said about a situation where you would put the odds at the same place. What differs is that the first commits you to having a reason, and invites the question "why do you think so?", to which you must have an answer. The second commits you to nothing. That is a difference of grounds, not of percentage, and attaching numbers to these forms is the single most common way of learning them wrong.

はず and にちがいない: expectation with a reason behind it

はず means that something follows from what you know. It is a noun, so it attaches like one: plain verb or い adjective directly, な adjective with な, and a noun with の.

今日きょうは日曜日にちようびだから、銀行ぎんこうは休やすみのはずです kyou wa nichiyoubi da kara, ginkou wa yasumi no hazu desu today is Sunday, so the bank should be closed

電気でんきがついているから、誰だれかいるはずだ denki ga tsuite iru kara, dareka iru hazu da the light is on, so somebody must be in

Notice that both sentences supply their reason explicitly with から. That is not decoration. A はず sentence with no visible reason invites one, and a speaker who cannot give one has used the wrong form.

Two derived shapes are worth having. はずがない says the opposite: there is no way this could be so. そんなことがあるはずがない, "that can't possibly be right". And はずだった says that something was supposed to happen and did not: 三時さんじに来くるはずだったのに、来こなかった. The のに of the previous lesson but two is doing its usual work there, carrying the speaker's irritation.

にちがいない is stronger and more emphatic, closer to English "must have". It attaches to the plain form, with nouns taking nothing at all: 田中たなかさんは知しっていたにちがいない, "Tanaka must have known". It belongs to writing and to dramatic speech; in ordinary conversation はず covers most of the same ground with less weight.

Example. Your flatmate's shoes are by the door. Say they must be in, and then say the same thing without committing to a reason.

With a reason: 靴くつがあるから、家いえにいるはずです. With none: たぶん家いえにいるでしょう. The first sentence would be strange without the から clause, or at least would immediately prompt どうして, because はず announces that a chain of reasoning exists. The second makes no such promise and cannot be challenged the same way. This is the whole difference between the two forms, and it is a difference in what you are undertaking to defend rather than in how likely you think it is.

Now you. The train was due at three and has not arrived. Say that it was supposed to come at three, and then say that this cannot be right.

でしょう and かもしれない: the guess

でしょう, plain form だろう, is the ordinary word for probability. It attaches to the plain form and nouns take nothing: 明日あしたは雨あめでしょう. It pairs naturally with たぶん.

たぶん明日あしたは雨あめでしょう tabun ashita wa ame deshou it will probably rain tomorrow

でしょう has a second life that has nothing to do with probability. Said with a rising intonation it seeks agreement, in the way an English tag question does: 面白おもしろかったでしょう, "it was good, wasn't it?". Whether a given でしょう is a guess or an appeal is decided by the intonation and by whether the listener could possibly know, which is one of the places where reading Japanese loses information that speech carries.

かもしれない, polite かもしれません, is weaker: this is one possibility. 明日あしたは雨あめかもしれません says rain is on the cards, not that it is likely. Attachment is the same, with nouns taking nothing before it. In casual speech it contracts all the way down to かも, which is a complete and very common answer on its own.

ようだ and みたい: what the signs suggest

ようだ says that the speaker has inferred something from evidence they have taken in directly.

道みちがぬれているから、雨あめが降ふったようだ michi ga nurete iru kara, ame ga futta you da the road is wet, so it seems it rained

Attachment follows the noun pattern, because よう is a noun: plain verbs and い adjectives directly, な adjectives with な, and nouns with の. So 病気びょうきのようだ, 元気げんきなようだ.

みたい is the conversational equivalent and means the same thing. Its attachment is easier, since nouns take nothing: 病気びょうきみたいだ, 風邪かぜをひいたみたいです. If you remember one difference between them, remember that の before ようだ becomes nothing before みたい.

Both also do simile, which is worth knowing so that you do not misread it as inference: 氷こおりのように冷つめたい, as cold as ice; 夢ゆめみたいだ, it's like a dream.

らしい: what you picked up

らしい is inference too, but from outside information rather than from what is in front of you. Somebody said so, you read it somewhere, it is going around.

田中たなかさんは来週らいしゅう引ひっ越こすらしい Tanaka-san wa raishuu hikkosu rashii apparently Tanaka is moving next week

It attaches to the plain form and nouns take nothing: 彼かれは医者いしゃらしい. The distance it puts between the speaker and the claim is the point: らしい is what you use when you would rather not be held responsible for the information.

There is a second らしい, attached straight to a noun, that means "typical of" rather than "apparently": 男おとこらしい, manly; 子こどもらしい, childlike. 今日きょうは春はるらしい天気てんきです means the weather is properly spring-like, not that it is rumoured to be spring. Context separates them, and the "typical" sense always sits before a noun or at the end with a noun immediately in front.

The two そう, one kana apart

This is the pair that has to be got exactly right, because the two forms differ by a single kana and mean unrelated things.

Hearsay そうだ attaches to the plain form, complete and unaltered, and means "I hear that".

天気予報てんきよほうによると、明日あした雨あめが降ふるそうです tenki yohou ni yoru to, ashita ame ga furu sou desu according to the forecast, it's going to rain tomorrow

Appearance そう attaches to the stem, the part left when ます or the final い comes off, and means "it looks like".

雨あめが降ふりそうです ame ga furisou desu it looks like rain

降ふるそうです and 降ふりそうです. One kana. The first is a report of what the forecast said; the second is you looking at the sky. Nouns make the difference visible in another way: hearsay takes だ, giving 雨あめだそうだ, while appearance cannot attach to a plain noun at all, so there is no 雨あめそうだ.

Appearance そう has some mechanics of its own. い adjectives drop their い: おいしそうですね, said over a plate of food, is one of the most useful sentences in Japanese. な adjectives attach directly: 元気げんきそうですね. Two forms are irregular and both are common: いい gives よさそう, and ない gives なさそう, as in 時間じかんがなさそうだ. And appearance そう never attaches to a past form, which is a useful negative test: 降ふったそう can only be hearsay.

There is also a semantic restriction. Appearance そう describes what something looks like it will be or might be, from surface signs, so it does not apply to properties you can simply see. Of a cake you have not tasted, おいしそう is right. Of a person plainly in front of you, きれいそう is wrong, because prettiness is not inferred from signs; you just say きれいです.

Example. You are looking out of the window at heavy black cloud. Then you check your phone, which says the forecast is for rain. Give the two sentences.

Looking at the cloud: 雨あめが降ふりそうです, from the stem 降ふり, because you are inferring from what you can see. Reading the forecast: 明日あした雨あめが降ふるそうです, from the plain form 降ふる, because you are relaying what a source told you. Swapping them produces two wrong sentences rather than one clumsy one: 降ふるそうです while staring at a cloud claims a source you do not have, and 降ふりそうです about the forecast claims the forecast merely looks like rain.

Now you. Give the appearance form of おいしい, いい, ない and 元気げんき, and the hearsay form of 高たかい and 学生がくせいだ.

Choosing, and where the boundaries blur

Example. Your colleague has not been at work for three days. Say it with ようだ, with らしい and with そうだ, and say what changes.

田中たなかさんは病気びょうきのようです says you have worked it out from what you can see: the empty desk, the cancelled meetings. 田中たなかさんは病気びょうきらしいです says you heard it from someone, and quietly declines responsibility for it. 田中たなかさんは病気びょうきだそうです says you were told, and are passing on the report as given, usually with the source available if asked. Note the three different attachments after a noun: の for ようだ, nothing for らしい, だ for hearsay そうだ.

Now you. You ring a shop at 8pm and nobody answers. Its posted hours are 9 to 6. Which form fits, and which two do not?

Now the honest part. ようだ and らしい overlap substantially, and plenty of sentences accept either with only a shading of difference in whether the speaker is claiming to have worked it out or to have been told. でしょう and かもしれない are separated by degree rather than by kind, and speakers differ in where they put the line. What does not blur is the pair of そう, the attachment rules, and the requirement that はず come with a reason. Get those three right and the rest is fine-tuning that listening will do for you.

Vocabulary

Everything up to here has been about the shape of a clause. The rest of the course is about the shape of the verb, and about the social information Japanese packs into it. Before that, though, one lesson away from grammar entirely: your sentences are now complex enough to read real Japanese with, and the thing standing in the way is no longer the grammar but the writing system.

Seven lessons of grammar have left you able to build a sentence more complicated than most of what appears in a newspaper, and still unable to read one, because the obstacle has stopped being grammar. This lesson is about the writing system, and specifically about the two things that let a reader make progress against thousands of characters rather than memorising them one at a time.

What the list is, and how it got that size

Japanese has no fixed inventory of characters, but it does have an official recommended set, and knowing its history explains a lot about what you will and will not meet.

In 1946 the occupation-era government published the 当用漢字とうようかんじ, 1850 characters, explicitly as a restriction: anything outside it was to be avoided or rewritten in kana. That list is why some compounds are still written with a mismatched character or spelled half in kana. In 1981 it was replaced by the 常用漢字じょうようかんじ, 1945 characters, and the framing changed from a limit to a guide for official documents, newspapers and broadcasting. On 30 November 2010 the list was revised again: 196 characters were added and 5 removed, giving 1945 plus 196 minus 5, which is 2136, the figure in use today. Most of the additions were characters that word processors had made easy to write and that people were using anyway, such as 鬱うつ and 誰だれ.

Inside that set sits the 教育漢字きょういくかんじ, the characters taught in the six years of primary school. It stood at 1006 for decades and was raised to 1026 in a revision applied from 2020, the twenty additions being characters used in prefecture names. So a Japanese child finishes primary school knowing 1026 characters, roughly 48 per cent of the jōyō set, and finishes lower secondary school with the rest.

Two honest qualifications. First, the jōyō list is a guide and not a boundary. Personal names may use roughly 860 further characters from a separate permitted list, and literature, menus and shop signs cheerfully use characters from neither. Second, and more usefully, knowing a character is not the same as knowing a word. The jōyō set is a list of building blocks, and the thing you actually read is vocabulary.

The phonetic half of a character

The single most useful fact about kanji is that the majority of them are not pictures. They are compounds of two parts: one indicating a meaning domain and one indicating a sound.

Xu Shen said so in the year 100 CE. His 説文解字せつもんかいじ analysed 9353 characters and classified 7697 of them, about 82 per cent, as phono-semantic compounds, where one component gives the sense and the other the pronunciation. That proportion has only risen since, because new characters have almost always been coined the same way.

The clearest series to see it in is 反はん, whose on reading is ハン.

Six characters, one sound, and in every case the left-hand part tells you roughly what field the word belongs to: wood, paper, money, food, land. The 青せい series works the same way and is even more common: 清せい, 晴せい, 精せい and 請せい all carry セイ from 青せい, and their left-hand parts give water, sun, rice and words respectively. 情じょう is in the series too, with the heart radical on the left, and reads ジョウ, which is the voiced variant of the same borrowed syllable rather than a different sound. 静せい shows the other thing to watch for: it is built from the same 青せい, but here the phonetic sits on the left and 争そう on the right, so the useful habit is to look for a component you know anywhere in the character rather than only on the right. 清きよい, clear, is water plus the sound セイ, and its on reading is セイ, exactly as advertised.

This is worth internalising because it changes what learning a new character costs. If you know 反はん and you meet 販はん for the first time, you do not have to learn a reading; you have to check a guess.

Example. You meet 紅こう for the first time. Its left part is the thread radical and its right part is 工こう, whose on reading is コウ. What do you guess, and how do you check?

Guess コウ for the reading and something to do with thread, cloth or colour for the meaning. Both are right: 紅こう means crimson, and 紅茶こうちゃ, literally red tea, is the ordinary word for black tea. The check is to look for a compound you already know that contains it, which is the fastest confirmation available and also the only one that gives you a word rather than a character. Note that the same phonetic 工こう also sits in 江こう, 攻こう and 功こう, all コウ, so the series is a strong one.

Now you. Given that 寺じ has the on reading ジ, predict the on readings of 時じ, 持じ, 待たい and 特とく, then say what that tells you about the method.

On and kun, and what okurigana tells you

The beginner course introduced the two kinds of reading: on readings, which are Japanese approximations of the Chinese pronunciations the characters arrived with, and kun readings, which are native Japanese words the characters were attached to. The question a reader faces is which one a given occurrence is using, and there are two reliable signals.

The first is okurigana, the kana trailing the character. Native Japanese words inflect, and the inflection has to be written in kana, so trailing kana are the fingerprint of a kun reading. 食たべる has okurigana and is read た; 食事しょくじ has none and is read しょく. 新あたらしい is あたら, 新聞しんぶん is しん. 高たかい is たか, 高校こうこう is こう. This one test resolves the majority of cases you will meet in ordinary text.

The second is company. A character standing next to another kanji, with no kana between them, is usually taking its on reading, because two-character compounds were mostly borrowed as units from Chinese. 電車でんしゃ, 銀行ぎんこう, 勉強べんきょう, 試験しけん: all on plus on.

The exceptions to the second rule are common enough to have their own names, which tells you they are not rare. A compound reading on then kun is called 重箱読じゅうばこよみ after the word 重箱じゅうばこ itself, a stacked lunch box, read じゅう plus はこ. Reading kun then on is 湯桶読ゆとうよみ after 湯桶ゆとう, and it covers a set of extremely common words: 場所ばしょ, 手本てほん, 見本みほん, 台所だいどころ. There is no rule that predicts which compounds are mixed. They have to be learned as words, which is the recurring moral of this lesson.

Example. You meet 下手へた in text, having previously learned 下した and 手て. Why does the reading fail to be predictable, and what should you conclude?

Neither part is using an obvious reading of the sort the rules give: 下手へた is not したて, and it is not the on-on かしゅ, and its meaning, unskilled, is not the sum of down and hand. It is a fixed word whose spelling was assigned to it, and the characters are a label rather than a derivation. The conclusion is the practical one that runs through this whole lesson: characters are for guessing at words you half know, and words are what you actually learn. A dictionary lookup here is not a failure of method.

Now you. Predict the readings of 花見はなみ and 見学けんがく from the rules above, and say which rule each one follows.

What 2136 characters actually buys

Frequency counts of Japanese newspaper text, made repeatedly since the 1960s, differ in detail and agree on the shape. The commonest 500 characters account for roughly 80 per cent of all kanji occurrences; the commonest 1000 for about 95 per cent; and 2000 for a little over 99 per cent. In other words a little under half the jōyō set, 1000 characters out of 2136, or 47 per cent, does 95 per cent of the work.

That number is encouraging until you do the arithmetic on what it means for reading. Coverage is measured in occurrences, not in words, and most words contain two characters. If your knowledge is 95 per cent complete and the gaps fall independently, the chance of knowing both characters of a two-kanji word is 0.95 squared, which is 90 per cent. At 99 per cent coverage it is 98 per cent. And in an article of 1200 characters, 5 per cent unknown is 60 characters you cannot read, or roughly one every two lines.

This is why learners at exactly this stage so often feel that their kanji study is not paying. It is paying; the arithmetic of composition simply eats a lot of it. The way out is not more characters but more words, because the gaps that matter are lexical.

Example. You know 1000 characters, giving about 95 per cent coverage. A page has 800 characters of running text, of which about 40 per cent are kanji. How many unknown characters should you expect, and how many two-kanji words will you fail on?

The kanji on the page number 800 times 0.4, which is 320. Five per cent of those are unknown, giving 16 unknown characters on the page. If those 320 characters make up about 160 two-character words, the proportion you know completely is 0.95 squared, or 90.25 per cent, so you should expect to fail on about 16 words. Sixteen lookups per page is slow but survivable, which is roughly the experience of a reader at this level, and it improves quickly because the unknown characters are not randomly distributed: the ones you meet are the ones that recur.

Now you. At 99 per cent coverage, what happens to those two figures on the same page?

Reading a character you have never seen

Put the pieces together into a procedure, because having one is what separates a reader who makes progress from one who stops at every unknown character.

Look first at whether kana follow it. If they do, the reading is native, the word is probably one you know spoken, and the okurigana often identifies it outright: a character followed by べる in a sentence about a meal is 食たべる whether or not you recognise the character.

If it sits against another kanji, assume on readings for both and look for a component you know on the right or the bottom. That component is the sound more often than not, and one candidate reading plus the surrounding sentence is usually enough to recover a word you have heard.

Then check, and check by looking up the word, not the character. A character learned alone is almost useless, since you cannot say when it takes which reading; the same character inside three words you can use is knowledge you keep.

Finally, accept a miss. Native readers do not know every character either, which is why furigana exists at all, why newspapers gloss rare characters, and why the 2010 revision was partly an admission that people were using characters nobody could write by hand.

Vocabulary

That is the last lesson away from grammar. The rest of the course goes back to the verb and to the social information Japanese packs into it, starting with something English leaves entirely to context: who did whom a favour.

Japanese has no neutral verb meaning "give". It has two, and which one you use depends on whether the thing is travelling towards you or away from you, so the grammar refuses to describe a transfer without saying where the speaker is standing. That refusal is the first place in this course where the verb carries social information rather than factual information, and it is the thread that runs to the end of the subject.

Three verbs, one event

Consider a single event: Tanaka hands you a book. English has one sentence for it and Japanese has two, and they are not stylistic variants.

田中たなかさんが本ほんをくれた Tanaka-san ga hon o kureta Tanaka gave me a book

私わたしは田中たなかさんに本ほんをもらった watashi wa Tanaka-san ni hon o moratta I received a book from Tanaka

The third possibility, 田中たなかさんが私わたしに本ほんをあげた, is simply wrong, and this is the point of the lesson. あげる means to give away from the speaker. くれる means to give towards the speaker. Both translate as "give", both are extremely common, and nothing about the English distinguishes them.

So the full set is: あげる, I or someone else gives to a third party; くれる, someone gives to me; もらう, I receive. Note that くれる and もらう describe exactly the same event and differ only in which participant is the subject.

私わたしは田中たなかさんに花はなをあげた watashi wa Tanaka-san ni hana o ageta I gave Tanaka some flowers

Example. Describe, in all the ways Japanese allows, the event of your friend lending you a dictionary.

Two sentences are available and one is not. 友ともだちが辞書じしょを貸かしてくれた, my friend lent me a dictionary, puts the friend in the subject slot and marks the direction as inward. 友ともだちに辞書じしょを貸かしてもらった, I had my friend lend me a dictionary, puts you in the subject slot and describes the same transfer as a receiving. What you cannot say is 友ともだちが私わたしに辞書じしょを貸かしてあげた, because あげる would send the dictionary away from you, and you are the one holding it.

Now you. Your sister gives your mother a present. Which of the three verbs are available, and why?

Inside and outside

The rule is not really about the speaker. It is about the speaker's group, the 内うち as against the 外そと, and this is the single most important social concept in Japanese.

田中たなかさんが妹いもうとにお菓子かしをくれた Tanaka-san ga imouto ni okashi o kureta Tanaka gave my sister some sweets

The sweets never came near you, and くれる is still correct, because your sister is inside your circle and Tanaka is outside it. Family are inside. So, in a work context, is your whole company when you are speaking to a customer, which is why the same colleague can be inside your group in one conversation and outside it in another.

The line moves with the situation, and learning where a Japanese speaker would draw it is a large part of what "sounding natural" means. For now the useful version is: family and close friends are inside; everyone else is outside; and when you speak on behalf of an organisation, that organisation is inside. The honorific lesson later in this course is built on the same distinction, and having it here first is why that lesson will be short.

The polite and humble members

Each of the three verbs has a version for use when the difference in status matters, and these are the first pieces of keigo in this course.

さしあげる lowers you as the giver: 先生せんせいにお土産みやげをさしあげました. Be aware that it can sound heavy, and many speakers avoid drawing attention to having given a superior anything. くださる raises the giver: 先生せんせいが本ほんをくださいました. いただく lowers you as receiver: 先生せんせいに本ほんをいただきました. Note that くださる and いただく are the source of ください and いただきます, both of which you have been using since the beginner course without knowing what they were.

やる is for giving downwards, to animals, plants and small children: 犬いぬにえさをやる. Used of an adult it is rough, and it is also simply the ordinary verb in some regions and among some men, so do not read too much into it when you hear it.

Doing somebody a favour

Attach any of the three to a て form and you get the same three-way system applied to actions rather than objects. This is where the construction earns its lesson, because Japanese uses it constantly and English has nothing corresponding to it.

友ともだちが空港くうこうまで送おくってくれた tomodachi ga kuukou made okutte kureta my friend gave me a lift to the airport

友ともだちに空港くうこうまで送おくってもらった tomodachi ni kuukou made okutte moratta I got my friend to take me to the airport

Both describe one car journey. The first thanks the friend by making them the subject and marking the action as done for you. The second reports it from your side, and carries a slight sense that you arranged it. Neither is translatable without adding words English would not otherwise use.

What matters more is what happens when you leave the favour verb off entirely. 友ともだちが空港くうこうまで送おくった is grammatical and cold: it reports a fact about a car and pointedly declines to register that anything was done for anyone. In a context where a favour was in fact done, omitting てくれた is close to rude, and it is the commonest way in which otherwise good learner Japanese sounds ungrateful.

Why てあげる is dangerous

てあげる is the one to be careful with. It means "I will do you the favour of", and saying it out loud puts your own generosity on the record, which in Japanese is not a neutral thing to do.

荷物にもつを持もってあげましょうか, offering to carry someone's bag, is fine to a friend and distinctly patronising to a customer, a client or your boss. The problem is not politeness in the grammatical sense, since the sentence is in ます form; it is that the offer announces a favour rather than simply making one.

The repair is to use a humble form instead, which the keigo lesson develops in full. For now, learn this one frame: お plus the ます stem plus しましょうか.

お荷物にもつをお持もちしましょうか onimotsu o omochi shimashou ka may I carry your bag?

This is what shop staff and hotel staff say, and it contains no favour verb at all.

Example. You want to offer to show a visiting client around the office. What is wrong with 案内あんないしてあげましょうか, and what should you say?

It announces that you would be doing them a kindness, which to a client inverts the relationship, since the customer is the one conferring status by being there. Two better options. The humble frame gives ご案内あんないしましょうか, using ご rather than お because 案内あんない is a Sino-Japanese word, a distinction the keigo lesson takes up. Or drop the offer framing entirely: ご案内あんないいたします, "I will show you round", stated rather than offered. Both are ordinary business Japanese and neither mentions a favour.

Now you. A friend is struggling with a heavy box. Offer to help, twice: once casually and once to a colleague you do not know well.

The request ladder

The most valuable thing in this lesson is what happens when you take てもらう and ていただく into the potential negative question. The result is the standard polite request in Japanese, and it comes in a graded set worth learning as a ladder.

ちょっと手伝てつだってくれない？ chotto tetsudatte kurenai? give me a hand?

手伝てつだってくれませんか, polite and direct. 手伝てつだってもらえませんか, politer, using the potential of もらう. 手伝てつだっていただけませんか, politer again, with the humble いただく. And 手伝てつだっていただけないでしょうか, which is what you use when the request is a real imposition on somebody senior.

The mechanism is the same at every rung and worth seeing, because it is a general principle of Japanese politeness rather than a list. Each step does one of three things: it swaps a plain verb for a humbler one, it moves from asking the person to act (くれる) to asking whether you may receive (もらう, いただく), or it adds a layer of negativity and indirectness, since a negative question presupposes less than a positive one. Stack all three and you get the longest form, which is also the most deferential. Length and politeness track each other closely in Japanese, and here you can see exactly why.

Example. Ask a stranger to take your photograph, and then ask a close friend the same thing.

To a stranger: すみません、写真しゃしんを撮とっていただけませんか. The いただく rung is right for someone you have no relationship with and are interrupting. To a friend: 写真しゃしん撮とってくれない？ or simply 撮とって. Note that both use the same て form of the same verb, and everything that changes is the favour verb and its ending, which is the whole architecture of this lesson in one pair of sentences.

Now you. Ask your professor to look over a draft, at the most deferential rung, and say which three moves make it deferential.

Vocabulary

The verb now says who benefited. The next three lessons change the verb itself: what you are able to do, what you have decided to do, and what was done to you.

The beginner course said "I can read kanji" as 漢字かんじを読よむことができます, which is correct, formal, and about twice as long as what anybody actually says. Japanese has a potential form built into the verb, and it costs one vowel shift you have already learned for something else.

One vowel shift, again

For a group 1 verb, move the final kana of the dictionary form to the え row and add る. That is the same shift that produced the ば form in the conditionals lesson, with る in place of ば.

Group 2 replaces る with られる: 食たべる gives 食たべられる, 見みる gives 見みられる, 起おきる gives 起おきられる.

The irregulars split. 来くる behaves like a group 2 verb and gives 来こられる, with the reading shifting to こ as it does in the negative. する does not have a potential form at all: it is replaced by the separate verb できる, which is why できる has been in your vocabulary since the beginner course without ever being explained as a conjugation.

Every potential verb is a group 2 verb

Look at the right-hand column above. Every one of those forms ends in える or いる, and every one of them is a group 2 verb, whatever the group of the verb it came from. That is not a coincidence and it saves you a great deal of trouble.

書かける conjugates as 書かけない, 書かけた, 書かけなかった, 書かけて, 書かければ, 書かけたら. Every form you have learned in this course applies to it directly, with the group 2 rules, and the potential form itself never needs to be conjugated in any special way.

漢字かんじが読よめなかったので、辞書じしょを使つかいました kanji ga yomenakatta node, jisho o tsukaimashita I couldn't read the kanji, so I used a dictionary

One consequence catches people: a potential verb has no potential of its own. There is no 読よめられる. Another is that potential verbs describe states rather than actions, so they do not usually take the ている of an action in progress, and they sit comfortably with adverbs of degree such as 少すこし and よく.

Example. Give the potential form of 泳およぐ, 持もつ, 食たべる, する and 来くる, and then the plain negative past of the first.

泳およげる, 持もてる, 食たべられる, できる, 来こられる. The group 1 pair take the え-row shift; the group 2 verb takes られる; する is replaced by できる outright; and 来くる follows the group 2 pattern with its reading shifted to こ. Then, since 泳およげる is itself a group 2 verb, its negative past is formed by the group 2 rules: 泳およげない gives 泳およげなかった. Not 泳およがなかった, which is the plain negative past of 泳およぐ and means you did not swim rather than that you could not.

Now you. Give the potential forms of 聞きく, 借かりる and 帰かえる, and say why the last one is worth watching.

が where を is expected

The potential form takes が on the thing you are able to do, not を. This is the same pattern as 好すき and ほしい at the end of the beginner course, and for the same underlying reason: a potential sentence describes a state rather than an action, so its complement is a subject rather than an object.

日本語にほんごが話はなせます nihongo ga hanasemasu I can speak Japanese

ピアノが弾ひけますか piano ga hikemasu ka can you play the piano?

を is nonetheless heard and written constantly, and it is not an error. As with the たい form, が pulls the focus onto the thing itself and を keeps the ordinary transitive feel of the verb. The tendency is that を is commoner when the verb phrase is long or when the sentence is about the activity rather than the ability. Produce が, accept を, and do not correct a native speaker who uses either.

Two things are not optional. The particle on anything else in the sentence is unchanged, so 図書館としょかんで本ほんが借かりられます keeps its で. And で marking a means or a place never becomes が.

できる, and ことができる

できる is the potential of する, so any noun that takes する has a potential built from it with が.

車くるまの運転うんてんができます kuruma no unten ga dekimasu I can drive

ことができる, from the beginner course, still works and means the same thing. The difference is register. The potential form is what you say; ことができる is what you write in a notice or a formal document, and using it in conversation sounds stiff rather than wrong. When a sentence needs to state a permission or a facility, ことができる is the natural choice: このカードで買かい物ものをすることができます reads like a bank's terms and conditions, which is exactly where you will find it.

What happens by itself

Two verbs describe perception happening to you rather than your being able to perceive, and they are not potential forms at all.

ここから富士山ふじさんが見みえます koko kara Fujisan ga miemasu you can see Mount Fuji from here

隣となりの部屋へやから音おとが聞きこえる tonari no heya kara oto ga kikoeru there's a sound coming from the next room

見みえる means the thing is visible; 聞きこえる means the sound reaches you. Neither says anything about your ability or your opportunity, and neither involves a decision on your part. Set against them, 見みられる and 聞きける are true potentials and are about opportunity.

明日あしたなら、その映画えいがが見みられます ashita nara, sono eiga ga miraremasu if it's tomorrow, I can watch that film

The film is not spontaneously visible from where you are standing; you are free tomorrow, so you have the chance to watch it. That is the whole distinction: 見みえる is about the world, 見みられる is about you.

Example. Choose between 見みえる and 見みられる: (1) 眼鏡めがねがないと、何なにも＿. (2) チケットがあれば、コンサートが＿.

(1) 見みえません. Without glasses nothing registers on your eyes at all, which is a fact about the visual world reaching you rather than about opportunity. (2) 見みられます. A ticket gives you the chance to attend, which is exactly opportunity. A useful test: if the obstacle is physical and immediate, it is 見みえる; if the obstacle is a matter of arrangements, it is 見みられる.

Now you. Choose between 聞きこえる and 聞きける, and say why: (1) 声こえが小ちいさくて、よく＿ませんでした. (2) 来週らいしゅうのコンサートで、彼女かのじょの歌うたが＿.

ら抜ぬき, and a change in progress

Group 2 られる is doing three jobs at once. 食たべられる can mean "can eat", "is eaten" and, as the honorific lesson will show, "eats" said respectfully. That is an unusual amount of ambiguity for a common form, and the language is dealing with it.

In speech, the potential of a group 2 verb is very widely formed by dropping the ら: 食たべれる, 見みれる, 来これる. This is ら抜ぬき言葉ことば, "ra-dropped words", and it has been the standard example of language decay in Japanese newspaper columns for decades. It is also useful, because the ら-less form is unambiguously potential, and it fits the pattern: group 1 verbs form their potential with a plain え-row shift, and ら抜ぬき makes group 2 verbs do the same.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs runs an annual opinion survey on the Japanese language, and in its 2015 round it found that for 見みれる against 見みられる, slightly more respondents preferred the shorter form, the first time the ら-less variant had come out ahead for that verb. Younger speakers lead the change by a wide margin.

What to do about it as a learner is straightforward. Understand ら抜ぬき, expect to hear it constantly, and produce the full form in anything written and in any formal setting, where it is still corrected. This is not a rule of grammar so much as a fact about a change that is under way, and the honest position is that in twenty years the advice may be different.

Easy and hard

Two suffixes on the ます stem round out the topic, because "can" and "cannot" are often too blunt for what you mean.

やすい means easy to, and にくい means hard to. Both produce い adjectives, so they conjugate as adjectives do.

この本ほんは分わかりやすいです kono hon wa wakariyasui desu this book is easy to follow

この字じは読よみにくい kono ji wa yominikui this handwriting is hard to read

The difference from the potential is that these describe a property of the thing, not of you. 読よめない says you cannot read it; 読よみにくい says it is hard to read, which is a complaint about the handwriting. づらい is a near synonym of にくい with a stronger sense of discomfort to the speaker, so 言いいづらい is something awkward to say rather than something physically difficult to pronounce.

Example. A colleague's note is a scrawl, and there is one character in it you simply do not know. Say both things, and say why they are not the same sentence.

この字じは読よみにくいです for the scrawl, and この漢字かんじが読よめません for the unknown character. The first locates the problem in the handwriting and is a remark anyone could make about it; the second locates the problem in you. Said to the colleague, the first is a mild complaint and the second is an admission, which is a real difference in a workplace. Note the particles: にくい describes the thing, so the thing is the topic with は, while the potential takes が on what you cannot manage.

Now you. Say that this dictionary is easy to use, and that you could not use it yesterday because you had left it at home.

Vocabulary

Ability is what you could do. The next lesson is about what you have decided to do, and about the difference between a change you chose and one that happened to you.

The previous lesson dealt with what you are able to do. This one deals with what you have decided to do, and it ends on a piece of Japanese that has no English counterpart at all: a construction for announcing your own decisions as though somebody else had made them.

The volitional form

You already have half of this. ましょう, from the beginner course, is the polite volitional, and the plain form of it is what this lesson builds.

For a group 1 verb, move the final kana of the dictionary form to the お row and lengthen it with う. 行いく gives 行いこう, 飲のむ gives 飲のもう, 買かう gives 買かおう, 待まつ gives 待まとう, 帰かえる gives 帰かえろう, 話はなす gives 話はなそう, 泳およぐ gives 泳およごう.

Group 2 replaces る with よう: 食たべよう, 見みよう, 起おきよう. The irregulars give しよう and 来こよう.

That is now the fifth thing the final kana of a group 1 dictionary form has decided, after the て form, the ない form, the ば form and the potential. Five conjugations, one piece of information, which is the argument for having learned the nine endings properly in the first lesson.

The basic meaning is the one you know: let us, or shall we.

お茶ちゃでも飲のもう ocha demo nomou let's get a cup of tea

Example. Give the plain volitional of 手伝てつだう, 持もつ, 始はじめる and 来くる.

手伝てつだおう, 持もとう, 始はじめよう, 来こよう. The first is a う verb, so its final kana moves to the お row and takes う, giving おう rather than あう. The second moves つ to と. The third is group 2 and takes よう. The fourth is irregular and shifts its reading to こ, as it does in the negative and the potential.

Now you. Give the plain volitional of 急いそぐ, 座すわる, 見みる and する, and say which one is easiest to get wrong.

Volitional plus と思おもう: intention

Put the volitional in front of と and a verb of thinking, using the quotation grammar of an earlier lesson, and you have the ordinary way to state an intention.

来年らいねん日本にほんに行いこうと思おもっています rainen nihon ni ikou to omotte imasu I'm thinking of going to Japan next year

The choice between 思おもう and 思おもっている matters here and is easy to state. と思おもいます reports a decision reached at this moment, often in response to what was just said. と思おもっています reports a settled intention you have been holding for a while, and it is the one you want for plans. The same ている that turned a claim about somebody else's mind into a report of an observable state is doing the same work again.

This construction is softer than saying you will do something. 行いきます is a statement of fact about the future; 行いこうと思おもっています presents it as your current thinking, which leaves room for it not to happen. In Japanese that room is usually wanted.

Volitional plus とする: on the point of

The other thing a volitional attaches to is する, and the result means "to be about to" or "to try to".

出でかけようとしたとき、電話でんわが鳴なった dekakeyou to shita toki, denwa ga natta just as I was about to go out, the phone rang

ドアを開あけようとしたが、開あかなかった doa o akeyou to shita ga, akanakatta I tried to open the door, but it wouldn't

Note carefully what "try" means here: an attempt that is under way or that failed, with the emphasis on the effort. It is not the てみる of the beginner course, which means to do something and see how it goes. 食たべてみる is to try a dish; 食たべようとする is to attempt to eat something and, usually, to fail.

つもり and 予定よてい

Both translate as "plan", and they differ in where the plan lives.

つもり is your own intention, held in your head. It attaches to the plain form.

明日あした早はやく起おきるつもりです ashita hayaku okiru tsumori desu I intend to get up early tomorrow

Its two negatives are not the same. 行いかないつもりです says you intend not to go. 行いくつもりはありません says you have no intention of going, which is markedly stronger and can be curt. And つもりだった says an intention that came to nothing: 電話でんわするつもりだったんですが, "I meant to ring, but...".

予定よてい is an arrangement, something on a calendar, which may well have been fixed by somebody else. It is a noun, so a verb takes the plain form in front of it and a noun takes の.

三時さんじに会あう予定よていです sanji ni au yotei desu I'm due to meet them at three

The test is simple: if a diary would know about it, it is 予定よてい; if only you know about it, it is つもり.

Example. You have a dentist's appointment at four, and you also mean to do some shopping on the way home. Say both.

四時よじに歯医者はいしゃに行いく予定よていです for the appointment, since it is booked and somebody else is expecting you, and 帰かえりに買かい物ものをするつもりです for the shopping, since nobody but you knows about it and nothing would go wrong if you skipped it. Swapping them produces two odd sentences: a 予定よてい for unplanned shopping suggests a schedule you have been given, and a つもり for a dentist's appointment suggests you might not turn up.

Now you. Say that you meant to ring but did not, and then say that you have no intention whatever of going to the party.

ことにする and ことになる

Here is where Japanese does something that English does not, and it is worth the whole lesson.

ことにする means to decide to do something, by your own choice. It takes the plain form plus こと, from the nominalisation lesson.

毎朝まいあさ走はしることにしました maiasa hashiru koto ni shimashita I've decided to run every morning

ことになる means that it has come to be decided. Grammatically the decision has no agent: it happened.

来月らいげつ大阪おおさかに転勤てんきんすることになりました raigetsu Osaka ni tenkin suru koto ni narimashita it's been arranged that I'll transfer to Osaka next month

Sometimes that is literally true and your employer decided. But the striking fact is that Japanese speakers use ことになりました even when they decided entirely for themselves. 結婚けっこんすることになりました is the ordinary way to announce your own engagement, and it does not mean anybody arranged the marriage. The construction presents the outcome as something that came about, which spares the listener the sight of you announcing your own plans, and spares you the appearance of self-importance.

That is not a grammatical rule and not a politeness level. It is a habit of self-presentation built into a construction, and noticing it is a good measure of how far into the language you have got. A learner who announces 結婚けっこんすることにしました has said something perfectly grammatical that sounds faintly like a press release.

The related ことにしている means to make a practice of something: 毎日まいにち日記にっきを書かくことにしています, I make a point of keeping a diary. And ことになっている describes a standing rule: この部屋へやでは靴くつを脱ぬぐことになっています, you are supposed to take your shoes off in this room.

Example. You have decided to quit your job and move to Kyoto. Announce it to a colleague in the way a Japanese speaker would, and say what the alternative would sound like.

来月らいげつ会社かいしゃを辞やめて、京都きょうとに引ひっ越こすことになりました. Nobody made you do it, and everyone knows that, which is exactly why ことになりました is right: it reports the outcome rather than parading the decision. Saying 辞やめることにしました is grammatical and puts your own agency in the foreground, which is fine among close friends and slightly graceless in an office. The English instinct, that taking responsibility for your own choices is a virtue, does not transfer here.

Now you. Your company has told you that you will be working Saturdays from next month. Say so, and then say that you have decided to leave the job because of it.

ようになる and ようにする

The last pair describes gradual change rather than a moment of decision.

ようになる means to reach the point of doing something, usually a change in ability or habit.

日本語にほんごが話はなせるようになりました nihongo ga hanaseru you ni narimashita I've got to the point where I can speak Japanese

Because it is about change over time, it pairs naturally with the potential form, and the negative is なくなる rather than ないようになる: 新聞しんぶんを読よまなくなりました, I've stopped reading the newspaper.

ようにする means to make an effort towards something, and ようにしている means you are keeping that effort up.

毎日まいにち運動うんどうするようにしています mainichi undou suru you ni shite imasu I try to exercise every day

甘あまい物ものを食たべないようにしています amai mono o tabenai you ni shite imasu I'm trying not to eat sweet things

The difference from ことにする is one of hardness. ことにしている is a rule you have set yourself and keep; ようにしている is an aim you are working towards and may miss. Saying 毎日まいにち運動うんどうすることにしています claims a discipline that ようにしています carefully does not.

Vocabulary

Everything so far has been done by somebody, and the grammar has kept track of who. The next lesson takes the actor out, first by choosing a different verb and then, in the lesson after it, by using the passive.

Japanese pairs almost every verb of change with a separate verb for causing that change, so where English uses "open" for both the door and the person opening it, Japanese has two different words. Choosing between them is not a stylistic matter: it decides whether anybody is being held responsible for what happened.

Verbs come in pairs

An intransitive verb describes something happening to a thing, and the thing takes が. A transitive verb describes somebody doing it, and the thing takes を.

ドアが開あく doa ga aku the door opens

ドアを開あける doa o akeru someone opens the door

The two verbs are related but distinct words, with their own conjugations, and neither is derived from the other by a rule you can rely on. Here is a working set, and it is worth learning them as pairs from the start rather than meeting them one at a time.

The patterns, and their limits

Two patterns cover a good part of that table. Where the intransitive ends in -aru, the transitive usually ends in -eru: 閉しまる and 閉しめる, 始はじまる and 始はじめる, 決きまる and 決きめる, 集あつまる and 集あつめる. Where the intransitive ends in -eru or -iru, the transitive often ends in -su: 出でる and 出だす, 消きえる and 消けす, 落おちる and 落おとす, 壊こわれる and 壊こわす.

Be honest about how far that gets you. Linguists describing this system count more than a dozen sub-patterns, several of them with only a handful of members, and there is no reliable way to predict from a verb alone which one it belongs to. 入はいる and 入いれる fit no pattern and change their reading as well. 並ならぶ and 並ならべる pair a group 1 verb with a group 2 verb. The generalisations are worth having as a memory aid and are not worth trusting to produce a form you have never seen.

There is one reliable consequence, though. Transitive verbs in a pair are almost always group 2 or -su verbs, and -su verbs are group 1 with a completely regular て form, so the conjugation side of this is easy once the pair is known.

Example. 窓まどが閉しまっています uses the intransitive. What is the transitive, and how does the sentence change?

The transitive is 閉しめる, and the sentence becomes 窓まどを閉しめています, which means somebody is in the act of closing the window. The particle moves from が to を and the meaning moves from a description of the window to a description of a person. This is the pattern throughout: が plus intransitive says what the world is like, を plus transitive says what somebody is doing.

Now you. Give the transitive partner of 消きえる, 落おちる and 集あつまる, and say which pattern each follows.

Which one Japanese reaches for

Given a choice, Japanese leans towards the intransitive more often than English does, and the reason is that the intransitive does not name anybody.

コップが割われました koppu ga waremashita the glass broke

An English speaker who dropped it says "I broke a glass". A Japanese speaker in the same kitchen is much more likely to say コップが割われました, which reports the same event and assigns no blame. This is not evasiveness so much as a default: the language offers a way to describe an outcome without an actor, and speakers take it.

The same instinct shows up all over ordinary life. A machine that stops is 止とまりました, not that somebody stopped it. A meeting whose time has been settled is 決きまりました. A lost thing that turns up is 見みつかりました. Learners who translate from English produce the transitive far too often, and the effect is to sound as though they are constantly attributing events to people.

ている with an intransitive verb

Now a fact that trips up almost everyone. ている with an action verb means the action is in progress: 食たべています, I am eating. ている with an intransitive verb of change means the change has happened and the resulting state persists.

窓まどが閉しまっています mado ga shimatte imasu the window is closed

That does not mean the window is in the process of closing. It means it closed at some point and is now shut. The same goes for 電気でんきがついています, the light is on; ドアが開あいています, the door is open; 田中たなかさんは結婚けっこんしています, Tanaka is married. This last one is the classic example, because a learner reading it as an action in progress produces something absurd.

The rule of thumb: if a verb describes a change from one state to another rather than an activity carried out over time, its ている is a state, not a progress. 知しっている, from the beginner course, is the same phenomenon: knowing is the state left behind by finding out.

てある, and the agent behind a state

てある attaches to the て form of a transitive verb and describes a state that somebody has deliberately produced and left. The object of that transitive verb takes が.

会議室かいぎしつに椅子いすが並ならべてあります kaigishitsu ni isu ga narabete arimasu chairs have been set out in the meeting room

名前なまえが書かいてあります namae ga kaite arimasu the name is written on it

Nobody is named, and yet the construction says somebody did it on purpose and that the result is still there for a reason. That is a lot of information for one auxiliary verb, and English needs a paraphrase for all of it.

Put the three together on one door and the system becomes visible.

The middle one is an intransitive verb reporting a state. The bottom one is a transitive verb, with its object promoted to が, reporting a state that was arranged. In a room where the door has blown open, the middle sentence is right. In a room where somebody propped it open to let air in, the bottom one is.

Example. You walk into a lecture room. The projector is on and a handout is lying on every seat. Describe both, and say what your choice implies.

プロジェクターがついています for the projector, using the intransitive つく with ている, because you are reporting a state and making no claim about who is responsible. プリントが置おいてあります for the handouts, using the transitive 置おく with てある, because somebody plainly put them there for a purpose and the arrangement is the point. Reversing them would be strange in both directions: プロジェクターがつけてあります is possible and pointedly says somebody turned it on deliberately, while プリントが置おいています is simply ungrammatical, since 置おく is transitive and its object cannot take が without てある.

Now you. The window is open and there is a note stuck to the fridge. Describe both, and say why the second cannot use ている.

ておく and てしまう

Two more auxiliaries on the て form finish the topic, and both are among the commonest things in spoken Japanese.

ておく means to do something in advance, or to leave something as it is.

ビールを冷ひやしておきます biiru o hiyashite okimasu I'll put the beer in to chill (ready for later)

The preparation sense is the usual one, and the second sense, leaving something alone, shows up in そのままにしておいてください, "just leave it as it is". In speech ておく contracts to とく and でおく to どく, so 買かっておく becomes 買かっとく and 読よんでおく becomes 読よんどく.

てしまう marks an action as finished off completely, or as regretted, and context decides which.

全部ぜんぶ食たべてしまいました zenbu tabete shimaimashita I finished the lot

電車でんしゃに傘かさを忘わすれてしまいました densha ni kasa o wasurete shimaimashita I went and left my umbrella on the train

The regret sense dominates with verbs that describe mishaps, and the completion sense with verbs that describe tasks, which is why the same auxiliary can be triumphant on a plate of food and rueful about an umbrella. Its contractions are ちゃう from てしまう and じゃう from でしまう, so 忘わすれちゃった and 飲のんじゃった, and these are so common in casual speech that the full forms can sound deliberate.

Example. You are hosting this evening. Say that you will chill the beer and tidy the room in advance, and then admit that you have eaten all the snacks.

ビールを冷ひやして、部屋へやを片かたづけておきます, and お菓子かしは全部ぜんぶ食たべてしまいました. Note that ておく attaches once, to the last verb of the chain, because the て form of 冷ひやす has already joined the two actions and politeness and aspect both live on the final verb. That is the rule from the first lesson still doing its work. In the second sentence てしまう could be read either way, as pride or as confession, and the は on お菓子かし pushes it towards confession by marking the snacks as the awkward exception to your preparations.

Now you. Say that you left your umbrella on the train, and that you had better book the restaurant now rather than later.

Vocabulary

The intransitive verb makes the actor disappear by choosing a different word. The next lesson makes the actor disappear by grammar, and adds a construction English has no equivalent of at all: a passive for things done to you that you did not want.

English uses the passive to move the interesting thing to the front of the sentence. Japanese does that with は and has done since the beginner course, so its passive is free to do something else, and what it mostly does is say that an event was to somebody's detriment. That second use has no English equivalent and is the reason this lesson exists.

Building the passive

For a group 1 verb, move the final kana of the dictionary form to the あ row and add れる. That is the same shift as the ない form, which you have had since the first lesson, so the two forms sit side by side.

The う column keeps the same irregularity in both: う becomes わ, not あ.

Group 2 replaces る with られる: 食たべられる, 見みられる. The irregulars give される and 来こられる.

That gives group 2 verbs a form doing three jobs, since 食たべられる is also the potential and, as the next lesson but one will show, the honorific. Context separates them, and the fact that group 1 verbs keep them apart, 読よめる against 読よまれる, is a large part of why ら抜ぬき exists.

Every passive verb is itself a group 2 verb, so 書かかれる conjugates as 書かかれない, 書かかれた, 書かかれて, exactly like 食たべる.

Example. Give the passive of 叱しかる, 使つかう, 見みる and する.

叱しかられる, 使つかわれる, 見みられる, される. The first is a group 1 る verb, so る moves to ら; the second is a う verb and takes わ rather than あ; the third is group 2 and takes られる; する is irregular and becomes される, which is worth noting because it makes every noun plus する verb passive for free: 発表はっぴょうされる, 説明せつめいされる, 使用しようされる.

Now you. Give the passive of 聞きく, 笑わらう, 呼よぶ and 来くる, and say which two forms look identical to something else you have learned.

The direct passive

In the ordinary passive, the person affected becomes the subject and the actor is marked with に.

先生せんせいにほめられました sensei ni homeraremashita I was praised by the teacher

母ははに叱しかられた haha ni shikarareta I got told off by my mother

に is the default marker for the actor. から appears instead with verbs of communication and origin, where the sense is closer to "from": みんなから愛あいされている, loved by everybody. And によって is the formal marker used when the actor is the creator of something: この絵えはピカソによって描かかれた.

Notice that both example sentences are about an unpleasant experience, and that is not an accident. The Japanese passive leans towards things you would rather had not happened, so a sentence like 先生せんせいにほめられました carries a very slight undertone that the praise was awkward or unexpected. If you simply want to report that the teacher praised you, the active 先生せんせいがほめてくれました, with the favour verb from four lessons ago, is warmer and much commoner.

The passive of things, and where it came from

Japanese also has a passive with an inanimate subject, and it is the one that looks most like the English passive.

この小説しょうせつは百年ひゃくねん前まえに書かかれました kono shousetsu wa hyakunen mae ni kakaremashita this novel was written a hundred years ago

会議かいぎは毎週まいしゅう開ひらかれます kaigi wa maishuu hirakaremasu the meeting is held every week

This construction belongs to written and formal Japanese: newspapers, academic writing, announcements. Its history is worth knowing. Classical Japanese used it very little, and the modern habit of putting inanimate things in the subject of a passive grew substantially during the Meiji period, under the pressure of translating European texts. The older instinct was to use an intransitive verb instead, and that instinct is still alive: a speaker will say 会議かいぎが始はじまりました rather than 始はじめられました unless the point is specifically that somebody started it.

The practical consequence for a learner is a warning. English speakers reach for this passive constantly, and in speech it makes Japanese sound like a translated document. In conversation, prefer the intransitive verb of the previous lesson, or an active sentence with は on the interesting thing.

When the event was not yours

Here is the construction English cannot copy. Japanese can put in the subject of a passive somebody who was not a participant in the event at all, and the meaning is that the event affected them, almost always badly. Grammarians call it the 迷惑めいわくの受身うけみ, the passive of nuisance.

雨あめに降ふられて、ぬれてしまいました ame ni furarete, nurete shimaimashita I got rained on and ended up soaked

Look at what has happened. 降ふる is intransitive: rain falls, and there is no object for a passive to promote. English cannot passivise "it rained" at all. Japanese can, and the resulting sentence has a subject, the speaker, who takes no part in the raining and is simply the person it happened to.

友ともだちに来こられて、勉強べんきょうできませんでした tomodachi ni korarete, benkyou dekimasen deshita a friend came round, and I couldn't get any work done

Compare 友ともだちが来きました, which reports a visit neutrally, or 友ともだちが来きてくれました, which treats it as a kindness. The passive says the visit was an imposition, and it says so without a single word meaning "unfortunately". Learning to hear this is a large step in understanding spoken Japanese, because speakers use it to complain without complaining.

Example. Your neighbour smoked and you had to put up with it. Say it two ways and compare.

隣となりの人ひとがタバコを吸すいました reports the fact and says nothing about you. 隣となりの人ひとにタバコを吸すわれて、困こまりました puts you in the subject slot of a passive built on an event you had no part in, and thereby says the smoking was done to you. Note the particles carefully: the neighbour moves from が to に, and タバコ keeps its を, because it is still the thing that was smoked. This is the shape to memorise.

Now you. A colleague read your email over your shoulder, and you were not happy about it. Say it with the adversative passive.

The を that stays

That last point deserves its own section because it is where most learners go wrong. When the thing affected belongs to you, it keeps を and does not become the subject.

電車でんしゃで足あしを踏ふまれました densha de ashi o fumaremashita somebody trod on my foot on the train

財布さいふを取とられました saifu o toraremashita I had my wallet taken

English promotes the foot: "my foot was trodden on". Japanese promotes you, leaves the foot as the object, and never mentions whose foot it is, because the passive has already said. 私わたしの足あしが踏ふまれました is grammatical and sounds like a forensic report.

The test is ownership. If what was affected is a part of you or a possession of yours, the passive subject is you and the possession keeps を. If it is an independent thing, the ordinary direct passive applies and it becomes the subject: この本ほんは多おおくの人ひとに読よまれています.

Example. Somebody stole your bicycle. Give the two possible sentences and say which you would use.

自転車じてんしゃを盗ぬすまれました is what you would say, using the possessor passive: you are the subject, the bicycle keeps を, and the sentence is about what happened to you. 自転車じてんしゃが盗ぬすまれました is also correct and describes the theft from the outside, as a police report or a news item would. In practice, the first is what you say to a friend and the second is what appears in a notice about thefts in the area.

Now you. Your younger brother ate your cake. Say it as the adversative passive, and say what the neutral version would be.

When not to use it

Three habits carried over from English produce most of the wrong passives a learner writes, and all three have a fix already in this course.

The first is using a passive to avoid naming a person. Japanese has better tools for that: the intransitive verb of the previous lesson, and simply leaving the subject out, which Japanese does constantly and English cannot. 間違まちがいがありました, "there was a mistake", beats a passive and names nobody.

The second is using a passive to put the important thing first. That is what は is for, and it has been available since the beginner course. この本ほんはもう読よみました puts the book in front without touching the verb.

The third is passivising a verb of receiving or benefiting. English says "I was given a book" and Japanese has もらう and くれる for exactly that, so 本ほんをもらいました is the sentence, not a passive of あげる. Reaching for a passive here is a reliable sign of translating rather than composing.

What is left, once those three are gone, is the genuine business of the Japanese passive: reporting that something was done to you, usually to your cost, and the formal written passive of books, meetings and discoveries.

Vocabulary

The passive removes the actor. The next lesson does the opposite and adds one: a person who makes or lets somebody else act, and then, by combining the two, the form for being made to do something you did not want to do.

The passive took the actor out of the sentence. The causative puts a second one in: somebody who made or let the first one act. The form costs nothing new, because it is the third construction built on a shift you learned in the first lesson, and one of the things it does is give you the most deferential way in Japanese to ask permission.

One more use of the あ-row shift

For a group 1 verb, move the final kana of the dictionary form to the あ row and add せる. Set the result beside the two forms you already build from that same shift.

One shift, three endings: ない, れる, せる. The う column keeps its わ throughout. Group 2 replaces る with させる: 食たべさせる, 見みさせる. The irregulars give させる and 来こさせる, and it is worth noticing that the causative of する is させる, identical in shape to the group 2 ending.

Every causative verb is a group 2 verb, so 読よませる gives 読よませない, 読よませた, 読よませて and so on by the group 2 rules.

Example. Give the negative, passive and causative of 使つかう and of 来くる.

For 使つかう: 使つかわない, 使つかわれる, 使つかわせる. All three take わ rather than あ, which is the う-verb irregularity showing up in three places at once and is a good argument for having learned it as a property of the verb rather than of the ない form.

For 来くる: 来こない, 来こられる, 来こさせる. The reading is こ in all three, and only the ending changes.

Now you. Give the causative of 待まつ, 話はなす, 食たべる and する, and say which two are identical in shape.

Make and let

The causative covers both coercion and permission, and Japanese does not separate them with different words. 子こどもを行いかせました can mean you made the child go or you let the child go, and only the situation says which.

先生せんせいは学生がくせいに本ほんを読よませました sensei wa gakusei ni hon o yomasemashita the teacher had the students read a book

娘むすめに留学りゅうがくさせます musume ni ryuugaku sasemasu I'm going to let my daughter study abroad

That ambiguity is less troublesome than it sounds, because Japanese has other ways to make the permission reading explicit, and the main one is the て form plus あげる: 子こどもを遊あそばせてあげました makes the indulgence obvious.

The particles, and what を against に says

With a transitive verb, the causee takes に, because を is already spoken for by the object.

母ははは子こどもに野菜やさいを食たべさせました haha wa kodomo ni yasai o tabesasemashita my mother made the children eat their vegetables

With an intransitive verb, both particles are available and they carry the difference between the two readings. を leans towards making, since it treats the causee as something acted on. に leans towards letting, since it treats them as a party in their own right.

子こどもを公園こうえんに行いかせました kodomo o kouen ni ikasemashita I sent the children to the park

子こどもに公園こうえんに行いかせました kodomo ni kouen ni ikasemashita I let the children go to the park

Treat this as a tendency and not a law. Speakers vary, the effect is stronger with some verbs than others, and a sentence with two に in it, as the second example has, is often reworded for that reason alone. What is not a tendency is the transitive rule: with an object already taking を, the causee must take に.

Example. Say that you made your younger brother wait an hour, and then that you let him use your computer.

弟おとうとを一時間いちじかん待またせました, and 弟おとうとにパソコンを使つかわせてあげました. The first uses 待まつ, which here has no object, and takes を on the causee to mark the coercion. The second has パソコン taking を already, so the causee must take に, and てあげる makes the permission reading explicit rather than leaving it to context. Without てあげる the second sentence would be ambiguous between letting him use it and making him use it.

Now you. Say that the teacher made the students write a report, and that the manager let the staff go home early.

させてください and させていただく

Here is the practical payoff. Put the causative into the て form and add ください and you are asking to be allowed to do something.

説明せつめいさせてください setsumei sasete kudasai please let me explain

Now combine it with the request ladder from the giving and receiving lesson. させていただく is "to receive the favour of being allowed to", and its potential negative question is about as deferential as Japanese gets.

明日あした休やすませていただけませんか ashita yasumasete itadakemasen ka might I be allowed to take tomorrow off?

Read the structure rather than memorising the string. 休やすむ becomes causative, 休やすませる, so somebody allows you to rest. That becomes て plus いただく, so you humbly receive that permission. That becomes potential, いただける, so you are asking about possibility. And that becomes a negative question, which asks for even less. Four moves, each of which you have met separately.

This is standard business Japanese and you will meet it constantly: 確認かくにんさせていただきます, "allow me to confirm"; 失礼しつれいさせていただきます, "if you will permit me to take my leave". A warning that comes with it: the pattern is now used so freely in Japanese customer service that native speakers complain about it, and stringing it onto every verb sounds obsequious rather than polite.

Example. You need to leave a meeting twenty minutes early. Ask permission at two levels of formality.

To a colleague: すみません、少すこし早はやく帰かえらせてください. To the head of the department: 申もうし訳わけありませんが、少すこし早はやく失礼しつれいさせていただけないでしょうか. Both are built on the causative of a verb you are performing yourself, which is the odd part of the construction and the key to it: you are not making anybody do anything, you are asking to be made able to. The second version adds every rung of the ladder at once, and the switch from 帰かえる to 失礼しつれいする is worth copying, since naming your own departure as a discourtesy is standard in formal Japanese.

Now you. Ask your professor to let you use their laboratory over the weekend.

The causative passive

Combine the two voices and you get the form for being made to do something against your will, which is one of the highest-value patterns in ordinary spoken Japanese.

Build the causative, then make it passive. 飲のむ gives causative 飲のませる, and its passive is 飲のませられる. In speech, group 1 verbs contract this to される, so 飲のまされる.

部長ぶちょうにお酒さけを飲のまされました buchou ni osake o nomasaremashita my boss made me drink

一時間いちじかんも待またされました ichijikan mo matasaremashita I was kept waiting a whole hour

The contraction does not apply to verbs ending in す, because 話はなさされる would put two さ together; those keep the full 話はなさせられる. Group 2 verbs have no contraction either: 食たべさせられる.

子こどもの時とき、ピアノを習ならわされました kodomo no toki, piano o narawasaremashita I was made to learn the piano as a child

The person doing the making takes に, exactly as the actor of any passive does, and the sentence carries the same undertone of grievance the adversative passive did. That is not an accident; it is the passive part of the form doing what the passive always does in Japanese.

What you cannot do with it

One restriction matters more than all the grammar above. You cannot use the causative on somebody senior to you. 部長ぶちょうに確認かくにんさせます, "I'll make the manager check", is not a politeness error but a category error: it claims authority over a person who has authority over you.

What you use instead is the receiving construction, which describes the same event from below: 部長ぶちょうに確認かくにんしていただきます, "I will have the manager check", literally receiving the favour of his checking. The event is identical and only the direction of the grammar has changed.

The same restriction applies in reverse to させていただく, which is why it works: you are not causing anything, you are receiving permission. Between the two of them, causative for people below you and ていただく for people above you, you can describe any arrangement of who does what without ever putting yourself in the wrong place.

Vocabulary

Two lessons have now been about who acts and who is affected. The last restriction in this one, that you cannot make a superior do anything, is not really about the causative: it is about a system for marking status that runs through the whole verb. That system is next.

Everything in this course so far has been said at one level of politeness, the です and ます you have had since the beginner course. Japanese has two further sets of forms that change nothing about the facts and everything about who is being placed above whom, and the rules for building them are mechanical once you have fixed the direction.

Three directions, and the official five

The traditional division is into three. 丁寧語ていねいご, polite speech, is です and ます, and it is aimed at the listener regardless of who the sentence is about. 尊敬語そんけいご, honorific speech, raises the person you are talking about. 謙譲語けんじょうご, humble speech, lowers you, which has the same relative effect.

The direction rule follows from that and admits no exceptions. Honorific forms are never used about yourself or about your own group. Humble forms are never used about anybody else. A learner who says 「私わたしがいらっしゃいます」 has not been merely clumsy; they have honoured themselves, which is the one thing the system exists to prevent.

The official account is now more detailed. In February 2007 the Council for Cultural Affairs published 敬語けいごの指針ししん, "Guidelines on Honorific Language", which replaced the three categories with five. It split humble speech into 謙譲語けんじょうご I, which lowers you with respect to a specific person, and 謙譲語けんじょうご II, also called 丁重語ていちょうご, which merely makes your own actions sound formal to the listener. And it added 美化語びかご, "beautification", the お and ご on words like お茶ちゃ, お金かね and ご飯はん, which honour nobody and simply make speech more refined.

That last category is worth knowing because it explains something that otherwise looks inconsistent: お is not always a mark of respect. お茶ちゃ said to your own family is not honouring the tea.

Raising the other person

There are three ways to build an honorific, in increasing order of weight.

The lightest is the passive form, which doubles as a mild honorific: 先生せんせいが話はなされました. It is common in business speech, it costs nothing new, and it is also the source of a great deal of ambiguity, since the same form is the passive and the potential. Use it when you want a small lift.

The standard frame is お plus the ます stem plus になる.

社長しゃちょうはもうお帰かえりになりました shachou wa mou okaeri ni narimashita the president has already gone home

For Sino-Japanese words that take する, the frame is ご plus the noun plus になる: ご利用りようになる, ご説明せつめいになる. The choice between お and ご follows the word's origin, お for native Japanese words and ご for Chinese-derived ones, with a few settled exceptions such as お電話でんわ and お時間じかん.

The heaviest, and the ones you must simply learn, are the special verbs.

There is also an honorific request, お plus the ます stem plus ください, which is what you hear in shops and stations all day: こちらでお待まちください, please wait here. It is politer than てください and completely fixed in form.

Lowering yourself

The humble frame mirrors the honorific one: お plus the ます stem plus する, or いたす for a further step down.

私わたしがお持もちします watashi ga omochi shimasu let me carry that

ご案内あんないいたします goannai itashimasu I will show you the way

And again a list of special verbs, which carry most of the traffic in practice.

田中たなかと申もうします is how you give your own name formally. 資料しりょうを拝見はいけんしました is how you say you have read somebody's document. 明日あした伺うかがいます is how you say you will visit them.

Note that いただく and くださる have been in your vocabulary since the beginner course, in いただきます and ください, and since the giving and receiving lesson as full verbs. They were the first keigo you learned.

Example. Rewrite 社長しゃちょうは何なにを食たべましたか as honorific, in two ways, and then say what you yourself ate.

The frame gives 社長しゃちょうは何なにをお食たべになりましたか, and the special verb gives 社長しゃちょうは何なにを召めし上あがりましたか. Where a special verb exists it is preferred, so the second is what you would actually say. For yourself you use the humble verb: 私わたしは天てんぷらをいただきました. Notice that the same event, eating, takes three different verbs depending on whose eating it is.

Now you. Ask a client whether they have seen the document, and then say that you have seen it yourself.

The five verbs that conjugate oddly

Five honorific verbs are irregular, and they are irregular in the same way, which makes them cheap to learn. いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, なさる, くださる and ござる all form their ます stem in い rather than the expected り.

So it is いらっしゃいます, おっしゃいます, なさいます, くださいます and ございます, not いらっしゃります and the rest. Their imperatives are the same shape, which is where なさい and ください come from: both are simply the imperative of a group 1 verb with the same irregularity.

That is the whole exception list. Every other keigo verb conjugates by the ordinary rules, 参まいる and 伺うかがう and 申もうす included.

Inside and outside, again

Now the part that surprises everyone, and it is the same 内うち and 外そと distinction from the giving and receiving lesson.

Your own boss is above you and takes honorific forms, in the office. Speak to somebody outside your company about that boss, and your boss joins your group, which means you speak about them humbly.

部長ぶちょうはただいま席せきを外はずしております buchou wa tadaima seki o hazushite orimasu the manager is away from his desk at the moment

おります is humble, and it is being used about a person senior to you, because to the customer on the phone your entire company is one unit and you do not raise any part of it. You also drop the honorific title: to an outsider your president is simply 社長しゃちょうの田中たなか, with no さん.

This is the point at which Japanese politeness stops being a ladder and becomes a map. The question is never "how senior is this person" but "which side of the line are they on right now", and the line moves with every conversation.

Example. A customer telephones and asks for your section head, Suzuki, who is out. What do you say, and what would be wrong?

申もうし訳わけございません、鈴木すずきはただいま外出がいしゅつしております. Suzuki is inside your group relative to the customer, so no さん, no honorific verb, and the humble おる for existence. What would be wrong is 鈴木すずきさんは今いまいらっしゃいません, which raises your own colleague in front of a customer and is the single most recognisable keigo error a learner makes on the telephone.

Now you. The same customer asks when Suzuki will be back, and you want to say that he will ring them later. Say it.

Double keigo, and what native speakers get wrong

Applying two honorific mechanisms to the same verb produces 二重敬語にじゅうけいご, double keigo, which the 2007 guidelines call incorrect.

おっしゃられる stacks the special verb おっしゃる and the honorific passive. お召めし上あがりになる stacks the frame and the special verb. Both are extremely common in real speech, including from people whose job is to be polite, and the guidelines themselves concede that a few doubled forms have become fixed and are accepted, お伺うかがいする among them.

The practical position is the same as with ら抜ぬき in an earlier lesson. Do not produce double keigo; expect to hear it constantly; and do not assume that a form you hear from a native speaker is therefore correct by the standard the same speakers would apply if asked. Keigo is the part of Japanese that Japanese people themselves study from books, and companies run training courses in it for new graduates, which tells you how far from automatic it is.

Example. Correct 部長ぶちょうがおっしゃられました and お客きゃく様さまがお召めし上あがりになりました.

Both are doubled and both are fixed by removing one layer. The first should be 部長ぶちょうがおっしゃいました: おっしゃる is already the honorific of 言いう, so the passive on top adds nothing but length. The second should be お客きゃく様さまが召めし上あがりました, since 召めし上あがる is already honorific and does not need the お plus になる frame around it. The rule to carry away is that a special verb is complete in itself: use the frame only where no special verb exists.

Now you. Correct 私わたしが明日あしたいらっしゃいます and 社長しゃちょうは何なにを申もうしましたか.

What to actually learn

If you learn nothing else from this lesson, learn the special verbs in the two tables, because they cover most of what you will hear and are not derivable. Then learn the two frames, お plus stem plus になる and お plus stem plus する, which generate the rest. Then learn お plus stem plus ください, which you will use every time you ask anybody for anything in a formal setting.

What you can safely postpone is producing keigo fluently in conversation. Understanding it is urgent, because it is everywhere in shops, stations, offices and announcements. Producing it can be reduced, without any rudeness, to ordinary です and ます plus the request ladder from the giving and receiving lesson, which will carry you through almost every situation a learner is actually in.

Vocabulary

That is the direction upwards from です. The last lesson goes the other way, into the speech people actually use with their friends, which turns out to have as many rules as this one does.

The first lesson of this course said that the plain form has a second job, as the ending of a casual sentence, and put it off. This is where it is collected. Casual Japanese is not polite Japanese with the endings removed and the rules relaxed; it has its own contractions, its own particles and its own obligations, and speaking it badly is more conspicuous than speaking politely badly.

What casual actually means

The word "casual" suggests a level of effort. In Japanese it is a statement about a relationship. Plain-form speech says that you and the listener are close, or that you outrank them, or that no distance needs to be maintained between you. It is used with friends, with family, with people clearly younger or junior, and with yourself.

That makes the switch into it a social event rather than a stylistic one. Two people who have been speaking politely and then move to plain form have agreed on something, and Japanese has a word for it, 打うち解とける, to relax the distance. The move is usually initiated by the senior or older party, and following it is safe while leading it is not. A learner who arrives at plain form first, unprompted, has claimed a closeness the other person may not have offered.

The safest working rule is the one you would use in any language with a formal register: mirror what you are given, and let the other person go first. What this lesson gives you is the ability to follow when they do, and the ability to understand everything said around you, which is the more urgent of the two, since almost nothing you overhear in Japan is in です and ます.

Dropping です, ます, だ and the particles

The first move is the one you already own. Put the final verb into the plain form and the sentence is casual.

今日きょう、何なにしてた？ kyou, nani shiteta? what did you do today?

Notice three things beyond the plain form. か is dropped from questions and replaced by rising intonation, which is why the written form takes a question mark, a punctuation mark Japanese borrowed for exactly this. だ is dropped after nouns and な adjectives far more often than です is: 「学生がくせい?」 「うん、学生がくせい。」 is an entire exchange, and adding だ to either would sound emphatic rather than complete. And ている loses its い, giving してた rather than していた, which belongs with the contractions below.

Then the particles go. In casual speech は, が and を are dropped whenever the sentence is short and the roles are obvious.

これ、食たべる？ kore, taberu? are you going to eat this?

コーヒー飲のむ？ koohii nomu? want a coffee?

に, で, から, まで and と are much more resistant, because they carry information that word order cannot recover. The rule of thumb is that the particles you can drop are the ones marking who does what to whom, which Japanese word order and context usually make obvious anyway, and the ones you cannot drop are the ones marking where, when, how and with whom.

The contractions

Casual speech shortens the long auxiliary chains this course has built. Every one of these is standard, none of them is sloppy, and you have met most of the full forms already.

The last two rows on the negative side deserve a note. なければならない, "must", is a long form and almost nobody says the whole of it in conversation. What you hear is 行いかなきゃ or 行いかなくちゃ, with the ならない simply left off, and the obligation carried by the fragment. This is the same trailing-off habit as the けど of the reasons lesson: Japanese is comfortable stopping before the end.

Example. Turn 明日あしたまでにレポートを出ださなければなりませんから、今日きょうは早はやく帰かえってしまいます into casual speech.

明日あしたまでにレポート出ださなきゃいけないから、今日きょう早はやく帰かえっちゃう. Working through it: を drops after レポート, since the role is obvious; なければなりません contracts to なきゃいけない, keeping just enough of the tail for から to attach to; から stays, because it carries the reason; は drops after 今日きょう; and てしまいます contracts to ちゃう. Counted in characters the sentence has gone from 37 to 30 and lost nothing except the register. Note that までに has not been touched, since dropping it would destroy the deadline.

Now you. Turn 傘かさを忘わすれてしまったので、買かっておかなければなりません into casual speech.

Sentence-final particles

Casual Japanese leans hard on the particles at the end of a sentence, and getting them wrong is the fastest way to sound blunt.

ね invites agreement and softens. いい天気てんきだね, "nice weather, isn't it". Use it when the listener already knows what you are telling them, or when you want the sentence to feel shared rather than asserted.

よ marks information the listener does not have. 明日あした、試験しけんだよ tells them something new. Because of that, よ on something they obviously know already sounds like a correction or a rebuke, and this is a common learner mistake: adding よ for emphasis, as English adds "you know", makes you sound as though you are informing people of the obvious.

よね combines the two: I believe this, and I think you agree. 明日あした、試験しけんだよね is checking a shared fact, and it is the softest way to raise something you are fairly sure of.

かな is I wonder, addressed half to yourself: 何なに食たべようかな. っけ asks for something you once knew and have lost: 名前なまえ、何なんだっけ, "what was your name again?". な on its own is a soft assertion or a musing, and leans masculine.

Example. Your friend has just come in and you can see it is raining. Choose between 雨あめだね and 雨あめだよ.

雨あめだね. Your friend has just walked through the rain and knows about it better than you do, so よ, which claims to be supplying news, would be absurd. ね marks the observation as shared and is what the situation calls for. Reverse it: if you are inside with no window and your friend has not been out, 雨あめだよ is right, because now you are the one with the information. The test is never emphasis; it is who knows.

Now you. You are checking a meeting time you are fairly sure of, and separately telling a colleague that the meeting has moved, which they do not yet know. Choose a particle for each.

Role language, and why fiction misleads

Textbooks and, far more, translated manga and anime present a sharply gendered casual Japanese: women ending sentences in わ and かしら and のよ, men in ぜ and ぞ and だぜ, elderly professors in じゃ. Learners absorb this and produce it, and it does not go well.

The linguist Satoshi Kinsui gave this phenomenon a name in a 2003 book: 役割語やくわりご, role language. His point is that these speech patterns are a set of conventions readers recognise instantly as marking a character type, and that they function in fiction precisely because they are not how people talk. A Japanese reader who meets わしは...じゃ knows an old man is speaking without being told, in the same way an English reader recognises stage cockney.

Real usage is much flatter. Surveys of young Japanese women find the heavily marked feminine forms in steep decline, and the actual gender difference in casual speech now shows up mainly in smaller things: women drop だ more, use ね more, and use the blunter sentence-enders less. The safe course for a learner is to use the unmarked set, ね, よ, よね, かな, っけ, and to leave ぜ, ぞ, わ and かしら to fiction, where they belong.

This is worth generalising. Almost every register error a learner makes comes from a source that was not speech: a textbook dialogue, a subtitle, a song. The remedy is to listen to unscripted Japanese, of which there is now an enormous amount available, and to notice how little of the marked material actually occurs.

Being a listener

The last piece is not about producing sentences at all. Japanese conversation places a heavy obligation on the listener to signal, constantly and out loud, that they are still there. These signals are 相槌あいづち, and English backchannelling is much lighter.

The usual set is small: うん and ええ for yes, そう and そうですか for acknowledgement, なるほど for "I see", へえ for mild surprise, そうなんだ for taking in something new. They go in the gaps, and there are more gaps than an English speaker expects, because Japanese speakers pause at phrase boundaries specifically to be answered.

Senko Maynard's comparisons of Japanese and American conversation in the 1980s found Japanese listeners producing backchannels roughly twice as often as their American counterparts in comparable stretches of talk. The practical effect is that a foreign learner who listens quietly and politely, as an English speaker would, is read as bored, unconvinced or not paying attention. Silence on the telephone is worse, since there is nothing else to go on, which is why Japanese telephone conversations are full of はい.

Getting this right costs almost nothing and improves how you are received out of all proportion to the effort. It is the single highest-value thing in this lesson.

Example. A colleague is telling you about a delayed train and a missed meeting. What do you say, and when?

Nothing more than うん or ええ at each pause, へえ or 大変たいへんだったね at the point where the story turns bad, and そうなんだ if a fact is new to you. What matters is the timing rather than the content: the gaps a Japanese speaker leaves after each phrase are invitations, and filling them is the listener's half of the conversation. Saving up a considered response for the end, which is polite behaviour in English, reads here as not having listened.

Now you. You are on the telephone and cannot nod. What changes?

Vocabulary

Where you have got to

Sixteen lessons ago you could form a polite sentence and stop. You can now put a clause inside another one, order events in time, give a reason and take it back, set a condition four different ways, report what somebody else said and grade how far you stand behind it, say who did whom a favour, say what you can do and what you have decided to do, take the actor out of a sentence and put a second one in, and move deliberately between three registers instead of one.

That is roughly the ground B1 covers, and more usefully it is the point at which the language stops being a set of patterns and starts being something you can use to find out what you do not know. The grammar ahead is real but thinner than what is behind you: the remaining constructions are mostly written and formal, and they can be picked up from reading. What is not thin is vocabulary, which from here on is the whole job, and the frequency arithmetic in the kanji lesson says how much of it there is.

The way forward is the way this lesson recommends for register: unscripted Japanese, in quantity, made for Japanese people rather than for learners. Everything in this course was designed to make that possible rather than to substitute for it.