Beginning Japanese for Professionals: Book 2

78 Group 2: RU-Verbs For the verbs in this group, replace / ru / with nai . tabemasu  taberu  tabenai ‘eat’ Group 3: Irregular Verbs The four members of this group have the following negative forms. kimasu  kuru  konai ‘come’ shimasu  suru  shinai ‘do’ arimasu  aru  nai ‘exist’ ikimasu  iku  ikanai ‘go’ Group 4: Special Polite Verbs The stem of the verbs in this group actually end in /r/, although it disappears in the ~masu form. This is why these five verbs are separated from Group 1. irasshaimasu  irassha r i  irassha r u To make the negative form, follow the rule for Group 1: change /u/ to / anai /. irasshaimasu  irassharu  irassharanai Remember that adjectives and nouns have two alternative formal negative forms. Similarly, desu can follow the plain negative verb form to form the alternative formal negative forms. Adjective: Takaku nai desu. Takaku arimasen. Noun: Ame ja nai desu. Ame ja arimasen. Verb: Tabenai desu. Tabemasen. Both forms are formal, but the form on the left is a little more casual than the one on the right. 8-4-2 ~ te form of desu ; X de ii ‘X will do’ We introduced the ~ te form of verbs in Lesson 7. Here we add Noun + de (the ~te form of desu .) The ~ te form is used to link sentences. Koohii wa 400-en desu. Keeki wa 500-en desu .  Coffee is 400yen. Cake is 500 yen. Koohii wa 400-en de, keeki wa 500-en desu. Coffee is 400 yen and cake is 500 yen. Note the difference between the following two. Koohii de ii desu . Coffee is fine. (It being coffee, I’m fine.) Koohii ga ii desu . Coffee is good. (Coffee is my first choice.)