Beginning Japanese for Professionals: Book 3

31 kau à kaeru à kaenai Group 2: RU-Verbs Change / ru / to / rareru / (or / reru / for the newly emerging version) taberu à taberareru (tabereru) à taberarenai (taberenai) Group 3: Irregular Verbs kuru à korareru (koreru) à korarenai (korenai) suru à dekiru à dekinai iku à ikeru à ikenai no potential form for aru Group 4: Special Polite Verbs Follow the same rule as Group 1—change / u / to / eru / Irassharu à irasshareru à irassharenai Note that the object of Potential verbs can be marked either by the particle o or ga , just like we saw before with the verb ~ tai forms. Kaado o/ga tsukaeru. You can use a credit card. Nihongo o/ga hanaseru. I can speak Japanese. 10-1-2 Negative Requests Earlier, we learned that the~ te form of verbs are used to make a request. Casual: Tabete. Eat. Formal: Tabete kudasai. Please eat. More polite: Tabete itadakemasen ka. Could you please eat? To make a negative request (asking someone not to do something), you add de to the plain negative form of the verb. Casual: Tabenai de. Don’t eat. Formal: Tabenai de kudasai. Please don’t eat. More polite: Tabenai de itadakemasen ka. Could you please not eat? Some sentence particles can follow these requests with an added meaning. Tabenai de ne? Don’t eat, okay? Tabenai de yo . Don’t eat, I’m telling you.