Lesson #2 - Verb usage

For those who does not know what a verb is; consider the simple sentence, "A dog bit John". The word bit is a verb.

Some of the interesting characteristics of Japanese verbs are as follows:

• Japanese verbs always goes to the end of the sentence
• There is no need to change the verb gender unlike French which has two genders and German which has three!
• There are three categories of Japanese verbs;
• (1) Irregular (Group 3),
  
• (2) Ichidan (Group 2)
• (3) Yodan (Group 1)

In future lesson, the usage and conjugation of these three categories of verbs will be taught. But meanwhile, you have to know that if you want to search for a verb's meaning in a Japanese dictionary, it is not as straight forward as in using a English dictionary, i.e. you have to first convert the verb into its Dictionary form.

That is why you need to know the rules on how to convert the three categories of verbs into their Dictionary form. Meanwhile if you wish to try converting words back and forth from Japanese into English or vice-versa, try this Google language translator.