Short Form Japanese Verb Conjugation Present Tense

Short forms seem kind of complicated when I first saw them and messed with them, but they aren’t, at all. If you just know the principles of it short forms are super simple. For present tense you don’t need to really review anything other than u-verb and ru-verb conjugation. The only thing to really know though for these is the exceptions as to which verbs ending in ru are actually u-verbs. So lets get started.

Present Tense Affirmative Short Form

This one is easy. Basically you just use the dictionary form. Long form, or masu form, you would have ねます. If it was short form you would have ねる. Here is a table of a few more as an example.

Short Form	Long/Masu Form
じろじろみる	じろじろみます
たべる	たべます
はじめる	はじめます
でかける	でかきます

Present Tense Negative Short Form

Negative is a bit more complicated, but not a lot. It is actually easy too. First remember that we have 3 types of verbs. ru-verbs, u-verbs and irregular verbs.

る-verbs
ru-verbs are easiest of these. Literally replace the final る with ない. That is it. Another way to describe it is remove the る so with たべる you remove る and have たべ left, then you just append ない to get たべない. Here are some examples.

Dictionary Form	Short Form
じろじろみる	じろじろみない
たべる	たべない
はじめる	はじめない
でかける	でかけない

う-verbs
This one kind of is confusing in some of the stuff I read. I have read where you should drop the final u and add anai. While that is true it is a bit confusing because that deals with sounds. Most of the time, at least for me, when I think of words I think of it as it is spelled. So how I like to think of doing short form instead of changing the u to a. Is to change the last character like く to か or む to ま. Here is a chart of dictionary form and short form. Remember change the u to a.

Dictionary Form	Short Form
かく	かかない
はなす	はなさない
まつ	またない
しぬ	しななに
よむ	よまない
つくる	つくらない
およぐ	およがない
よぶ	よばない
かう	かわない

Remember the groups of characters か, き, く, け, こ and さ, し, す, せ, そ and た, ち, つ, て, と. When you come up on a character with u at the end remember that group and change it to the one that ends in a then add nai to it. く to かない, す to さない, つ to たない.

irregular verbs
Just like ru and u-verbs are easy so are irregular verbs. Change する to しない and くる to こない.

Dictionary Form	Short Form
つれてくる	つれてこない
べんきょうする	べんきょうしない

exception
Just like there is an exception for every rule, except the rule there is an exception for every rule. There is one for this, but it is easy.

Dictionary Form	Short Form
ある	ない

Basically, the verb ある that is used for existence of things and people just goes to ない instead of あない. Not really sure why, but I kind of think because the あ in あない is kind of pointless since it will sound almost the same anyway.

Related Posts:

• Start Using New Verbs
• Don’t do that with short forms
• Short Form Japanese Verb Conjugation Past Tense
• Japanese Verb Conjugation Present and Future Tense
• 〜ておく Preparation Time

Tagged as: Present Tense, Short Form, Verbs