grammar help. ive got 80% of hira and kata down and learning more kanji each day. but cant string… - Feed Post by Maddx_Etsuko
grammar help. ive got 80% of hira and kata down and learning more kanji each day. but cant string it into sentences.
e.g. 教えて, 教え, 教える. diffrence?
e.g. 教えて, 教え, 教える. diffrence?
posted by Maddx_Etsuko
Comments 11
Those are just different ways to conjugate a Oshieru...
教える is called the dictionary form. It is the plain form of the verb when used to express present or future tense.
教えて and 教え are called continuative or conjunctive forms; they are used to join the verb to another verb or clause. 教えている can be used to express the present progressive or present perfect tenses in English-- "is/am/are teaching" and "have been teaching", respectively.
If you don't have a textbook and are not taking a class, the best free resource I know of on the Internet for learning basic grammar is Tae Kim's site, http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar .- The first thing you are likely to use 教え for, by the way, is to connect it to the auxiliary verb ます, forming the combination 教えます. This is the way the verb will appear at the end of a normal polite sentence (as opposed to a plain, or casual, sentence). ます changes to ません for negative, ました for past tense, and ませんでした for negative past tense.
I'm not an expert, but here is how I understand it...
教える is the word you would find in a dictionary.
As fuonk was talking about... 教え is the base of the verb
Yes, this is "る" verb, so the base of the verb is just the dictionary form minus the "る" WARNING, not all verbs that end in "る" will be that way as there are a few exceptions (such as 帰る). Once you have the base verb, you can add something to the verb base to further the meaning of the word. 教えて is the "て" version of the word. There is more than one use of the "て" form, but what comes to mind is that it is used for making requests and can show how one action comes after another.
Examples:
"教える" in a sentence: 私は教えることができません。I can't teach.
"教えて" in a sentence: (私に)日本語を教えてください。Please teach (me) Japanese.
I don't know if these sentences are right, and having "私に" may be awkward. I don't know.
I agree with fuonk. You should see Tae Kim's guide to Japanese. It hasn't been my only resource, but it is good... and free. There is also an app for his guide!- This idea of the "base" of a verb is something you will find only in English language textbooks about Japanese. In Japanese grammar, 教えて and 教え are both called 連用形 (renyoukei; roughly, "forms which continue"). I think most textbooks make the mistake of trying to explain Japanese grammar too much in terms which are already familiar to English speakers. That may help with learning initially, but it gets in the way of understanding what is really going on in a Japanese sentence when one gets a bit further with the language.
@fuonk,
You could say 教え is the 語幹 (root/stem) of that 動詞 (verb). I think this may be what Gakusei72 meant by "base", rather than speaking of there being multiple so-called bases.
Is the て形 (-te form) actually referred to as a 連用形 (continuative form) of the 動詞 though? I'm aware that the 接続助詞 (conjunctive particle) て itself is from the 連用形 of an old 助動詞 (auxilary verb) "つ". And I'm aware that て is affixed to the 連用形 of the 動詞. But I can't remember seeing the テ形 being referred to also as 連用形. I'm just genuinely interested to find out whether this is so or not, although I guess I should just go look it up instead of straying a little off-topic... I get really interesting in these kind of things. ^^;- The middle school text I used to study grammar after coming to the conclusion that texts written in English had been leading me astray for years referred to both 教え and 教えて (or 書き and 書いて, to give a godan example) as 連用形. I have also seen て referred to as an independent 助詞, so it's possible that what I was reading was an oversimplification for the benefit of young students. The way you learned it, are 書き and 書い the 連用形 (or 読み and 読ん, to give an example with a sound change)? That would make more sense to me, actually.
- For 待つ, I guess it would have to be 待ち and 待っ, then. It might be a bit strange to call 読ん and 待っ "forms" (形) of verbs when they can't be used independently, though.
- The way I learnt it is that only 書き is called the 連用形 of 書く.
I've never considered calling 書い a conjugation form of 書く. The 書い in 書いて is merely the result of the 連用形 + て, due to sound change from contraction (or whatever), and nothing more than that.
As for your last sentence, can the 未然形 (imperfective form) be used on it's own? (I can't remember if it's definitely not possible, but off the top of my head I don't think it is. I'm fairly sure the 已然形/仮定形 can't be used on it's own either.)
(I might not reply for quite a while because my headphones broke straight after my last post.) ;_; 
thank you both! wow this is a long post. im still a little confused and it's still rather hard to remmebr but it helps alot. since i listen to quite a bit of japanese dialogue i have a vague idea as to which one sounds... more 'correct' in a sentence. btw, i have no clue what continuative or conjunctive forms are so yeah.
so can i confirm?
教えてください＝please tell/teach me. 教える shouldnt be used in this context and is more like referring to the act of telling/teaching?
今は教えている。煩い＝I'm teaching/speaking(?) right now. be quiet.
is the 'いる' is something along the lines of expressing that something is happening now? (and can be used for past continuous tenses like: i 'have been teaching'...)
is this correct?- Don't get attached to the idea that a て form should be translated by an "-ing" form of a verb in English. The combination 教えている can be translated by "is/am/are teaching", but not 教えて by itself. いる is the dictionary form of the verb you probably know as います; it also means "to be (in a place), to exist" for people and animals.
In the combination 教えてください, the ください part gives the meaning "please do something for me". The て form is needed before it to connect the two verbs. It should not be translated as "teaching". (The usual translation of "teaching" as a noun indicating the act of teaching is 教えるの, not 教えて.)
うるさい, by the way, is an adjective meaning annoyingly noisy. If you want to command someone to be quiet, that is だまれ, which is the imperative form of 黙る = だまる.
There is no continuative form in English. There are things in Japanese grammar with no counterparts in English (and vice versa). It's better to try to come to terms with them as they are than to try to force them to correspond to something that they don't really correspond to. If the word "connecting" works better for you than "continuative", think of it that way. The central idea is that the て form connects one verb to another.
