Conjugating ～ぬ

Japanese
#1

I just got to the ～ぬ grammar point and had a question about the exception for conjugating いる:

いる ￫ おらぬ

Is this applicable to both 五段 (godan) and 一段 (ichidan) verbs or just 一段?

For some reason, it’s really hard to find information online about ぬ and ず, and some of it can be misleading. For instance, the information I found about ぬ was written from a classical perspective, so it indicates that it’s only used adnominally, but I’ve seen it used as a predicate in modern Japanese, following the information provided in the grammar point.

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#2

Isn’t that just the actual verb 居いる turning into 居おらぬ?

As far as I’m aware ぬ works the same for ichidan and godan verbs: replace ない with ぬ and you’re done, basically. So just like you’d have 入らぬ and 言わぬ you’d also have 食べぬ and 用いぬ, 用いない doesn’t become 用おらぬ.

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#3

Oh, is that what the structure details meant? LOL! That makes way more sense now. I thought it meant verbs that end in ～いる. Thanks for clarifying.

Maybe spelling it with kanji and adding ruby text might help others who were similarly confused? Or maybe I’m the only one who was. :sweat_smile:

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#4

Yeah, I’m guessing kanji would definitely help - seeing Yomichan parse おらぬ as 居らぬ is part of what made the connection for me.

It also caught my attention that none of the other resources linked to mention it at all - Tae Kim goes into exceptions but only mentions 来ぬ and せぬ. Looking a bit further, it seems that actually 居いぬ is a thing, so I’m starting to think maybe the details section is wrong? Because with that in mind, it seems to me like おらぬ is the negative for おる, not いる, which makes no difference in meaning other than おる being the humble form, but maybe it’s not always appropriate to use with that in mind?

Though admittedly, the only place I’ve seen 居ぬ used is in an expression, 鬼の居ぬ間に洗濯 (and several variations on that in titles and such, like 神の居ぬ間に or 親の居ぬ間に), so maybe it’s not really used in practice.

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