Help with Godan or Ichidan

Grammar Points
#1

little question: BunPro wanted me to change 話します to a casual form. I thought it was Ichidan because of the i ending, so put it as はなしる however I then saw it wanted 話す as it was infact Godan. Any help on what i’m getting wrong here? I seem to remember reading something about root consonants and vowels… but it was all a bit much for me

it seems to be sure when a verb is ichidan or godan, you can use the root to tell if it (the root) ends at a consonant or a vowel, however my issue is this would need me to already know the change as, in the case above, I didn’t know what the root was

if that makes sense? idk sorry if its a bit badly worded, I am just confused how to tell in situations where and i ending word isn’t ichidan (as I had been using the rough guess that I and E endings were commonly Ichidan (and that A U or O before the る meant it was always Godan)

1 Like
#2

Ichidan verbs all end with iru / eru, but not all verbs that end with ire / eru are ichidan verbs. Ichidan verbs don’t end with i or e, or vowels in general.

The reason why you should have guessed that 話します comes from a godan verb is that you can see the し (as opposed to the し sound being a part of the kanji). It’s common for verbs to end with す. This す comes from the auxiliary verb す in old Japanese which means “to do.” The す in する comes from that same auxiliary verb too.

I went through JMDict and 接しる is the only ichidan verb ending in しる. This word is marked as being an ​archaism though.

A verb ending with しる is a rare thing in general. If we also take a look at the godan verbs that end with しる the し is always part of a kanji except for three exceptions where they were using katakana シ. The first was making an onomatopoeia into a verb, the second came from a contraction of a longer phrase which included し in a kanji, and the third was converting an English loan word into a verb.

Knowing this, it would be weird if the dictionary form of a word was 話しる.