In my reviews I come across this one.
How am I supposed to know that I have to change か to き?
I don’t see that anywhere.
Can someone explain?
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It should be shown in the grammar lesson page (under the formal tab) if I am not mistaken. You will start to discover that the last kana has a pattern of changing for the formal forms (usually to an “i” ending)
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If you look at the grammar entry for う - Verbs (negative form), it’s mentioned in the information section:
As can be seen here, the kana change differs depending on whether ない or ません is being used. If ない will be used, the last kana will always change from the kana ending with a う sound, to the kana ending with an あ sound within the same row. If ません will be used, the change will be from the う sound kana to the い sound kana. The only exception to this rule is verbs that end in the kana う. Instead of changing to あ (the あ sound kana in the same row), they will change to わ when used with ない.
These types of verbs are called 五段 (Godan) verbs because their different conjugations use all 5 sounds (かきくけこ for 行く), unlike 一段 (Ichidan) verbs which simply remove the る and add a different suffix.
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In addition to this, if you click on the “formal” tab in structure it shows how casual changes to polite. This is for う - Verbs［う・ます］ | Japanese Grammar SRS
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Thanks.
I saw that list in ‘josh’ reply, but the changes from るto り e.g. and the rest of the list, is that a case of just memorizing what changes to what?
You have to memorize it, but there’s a system behind it: The last kana in the dictionary form changes to the corresponding kana from the same row in the gojūon that has an “i” sound. u → i, ru → ri, ku → ki, and so on.
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That’s very helpful, thanks!
Although it takes a while to learn these various conjugations, you’ll use that knowledge all the time. Some grammar points have a long list of things to memorize; I try not to get bummed out when I miss them. It’s almost like 10 points in one.
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Yeah in terms of brute memorization, N5 has a lot of it but the good news is that once it clicks, you’ll never really forget a lot of it. Plus it helps that a ton of sentences require conjugation, so you’ll get so much practice you won’t ever forget them. I’ve always said on here that conjugation in particular is really effective if taught visually, so I try and post this link whenever I can on here. I have a feeling that most of my top links on the forums is this one thing alone hahaha but it’s something I used when starting out and people on here seemed to really like it too, maybe it will help ya out.
First two lessons in particular relate to polite-form conjugation, but it’ll all become useful pretty soon if you continue your lessons. If you have any questions whatsoever feel free to keep asking!
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Thanks! I’ll check it out Born2peepee (I never wrote that before 
)
Great community here.
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later when you see potential form is way worse,
we have to memorize them, to this day I keep making mistakes with them. I never remember if is is させ らせ られた etc
My advice on conjugation is that once you’ve learned them SRS helps you retain that memory, but you aren’t going to get enough examples/practice with SRS alone to begin the learning process. It’s one of those things where I cram as many examples as I can to get the feel for the rules and then use SRS to force myself to not forget them.
This website is great for looking up every conjugation of a verb: http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/
This website is what I use to cram the rules:
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All super useful stuff, but an FYI if you also use jisho like a lot of users do - underneath the word you will see ‘Show Inflections’ which shows all conjugation. Maybe this was common knowledge, but myself a bunch of my friends never noticed the button before and stopped using outside resources and just stuck with jisho haha.
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I’ve rarely used jisho. I just found the ‘show inflections’ button. Thanks!