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Wow here we are, back again for the last part in our Japanese verb conjugation series. Today we are going to looking at conjugating plain form verbs into the negative and past negative forms. Since we have a lot to do let’s get started right away!

Past negative and negative verb forms are essential for your basic understanding and utilisation of Japanese. Mastering these Japanese verb conjugations will complete the conjugation puzzle and give you the keys to drive forward to the next step on your journey with confidence.

Again it will be helpful to refresh our memories on the 3 verb groups as this will help us today with our Japanese verb conjugation.

How to conjugate plain form Japanese verbs into the negative and past negative forms.

Japanese Verb Group 1:

 IRU/ERU Verbs – Verbs that end in IRU いるand ERUえる- such as: みる Miruたべる Taberu

Japanese Verb Group 2:

Verbs in group 2 end with syllables ku (く), gu (ぐ), su (す), mu (む), nu (ぬ), bu (ぶ), u (う), tsu (つ), or ru (る).

Japanese Verb Group 3:

Is made up of only two verbs, Suruする and Kuru くる.

As you know, Depending on what group the verb is in the verb conjugation will be different. So lets go ahead and take a look at conjugating some Japanese plain form verbs into the negative tense.

Conjugating Japanese group 1 plain form verbs into the negative forms

So again firstly we will start with the easiest group, group 1 – Iru + Eru verbs

To conjugate this group to past tense all you do is take off the “ru” る and add “nai” ない.

This is one of the simplest groups to work with for verb conjugation.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conjugate these iru/eru verbs into the plan negative tense. Lets take it up a notch and move over to group 2!

Conjugating Japanese group 2 plain form verbs into the negative forms

Group 2 includes all verbs ending in: Verbs in group 2 end with syllables ku (く), gu (ぐ), su (す), mu (む), nu (ぬ), bu (ぶ), u (う), tsu (つ), or ru (る).

Now fortunately with most verbs in this group you can take off the U sounds and add “anai”

Lets have a look at the conjugation table:

Now its not as difficult as conjugating into the past form but there are still some exceptions to the “anai” rules as you can see with U and Tsu but they shouldn’t cause you many problems.
Try and conjugate some sentences of your own to practice. The key is to constantly practice Japanese verb conjugations until you can do them in your sleep.

Conjugating Japanese group 3 plain form verbs into the negative forms

So now onto the final group, group three! Let’s conjugate these two plain form Japanese verbs into the negative form.

Since there are only two verbs in group 3 all you have to do really is to remember these 2 cases to change the verbs into negatives.

Conjugating plain form Japanese verbs into the past negative forms

Now we have come to the last section of the Japanese verb conjugation series, conjugating plain form Japanese verbs into the past negative form.

So what we are going to be doing here is conjugating  plain form verbs like to eat　たべる　 into did not eat　たべなかった.

We don’t need to split the verbs into 3 groups here because they all conjugate in the same way.

All we have to do is take the negative plain verb form ending ない nai and change it to nakatta なかった.

Summary

So there you have it you can now conjugate all Japanese verbs like a pro. All masu form and plain form verbs in the past, negative and past negative forms are at your disposal. I hope you all enjoyed this series and found it useful.

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