Brave Kobun pupils! I’m going to take you further into the woods of Classical Japanese with verbs. Remember, Kobun is very different from Modern Japanese, and, as such, you’ll see new and unfamiliar features. In starting with verbs, I’m being biased and deliberate. It’s my opinion that verbs are top priority in a Kobun education because:

• Classical Japanese, like Modern, can omit the subject.
• Again like Modern, adjectives work like light verbs.
• Verbs take longer to look up and identify accurately than nouns, particles, etc.

Seriously – it’s a long process to decode verbs. I’ll describe an approach each for the short-term and long-term Kobun students. Both approaches involve puzzling a verb’s meaning by 1) establishing what kind of verb you’re dealing with and 2) looking at what shape it’s in.

The Short-term Approach

Photo by Anu & Anant

If you’ve never used Rikaichan, check it out. Rikaichan is an app that doles out meaning and readings for unfamiliar Japanese words and kanji if you hover your mouse over in-browser text. The short-term approach to Kobun verbs is equivalent to using Rikaichan on a news article: unless you’re really pro at Japanese, you won’t mentally store all the new words and characters Rikaichan breaks down for you, but you can read and comprehend the news article. This kind of approach is about understanding a text you have time to sit with but don’t expect to quote or write commentary about.

Let’s start with this line, the first in Taketori Monogatari:

いまは昔、竹取の翁といふもの有りけり。

Here’s the non-verb stuff in the sentence :

• いまは昔 (mukashi): now (subject) an ancient time
• 竹取 (take-tori): bamboo-lumberjack (AKA “bamboo wood-cutter”)
• の翁 (ou)といふもの: an old person/man.

といふもの is technically a verb phrase. I’m ignoring it because it has carried on into modern Japanese as というもの. That leaves just one verb phrase to decypher: 有りけり(arikeri).

Given this information, I want you to spend a moment searching around in a kogo-jiten for what you think 有りけり means. Don’t look up translations. Honestly look to see if you can analyze 有りけり the way you could “食べました”, which is [“eat” + past + polite + affirmative + end of a sentence]. Did you give it your best shot? I hope so. Here’s what I do:

Step 1: ID the Verb

First, we’ll need to figure out what kind of verb we’re looking at. Find the verb in a kogo-jiten. 「有りけり」 as a whole doesn’t get results. However, breaking it up into「有り」and 「けり」gives us results. Here’s 有り.

The top orange box outlines the verb type: 有り is a ra-gyou henkaku (“ra-sound irregular”) verb. The second box encapsulates the most common meaning: “to exist”, “to be”, etc. But wait — do you see the sample usage they provide? I’ve underlined it: it’s the sentence we’re trying to translate! We’ve definitely ID’d the right 有り. As for けり…

In the previous search, we could tell that what we’d found was a verb because 自動詞 (jidoushi; “transitive verb”) was written before ラ行変格 (the verb type). But here the Kogo-jiten entry lists けり as 「助動詞 (jodoushi)」, which means “helper verb”. Jodoushi won’t appear on their own but, instead, always connect to something else.

The orange box in the screencap outlines that this 助動詞 is used to create a past tense verb. So, this けり is like the “-ed” in English “highlighted” and the “た” in Modern Japanese “食べた”. Again, underlined in orange, the example provided is the very sentence we’re translating! For other verbs, though, you won’t be as lucky.

Pretend the sentence they provided wasn’t the exact one we’re looking at now. Two other search results appeared for “けり”: one is a verb (not a helper verb) that means “to come along” and the other is a verb for “to be wearing”. How do you know which is the right one? Mostly from meaning and context. While it’s definitely possible to see verbs chained together, “live” (verb) + “past tense” (helper verb) makes more sense here than “live” + “came along/comes along”or “live” + is “wearing”, especially after looking at the next step.

Step 2: Listen to the Verb

The next step: identify what form, or 形 (~kei) the verb is in. I’ve translated another part of the entry for けり in that screencap: “Attaches to an inflecting word in the Renyoukei”. If this けり attaches to a Renyoukei verb, we need to check if 有り is in the Renyoukei or not. Then we’ll know for sure which of the three けり’s is in this sentence. Ugh, homophones.

To check which “form” the verb is in (Renyoukei, etc.), think about the last sound in 「有り」 and check this chart:

This chart was made by Anthony Stewart. The original chart has more cool things and is available here.

Using the charts is like playing Battleship. The verb types are the x-axis points which intersect with sound-based forms on the y-axis. As the chart lists, 有り, a ラ行変格 verb, could appear as -あら, -あり, -ある, or -あれ. The form in our sentence ends in -り, which means we either have the Renyoukei or the Shuushikei.

Renyoukei is a connective form, like the Modern Japanese pre-masu stem. Shuushikei is a form that marks the end of a sentence, like how “-ました” in modern Japanese always comes at the end of a sentence and never in the middle. 有り doesn’t end the sentence, so it’s not in the Shuushikei. Plus, 有り is connected to something, which means it’s the Renyoukei 「あり」. We were right with our context judgement: the right けり is the past tense helper verb. けり also happens to be in the Shuushikei, the sentence-ending form, so all the pieces line up.

It’s helpful to know what all of those y-axis forms mean. But an in-depth knowledge of those verb forms isn’t necessary in the short-term approach since you can just look them up.

If you put the pieces together [“live” or “exist” + past tense + end of sentence], it becomes clear what 有りけり as a whole means. Kafka-fuura skillfully translates this sentence as: “In a time now long past, there was an old man who was a bamboo cutter.”

You might be getting curious about some patterns. Could 有り sit on its own in the Renyoukei? While using the short-term approach, don’t fill your head with such stuff. Just look things up until they make sense. Eventually, some patterns will settle in your memory, and that’s great, but memorizing patterns isn’t the aim. The aim is to give you a process for sporadic Kobun dealings. That said, the short-term approach only works if you have time to sit with a Classical sentence and some dictionaries and charts.

The Long-term Approach

The short term method will hold back folks who really want to learn the lingo of the ancients. So, I’ve made the above flow chart for your referencing pleasure. Short-term and long-term students can benefit from the chart, but long-term learners should know it thoroughly.

To read more than the first couple pages of one Classical Japanese text, it’s more efficient to have verb types steadily memorized on the front end of your learning journey.

Actually, that’s how my Latin education was; we learned verb conjugations and noun declensions while reading increasingly difficult sentences at a slow pace. At first I was reading “In the picture is a Roman girl named Flavia”, but by the end of the year, I could eek out a paragraph from the eloquent Cicero. If I had had a prior knowledge of Italian, my reading comprehension probably wouldn’t have taken me a year, though, because of common vocabulary and roots. So if you have a functional grasp of modern Japanese (and motivation!), it won’t take you a year to teach yourself what’s necessary to read Kobun.

Step 1: Know Thine Verb Types

As I briefly pointed out earlier, Kobun verbs come in different types. Think of them as flavors. Things that are watermelon flavored just get called some variety of “watermelon-flavored”, right? Verb type names aren’t misleading. For example, 四段 (yo-dan) verbs are called “quadrigrade” because they conjugate into four different vowel endings. 知る is a 四段 verb, and conjugates as outlined in orange:

The vowels あ、い、う、and え added together make four grades of sound, see? Hence 四 (“four”) 段 (“grades” or “steps”).

The other eight verb types are: 上一段 (kami-ichi), 上二段 (kami-ni), 下一段 (shimo-ichi), 下二段 (shimo-ni), and the irregular ナ行変格 (na) , ラ行変格 (ra), カ行変格 (ka), and サ行変格 (sa-gyou henkaku) verbs. For the first four, see the next image. The last four conjugate mostly as 四段 verbs, but with irregularities you can reference in a traditional chart.

Ichi-dan = one vowel in the Katsuyou. Kami = ‘upper’ vowel (almost always い). Shimo = ‘lower’ vowel (え). Ni-dan = either upper or lower vowel plus the median う.

My favorite author on Classical Japanese, Vovin, actually boils those verb categories down to just three: verbs with a vowel stuck at the end of the root (like mi-, “see”), verbs stuck with a consonant at the end (shin-, “die), and irregular verbs.

Step 2: Know Thy Charts

Photo by Linus Bohman

There are a variety of charts out there, but they’re all basically the same x/y-axis combo between verb types and forms. Hard-core classicists probably have, either intentionally or over time, memorized which sounds correspond to which verb forms.

Personally, I don’t think you need to have the sounds memorized. It would suffice to just be really familiar with the form boxes and what they represent:

• 未然形　Mizenkei: Imperfective, but not really, since it usually tags an action that has not yet begun. Connects often to form the negative.
• 連用形　Renyoukei: Stem form, like pre-ます.
• 終止形　Shuushikei: Sentence ender.
• 連体形　Rentaikei: Attributive. Modifies other parts of sentence, like 「かかる人…」, “such a person…”. Can also make gerunds and participials. Sometimes, this ends a sentence.
• 已然形　Izenkei: Perfective. Action started or completed.
• 命令形　Meireikei: Command form. Usually on its own and at the end of a sentence.

These forms are what I’m personally trying to memorize and understand, especially since I am now noticing Kobun forms in Japanese media a lot more. It’s easy for me to notice and remember things like “けり”, but not as easy to translate, say, a folk song as I hear it.

All Roads Lead to Rome

No matter which interest group you fall in for Classical Japanese, both translation approaches I’ve described emphasize looking at these four parts of verbs:

If you wish I’d provided more examples, check out the cool stuff below — especially the source with quizzes. Deciphering Kobun is a strategic process that takes practice (and time) to get right. If you have any questions, please say something in the comments section. The sources I’ve been using are have more fun tidbits than I have space in this article to fully explore (after all, they are books on the subject). Ditto for comments or criticisms: I want to hear your take on Kobun verbs, especially if you are learning it in class or on your own!

Cool Stuff

• Classical readings with multiple-choice quizzes (Japanese)
• Anthony Bryant’s page for verbs (English)
• Various Kobun readings (Japanese)
• Fill-in-yourself practice conjugation charts (Japanese)
• Wikimedia book for Kobun verbs, oriented with verb type on the y-axis (Japanese)

Sources

• Barczikay, Zoltan. “Classical Japanese Grammar: Japanese verbs”.
• Stewart, Anthony. “Bungo Nyuumon”, Paradigm Chart & Verbs.
• Kafka-Fuura. “竹取物語ー「かぐや姫の生い立ち」”Taketori Monogatari” – The Birth of The Shining Princess”
• Shirane, Haruo. Classical Japanese: A Grammar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. p. 24, 44.
• Vovin, Alexander. A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. p. 163- 172, 213.

Don’t get me wrong – I love Japanese just as much as the next weeaboo – but there were times that I got so bored with the vocabulary I was learning, especially verbs. I wanted to be able to express myself, be more animated, but I didn’t know how. I felt like a stale saltine cracker, using the same boring verbs over and over again amongst my friends. That was, until I learned how easy it was to modify the verbs I already knew by using onomatopoeia in Japanese.

The Power of Onomatopoeia

It’s probably not a question your Japanese teacher will bring up, but have you ever noticed how vague many verbs in Japanese really are? For instance, the word 笑う can refer to smiling, laughing, chuckling, or any other type of laughter. The verb 飛ぶ (tobu)、or 跳ぶ (tobu)、covers jumping, springing, and flying! As a rule, Japanese verbs have far more general meanings in comparison to English. However, this “insufficiency” is more than compensated for by the almighty onomatopoeia.

If you’re familiar with the term onomatopoeia in English, you’ll already know that it refers to words that mimic sounds like “sizzle,” “pop,” “bang,” or “cock-a-doodle-doo!” However, onomatopoeia in Japanese are a much more important part of the language, covering words that describe emotions, mental states, actions, and much more.

In fact, onomatopoeia are so prevalent in Japanese that there are three different categories of them: giseigo, giongo, and gitaigo. If you are interested in learning more on this subject, I’d recommend checking out Tofugu’s Japanese Onomatopoeia Guide. Japanese onomatopoeia also tend to follow one of the following forms: り endings、as in ゆっくり (slowly); duplication, as in ワンワン (bark-bark); and と endings, as in ちょっと (a little). The are written in either hiragana or katakana, but sometimes both are okay.

Onomatopoeia in Japanese are very in-depth, making them confusing for learners at times, but the basic function of an onomatopoeia is to describe things, whether it be actions or states of being. Onomatopoeia have the power to describe many things, but for now, let’s just stick with the verbs.

Onomatopoeia in Action

Grammatically speaking, the adverb usage (describing an action or process) is the default function of an onomatopoeia in Japanese, making it also the easiest. For the most part, you can just plop an onomatopoeia right in front of a verb and call it good.

“BUT WAIT, THERE’S NO PARTICLE!?” you may be thinking. Well, you’re not off that easy. The particle you should learn to associate with onomatopoeia is the particle “と.” In fact, the “と” in と-ending onomatopoeia is the particle と (it’s just been made easier for you)! Just as “と” is used to quote speech in Japanese, it is also used for sounds and onomatopoeia, though most times it is optional. When と is employed optionally however, it’s main effect is making one’s language more poetic.

So what verbs can you use with onomatopoeia? This is a difficult question. Onomatopoeia are often used with general verbs in order to further specify them. In addition to that, they can also be used with the verb する, to do. The use of onomatopoeia with the verb する often seems to be the result of simplification, having been paired with a more specific verb originally, just as ニコニコ笑う (nikoniko warau) has become　にこにこする (nikoniko suru) over time.

However, be careful: sometimes the meaning of an onomatopoeia can vary depending on which verb they are paired with. For example, ガツガツ食べる (gatsugatsu taberu) means to gobble something down, but “ガツガツする (gatsugatsu suru)”　means to do something with an obvious sense of greed (Where’s my money man? Where’s my money!?). Overall, there is not much consistency, and that’s what makes onomatopoeia tricky.

Enhancing Your Verbs

To make things easier, I’ve made a list of some common general verbs that can be made specific by adding onomatopoeia below. From an English speaker’s perspective, Japanese verbs may seem vague, but the difference between words like smile and laugh, or between jump and fly, can be communicated far more expressively through the use of onomatopoeia:

Key:
(と) = optional と usage
と = required と usage
strike-through = verb has been simplified to  する
verb / する = both する and the general verb can be used

寝る　（ねる）

ぐうぐう寝てる

コックリ寝る する　to nod off
ぐうぐう (と) 寝る　 fast asleep and snoring
すやすや (と) 寝る　sleep peacefully
うとうと寝る する　to doze off

歩く　（あるく）
とぼとぼ (と) 歩く trudge
ちょこちょこ (と) 歩く trot
のろのろ (と) 歩く / する　inch (along)
よろよろ (と) 歩く / するstagger, stumble
ふらふら (と) 歩く / する　shamble, teeter
ブラブラ (と) 歩く /する　stroll, loiter
ぞろぞろ (と) 歩く　swarm, cluster

食べる　（たべる）

ガツガツ食べてる

ガツガツ (と) 食べる to eat greedily or with a burning desire
パクパク (と) 食べる to eat with your mouth flapping open and shut
むしゃむしゃ (と) 食べる to munch and crunch on something
ぺろぺろ (と) 食べる to lick (e.g. ice cream)

見る　（みる）
じろじろ (と) 見る　to stare scrutinizingly
ジーと見る　to stare someone/something down
キョロキョロ 見る する　to look around restlessly
チラチラ (と) 見る　to glance at here and there
まじまじ (と) 見る　to look at something with astonishment

飲む　（のむ）
がぶがぶ (と) 飲む    to gulp something down
ちびちび (と) 飲む　to take a small sip, just to wet the mouth (used with sake)
ぐびぐび (と) 飲む　to drink (used with sake)
ごくごく (と) 飲む　normal drinking

飛ぶ/跳ぶ　（とぶ）

ビュンビュン飛んでる

ひらひら (と) 飛ぶ　to flutter (like a butterfly)
ビュンビュン (と) 飛ぶ　to soar through the air (like a fish from the water)
ポンポン (と) 跳ぶ　to jump up and down (like on a trampoline）
ぴょんぴょん (と) 跳ぶ　to leap (like a frog）
ふわーふわー (と) 飛ぶ　to float lightly
ぶんぶん (と) 飛ぶ　to fly with wings buzzing

泣く　（なく）
ワーワー (と) なく　to cry
メソメソ (と) 泣く　to weep
ぐすんぐすん (と) 泣く　to sob
おいおい (と) 泣く　to blubber
しくしく (と) 泣く　to whimper
わんわん (と) 泣く　to howl
ヒーヒー (と) 泣く / する　to pule
えんえんと泣く　to mew

笑う　（わらう）

ニヤニヤしてる (I don’t know why he’s smiling…)

にっこり笑う する　to grin
げらげら（と）笑う　to laugh out loud
ニヤニヤ　(と) 笑う / する　to grin stupidly (to laugh/smile for no reason)
はははと笑う　to laugh ”hahaha”
ニコニコ　(と) 笑う / する　to smile
くつくつ (と) 笑う　to titter (used in classical Japanese)
ワハハ と笑う　to laugh “haw-haw!”
ニタニタ　(と) 笑う / する　to grin broadly
おほほと笑う　to laugh like a rich old woman, “ohoho!”
クスクス (と) 笑う　to giggle, to laugh under one’s breath

Adding More Emotion

Besides adding extra words, the way you say something can also strongly affect the emotive quality of speech, no matter what language. Now, I know that we’ve all been taught that Japanese is a very precise language, with flat tone quality and clear vowels, and that might all be true, assuming we were talking about a country of robot zombies.

Onomatopoeia are like the rebels of the Japanese world – they like to break all the rules. Since onomatopoeia are used to express emotion and describe details, the way they are said is often different from normal speech.

For example, if someone says “ruff-ruff” in English, they would most likely do so in a way that mimics a dog, rather than saying it in their normal voice. Japanese onomatopoeia are similar in that they too are said in a more expressive fashion. More specifically, the sound qualities of onomatopoeia are directly correlated to their intended emotional effect, more so than other word classes. This phenomenon can be seen clearly in the different forms of onomatopoeia:

と ending

Although the rules of Japanese state that all sounds must end in a vowel (expect ん) because of the syllablery nature of the language, onomatopoeia ending in  と are often pronounced with an abrupt stop, changing the と ending into a sharp “t” sound.  For instance, the onomatopoeia ドサっと (dosatto, with a thud) would be pronounced “dosat.” This abrupt “t” sound symbolizes quickness, the stopping of action, of the single occurrence of an action.

ん ending

Onomatopoeia that end in ん are pronounced with a nasal sound, producing a feeling of “prolonged resonance” or rhythm. An example of this would be どかん （dokan） which symbolizes the sound of a boom or explosion. Can you imagine hearing the sound of an explosion resonating in the distance?

Long vowel ending

The presence of a long-vowel at the end of a onomatopoeia represents the feeling of “prolongation or continuity.” Therefore, onomatopoeia like フワー (fuwaa, to float or drift) are pronounced with special attention to the elongated vowel sound to really capture a sense of airlessness.

り ending

The onomatopoeia form ending in り conveys a feeling of softness or slowness.　のそり (nosori) means slow movement, and is usually pronounced with a gentle り sound.

Reduplication

Just as in many other languages, the reduplication of a sound symbolizes repetition in sound or action.  Usually these onomatopoeia are produced more quickly, but that depends on what sound is being mimicked.  An example of this would be ごろごろ (to roll). You might hear this onomatopoeia over and over again like “ごろごろごろごろごろごろ”, especially by little children when they roll down hills for fun!

Here’s a small sample of reduplication in onomatopoeia, presented in a very *ahem* interesting way:

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Onomatopoeia make things fun in Japanese! They give the language pizzazz, spice, jazz – they bring words to life. Without them, all we could talk about would be the stock exchange, the weather, or types of fish – you decide.

Using onomatopoeia with the verbs you already know can give you a quick vocabulary boost. The use of onomatopoeia is also a big contributor to true fluency in Japanese, so you can totally impress your Japanese friends with these fun little words. Fun, easy, and useful words? I feel like there should be a loophole somewhere here.

Are onomatopoeia in Japanese fun for you, or are they just a pain? Let us know in the comments section below! Also, let us see what kind of sentences you can create now that you know some crazy cool new verbage!

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Sources:
Japanese Onomatopoeia

I put it up on the Japanese Resources page around a week ago (and it’s been on TextFugu a bit before that), but thought I should share it all with you here, since I think it will help a lot of you out. Being able to conjugate nouns, adjectives, and verbs isn’t terribly difficult, but it does require some nasty memorization for beginners … and I’ve never been a fan of memorization when I can help it (much better to memorize things other ways, I think. Stuffing your brain with repetition doesn’t do the trick for most people, even when they think it does). In order to help with this I came up with a Japanese Conjugation Cheatsheet. There was some thinking behind it, too, if you want to know why the cheatsheet is set up the way it is.

Simple And Not A Crutch

The whole goal was to make something that wouldn’t be too much of a crutch. The thing I worry about the most with cheatsheets is that people are using them instead of actually learning things. I’ve made sure the cheatsheet was set up in a way that won’t actually teach you about conjugating nouns, adjectives, and verbs. This cheatsheet is for people who have already learned it, but don’t know everything off the top of their head. Still, if you’re using this cheatsheet, it’s a good idea to be able to do all this (for the most part) on your own.

Really, the minimal amount of information is present. There’s information on:

• Neutral/Formal Nouns
• Neutral/Formal Adjectives
• Neutral/Formal Verbs
• A small reminder on how to convert from ます form to Dictionary Form
• Casual Nouns
• Casual Adjectives
• Casual Verbs

It will tell you how to do present/future, past, negative, and past negative tenses. Beyond that, there’s nothing else. It doesn’t cover the billion other things it could cover, because I wanted to keep things simple. Besides, if you don’t know the things on the cheatsheet, it’s really hard to learn anything else, so think of this cheatsheet as a cheatsheet for the foundations you need to learn to be awesome.

Formal vs. Informal

Another thing I wanted to do is make sure there was a way for people to visually see the difference between formal and informal, since I think the difference between the two are really important when learning Japanese. Both of them are good to know, so I’ve put them both on the cheatsheet. I didn’t include any of the super informal stuff, or the super formal stuff – only the stuff that’s going to be useful 90%+ of the time.

The cheatsheet positions the formal / informal conjugations in a vertical fashion, where formal is on top, and as you go down it gets more informal. Anyways, it’s pretty obvious when you actually look at the conjugation cheatsheet :)

Download It!

You can download it for free right here – Definitely share it with your Japanese-learning friends, classmates, teachers, etc. Might be helpful. If you use it and like it, please “recommend” it on the Japanese Resources page. Really appreciate it!

Download Page

Also, if you’re into this kind of thing, there’s the somewhat similar and possibly even more useful “Japanese Particles Cheatsheet.” Enjoy!

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