How to Conjugate Japanese Conditional Form ば

The conditional form of Japanese verbs is also often called the ば form because all verbs end in 〜ば in this form. This form is used when we would use "if" or "when" in English.

What Is the Conditional Form?

All Japanese verbs in the "conditional form" end in 〜ば, so it is also often called the ば form. The name "conditional form" comes from the fact that it is used to express the conditions that need to be in place for a certain situation to arise, and it can generally be translated as "if," "when," or "whenever" in English. For example, 食べれば means "if/when I eat," 飲めば means "if/when I drink," and すれば means "if/when I do."

In this post, we'll focus on how to conjugate verbs into the conditional form. If you want to know more about what it means and how we use it, check out this page.

Godan	会う　→　会えば立つ　→　立てば写す　→　写せば代わる　→　代われば書く　→　書けば泳ぐ　→　泳げば死ぬ　→　死ねば学ぶ　→　学べば休む　→　休めば
Ichidan	食べる　→　食べれば起きる　→　起きれば閉じる　→　閉じれば
Irregular	来る（く　）　→　来れば（く　　）する　→　すれば

The conjugation of this form is very regular, which makes it easy to conjugate. In fact, we can apply exactly the same rule to every single Japanese verb, including 来る and する, which usually behave differently from the rest of the pack.

All we need to do is take the dictionary form of the verb (that's the one that always ends in a hiragana from the う line, like 会う and 行く) and switch it to the え line:

会う　→　会え
行く　→　行け

The second and final step is to add 〜ば:

会う　+　え　+　ば　=　会えば
行く　+　け　+　ば　=　行けば

If you prefer to think of this in terms of romaji, remove the final "u" sound from any verb, and replace it with "eba." So for example, the verb for "to meet," 会う (au) becomes 会えば (aeba), and the verb for "to write," 書く(kaku) becomes 書けば (kakeba). What about 食べる (to eat)? Exactly the same! 食べる (taberu) turns into 食べれば (tabereba).