Lesson 52
Base 4 + nai
In the last lesson we saw how verbs in the Base 4 with ru "can do" plain form can be treated the same as Base 3 ichidan verbs ending in eru. We looked at some examples which use polite endings just as if they were ichidan verbs in the Base 2 form. In this lesson we will use Base 4 + nai, the "cannot do" plain form. If it helps, you can pretend that we are converting ichidan verbs to Base 1 and adding nai for the plain negative ending, which was covered in Lesson 17. (As you remember, Bases 1 and 2 are the same for ichidans.)
Please keep in mind that these are yodan verbs in Base 4 + nai. I only mention this because they act just like ichidans in many ways, which makes the logic behind converting them easier to most people. It made sense to me, and I hope it will make sense to you. Let's take the same examples from the last lesson and change them to plain negative:
- Watashi wa nihongo o yomenai. (I can't read Japanese.)
- Keiko wa piano o hikenai. (Keiko can't play the piano.)
- Ashita Jack wa Tokushima ni ikenai. (Jack can't go to Tokushima tomorrow.)
See how that works? As mentioned in the last lesson, this form is only meant for yodans, but there are exceptions like taberenai (I can't eat it) and nerenai (I can't sleep).
As you may have guessed, there are other nai-related endings that will work here. Here are two we've already covered:
- Jack wa korenai deshou. (Jack probably won't be able to come.)
- Jitensha ni norenakereba arukimashou. (If you can't ride a bicycle let's walk.)
Word Check
neru: to sleep
koreru: to be able to come (This is a specialized verb.)
noru: to ride
aruku: to walk
(Verbs are shown in their plain form.)
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