Conjugable words (verbs, i‑adjectives, and na‑adjectives) are traditionally considered to have six possible . This article lists those from the , as well as the that was split off during the post‑WWII spelling reforms.
Negative The , apart from being plainly negative, can commonly express affirmation of the contrary but in an understated way, for example in rhetorical negative questions which imply affirmation, often for politeness, such as for softening hortatives.
Negative form example sentences English Japanese Function 'There's no need to lose your temper with me,' […] 'If you're upset because Isobel went back to London, then that's not my fault! She could have stayed here overnight. It's not as though Joseph is around to be offended. In fact, I'm sure that Joseph wouldn't have been offended anyway.' general negation After all, she'd seen the old lady every day. He'd stayed away for six years. "He hasn't nerve enough to kill a fly." You cannot pass!Gandalf!I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn! Go back to the Shadow. You shall not pass! Die for me, thou shalt not. And I too shall not die for thee. Thanks to that, I did not die. Even so, he never lost hope. Did you walk round the city streets in America?I didn't. past negation in non‑past form I stayed up late at night waiting, but he never came. Isn't the magazine interesting and doesn't it also prove of value? rhetorically implied affirmation of the contrary Won't you read it? Aren't we early? Aren't we not early? Isn't it nice? He said he'd come but I guess he won't after all. Shall we leave? How about a drink? Of course not only is there lack of evidence to substantiate the government's theory but on the contrary a number of pieces of counter‑evidence even can be offered. My grades were none too outstanding. There is no reason to think that a mouse can get the better of a cat.
Negative: Conjugation table The negative form is created by using the mizenkei base, followed by the suffix. This auxiliary arose in eastern dialects during Late Middle Japanese and displaced the western ‑n (see below) in standard Japanese, and while having been linked to another negative auxiliary, , it appears to be a grammaticalized version of the adjective . In masculine (or rural eastern) speech, ‑nai is smoothed out into ‑nē (see for more comparative examples).
‑N () is a negative auxiliary that was reduced from the earlier western and classical ‑nu (), but was largely displaced by the eastern ‑nai () in standard Japanese. ‑N(u) is still found in modern Japanese and thought of as "shortened" from ‑nai, although as the fact that is strictly dialectal compared to the standard shows, it is not really a "short" form. Some modern examples include , , . ‑N(u)s infinitive form, ‑zu, is still used in writing. is indeed shortened to especially by young people. ‑Nai and ‑nu can be used in the same sentence where ‑nai is treated as conclusive and ‑nu as attributive: .
The regular negative of aru would be aranai, but it is very rarely used, for example in , , etc. In Murakami Haruki's 2017 novel Killing Commendatore, the character "Commendatore", who is characterized as having "an odd way of speaking" that is "not the way ordinary people would speak", often, but not always, uses aranai in place of nai. The western aranu usually functions as an attributive word that idiomatically means "unexpected" or "untoward", as in ; it can still have a literal meaning and be used predicatively just like nai, but for literary or faux‑archaic effect, as in the Parmenidian phrase . Arazu usually occurs in the literary negative copular phrase , as in .
For the negatives of suru and its compounds, the general practice is to pair the eastern shi‑ with the eastern ‑nai, and the western se‑ with the western ‑n(u) and ‑zu for mainstream Japanese (only the eastern shinai is standard). Any of such combinations as sanai, sunai, shin(u), etc are considered dialectal. The writer Mori Ōgai, hailing from the western prefecture of Shimane, reportedly rigorously used senai, apparently in accordance with the classical (western) se‑, despite the dominance of sen in the west. For "irregular" verbs such as and , which are irregular even compared to suru, see for more.
The current negative of ‑masu is ‑masen. The unique shapes of ‑masen (rather than ‑mashinai) and the hortative ‑mashō (rather than *‑mashiyō) suggest their provenance in western polite speech. Compare westernized hyper‑polite adjectival expressions with gozaimasu. The easternized ‑mashinai was first recorded in its spoken form with vowel fusion as ‑mashinē in Edo Japanese. It has been attested in dialog from modern literature, for example in the speech of underclass, poor, peasant, servile or rural characters, even non‑Japanese ones, notably the eye dialect of black slaves from the novel Gone with the Wind. The practice of using the stigmatized "unsophisticated" Tōhoku Japanese, in which ‑mashinai and ‑mashinē figure, to translate the stereotypical speech of black Southern Americans, has become unpopular. The use of a low‑class pseudo‑dialect has been claimed to contribute to the churlish stereotype of Tōhoku Japanese, although it has also been argued that such use is increasingly perceived as mere fictional rural speech without necessarily any association with real‑life dialects.
The negatives of are regularly konai/konē/kon(u), with kinai/kinē being dialectal Kantō alternatives.
‑N also happens to be a reduced form of ‑mu (), whose other reduced form, ‑u, is still used to make hortative forms (). ‑Nu also happens to be an archaic perfective auxiliary, with a different conjugation from the negative ‑nu; it is equivalent to ‑ta/‑da in modern Japanese, and it is sometimes used elevatedly, as in .
The godan and ichidan‑based negative endings ‑ranai, ‑rinai or ‑renai, specifically with the consonant r, can be reduced to ‑nnai and even ‑nnē in speech, as in , , .
The expressions comes from a special use of the subsidiary verb (see Gerund: Grammatical compatibility for examples).
The godan verb , whose kanji represents the Chinese word for "know", is often translated as "know", but a more accurate translation would be "learn", "find out", or "get to know". In order to say "I know", the construction is used instead (see Gerund: Grammatical compatibility for the usage of ‑te iru). This is because shiru is imbued with active recognition, which relates to the archaic meaning of taking physical command or possession of somebody or something, reflected by the spellings with the kanji for the Chinese word for "rule", "govern" or "control", and for "lead". To "know", therefore, is to take psychological command or possession of outside information, hence shiru ("I take command of this information"), and maintain it, hence shitte iru ("I took command of this information and it's still in my knowledge"). While "I know" ("I take command of it and still have it") is shitte iru, "I don't know" is actually , which is morphologically the negative of shiru, but semantically the negative of both shitte iru and shiru.
On the other hand, implies perpetuation of ignorance, for example in . There have been analyses on precise cases where shitte inai is interchangeable with or even preferable to shiranai, for example when paired with shitte iru in the same clause, as in ; or in cases involving the perfect aspect, only shitte inai, not shiranai, can be used, as in , Nevertheless, the question remains as to why shiranai is uniquely more common than shitte inai as the negative of shitte iru to begin with, a phenomenon not yet observable in other verbs. A recorded conversation with a young child shows that shiranai is not inherently intuitive in and of itself: when his father asked him a question with papa […] shiranai ("I don't know […]"), he mirrored his prompt with shiranai ("I don't know"); yet, when his father asked him with shitte 'ru deshō ("you know, don't you?"), he erroneously responded with *shitte 'ru nai ("I don't know", or more "accurately", shitte 'nai, though the expected response was still shiranai). In western dialects, there are , , , and .
Unlike verbs, adjectives do not have mizenkei, and instead their negatives are formed with their infinitives followed by the negative adjective nai, which is used to expand adjectives' negative conjugation similarly to how its opposite, the verb aru, is used to expand their affirmative conjugation. Since nai is of itself an adjective, it is possible to have a double negative, as in , , , etc.
The western negative auxiliaries ‑n(u) and ‑zu cannot attach directly to adjectival infinitives, and thus require the help of aru (which does have a mizenkei, ara‑), hence ‑karan(u) (← ‑ku aran(u)), ‑karazu (← ‑ku arazu), ‑karazaru (← ‑ku arazaru), etc. These are primarily used in writing, seldom in speech.
The word is the negative of the archaic adjective . Usually this western negative is used, but the easternized has also been reported as an Edo expression.
Dictionary form Pattern Negative form Godan and pseudo‑yodan verbs Irregular godan verbs Ichidan verbs Irregular verbs Verbal auxiliaries Adjectives and adjectival auxiliaries
Negative: Grammatical compatibility The eastern negative ‑nai generally works like an adjective, although its gerund ‑nai de is more common than the adjectival ‑nakute. The western gerund is ‑n(u) de.
The imperfect negative can be followed by the noun , whereby it means "while it hasn't happened" or "before it happens." Contradictorily, when it is followed by the nouns and , it can also mean the same thing, even though the literal meaning would suggest "before it doesn't happen." Thus, would mean the same as , and roughly as the affirmative which, however, may be used when the speaker has positive conviction that one will in fact come.
The classical, and thus more literary than colloquial, ‑zu is originally the infinitive of ‑n(u), but it is often used conclusively with a copula. It is often optionally followed by the copular infinitive particle ni as in ‑zu ni which works like a sort of adverbial gerund that means "without doing." It is possible to distinguish between coordination in and subordination in .
Negative with extender examples Extender English Japanese Function "You good? Worst‑case scenario, you get caught before you even kill anyone." while not having done something; before doing something My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,To give up willingly that noble titleYour master wed me to: nothing but deathShall e'er divorce my dignities. copulae I do not understand a word. elevated negative predication Of course the largest borrower is America which takes up to 40 percent of the total; Japan is far from equaling that but is in second place. I slept soundly without dreaming. elevated negative conjunction If you keep steady, without running risks, you are safe.
Passive The passive or passive potential turns the patient (or target) or victim of an action into a subject, which can be marked with the nominative particle ga.
The pure passive simply expresses what act is done by the agent (A) to the patient (P), thus becomes . The agent is typically marked with ni, but kara can sometimes be used instead, especially if ni might be ambiguous; for example in , it is not clear which between A and B the agent is, so kara can be used instead as in .