Masu-forms (polite) and plain forms

Japanese verbs can be divided into many groups from various viewpoints. Today I would like to write about one way of grouping, called “masu” form and “ta” form, or plain form or short form. There is a different way of looking at it that is easier to understand than considering the form’s name.

ikimasu (1)　iku (2)

ikimashita (1)　itta (2)

ikimasen (1)　ikanai (2)

To begin with, what is the difference between these two forms? An easy answer is type 1 is polite and type 2 is casual. For example, you would ask your boss a question like this:

ashita doko ni ikimasu ka?

But, you would ask your friend like this:

ashita doko ni iku?

If I give you this explanation, you might say, “I want to learn casual form (type 2) because I want to speak Japanese to my friends” or “I want to start with casual form”. However, in reality it does not work that simply. Even if you know “iku” (plain form), if you don’t know “ikimasu” (masu form), there are many expressions you can’t say. For instance, “want to go” or “would like to go” are made based on “ikimasu”. Remove “masu” from “ikimasu” and add “tai” to “iki”. Then you will get “ikitai” which means “want to go”. There are many of these kinds of expressions.

On the other hand, some people say, “I always want to use a polite ‘masu form’ because I don’t want to take the risk of saying something impolite in Japanese. Therefore, the ‘plain form’ is unnecessary.” This is not good, either. This is because many expressions require plain form of verbs. If you don’t use plain form for these expressions, they are not grammatically correct regardless of the situation. In short, if you don’t know both masu form and plain form, you can’t make expressions in Japanese.

Moreover, which should you learn first? Either one would be ok if you learn both in the end. But, I recommend you start with the masu form because conjugation of this form is easier. You just need to change “masu” to “mashita”, “masen” and “masendeshita” in order to describe different tenses except for “te form” which expresses a present continuous tense.

Isn’t this simple? It makes sense whenever you learn something to start from easy things and then move on to more difficult things.

I think the first thing you find difficult when you start learning Japanese is verb conjugation. First of all, you should master how to classify verbs into groups such as group 1 and group 2 (classification in “Minna no Nihongo”) or U-verb and RU-verb (classification in “Genki”) before learning masu form and plain form. If you can do this, you will be better at verb conjugation. If you don’t know these ways of classification that I mentioned, please ask me.