Posted by valzevul 2 days ago
There’s no clever engineer hack that replaces time spent with the language. and with regard to japanese, please stay away from romaji, unless you're still in beginner stage and typing things out to communicate words you already know the phonetics to.
The choice of romaji is deliberate for multiple reasons and is defended in the article (with counter-arguments for why it’s bad too).
I prefer the term "group 2 verbs" to "-ru verbs." Group 2 verbs are verbs that end in -eru or -iru, not just -ru. Of course there are some exceptions, like kaeru, which ends in -eru but is actually a -u verb. Conjugation is easy: remove the final -ru and append -masu, -mashita, etc.
"Group 1 verbs" (again, -u verbs) are verbs that are not group 2 verbs. Conjugation is a bit more difficult because the -nu, -bu, -mu, and -u verbs have many suffixes. However, after memorizing these two (-nbmu and -u, because -nu, -bu, and -mu are almost the same), the rest are easy.
There are only two irregular verbs: kuru and suru. Just memorize them.
I learned Japanese by just memorizing. Once you have memorized enough verbs and their conjugations, you can figure out the conjugation of a new verb even if you don't understand how it works.
Irregulars notwithstanding, the conjugation pattern is actually completely lossless if you just remember the imperative form (e.g. 着ろ kiro, 切れ kire) instead of the infinitive, which is lossy (e.g. 着る kiru, 切る kiru). Then there's no need to have to remember, "oh... is this -iru verb group 1 or group 2?"
i chi ri tte
bi mi ni nde
ki ite
gi ite
shi shite
u tsu ru tte bu mu nu nde ku ite, gu ite
without the shi shite as that had been learned well ahead of the lesson adding ta/te forms.
I just think it's interesting how readily a little ditty tune helps people with recall, regardless of the actual tune.
I feel similarly about the transformations for the Japanese -te forms and -ta past tense marker. The entire system is:
Ichidan: add -te/ta to stem Godan: -u/ru/tsu -tte/tta -su -shite/shita -mu/bu/nu -nde/nda -ku -ite/ita -gu -ide/ida
So basically ten patterns which group into 5 subpatterns. There's some logic behind them - the -te and -ta morphemes originally got added to the -i/pre-masu/ren'youkei stem and then underwent some idiosyncratic consonant reductions in godan verbs. But, really, it's only ten patterns, you can just memorize them; and these are incredibly common verb forms that get used all the time so you'll have them reinforced frequently if you are at all engaging with the language. It's a lot less to memorize than if you were learning Ancient Greek or Sanskrit or something.