Japanese Lesson 36: Casual/Polite form - affirmative pattern

Following last week's lesson about the negative and interrogative patterns of the casual (dictionary form), today I will be explaining about yet another form, which is situated between the casual and the polite ones, so to easily understand, I will be calling it casual/polite form. It has the exact same meaning but it is mostly used in conversations.


Proceeding to the verb construction, it can be quite easily explained!

Basically, you just have to get the casual form, and add "ndesu".

Example sentence: Watashi wa Nihon he ikundesu (I go to Japan).

And that's it!

You got yourself a new verb form, with little effort! ^O^


Here are the old forms, and the equivalent new ones, using the verb iku (to go):

	POLITE	CASUAL	CASUAL/POLITE
PRESENT AFFIRMATIVE	ikimasu	iku	ikundesu
PRESENT NEGATIVE	ikimasen	ikanai	ikanaindesu
PRESENT INTERROGATIVE	ikimasuka	iku(?)	ikundesuka
PAST AFFIRMATIVE	ikimashita	itta	ittandesu
PAST NEGATIVE	ikimasendeshita	ikanakatta	ikanakattandesu
PAST INTERROGATIVE	ikimashitaka	itta(?)	ittandesuka

P.S.: Can you discover the meaning of the kanji above? I will be saying it in next week's lesson! Hint: It describes today's lesson!