Chapter 3

More grammar

Having covered the basics in the previous chapter, we will revisit and elab-
orate on certain inflections and conjugations, as well as list all of the other
inflections that are used in the Japanese language. This chapter treats the
inflections one by one, starting with a recap of politeness and explaining
how it applies to all verbs, then treating all the basic – but not yet covered

• inflections, followed by the more advanced inflections that are used in
  Japanese.

3.1 Revisits and simple inflections.

3.1.1 Politeness

Politeness, or the use of
as it is called in Japanese, revolves around
using and. We saw these explained in the previous chapter, but
for completeness their bases will be listed again here:

copula

( ) /

( )

/

/

( )

Of these, the copulae are used in combination with nouns and ver-
bal adjectives, and is used in combination with verbs (in their
form). For the and verbs, the procedure is exactly the same: the

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