Tried googling but I’m getting nothing!
Since I’ve got 6 weeks until I’m back at work I’m finally going through *Nihongo somatome* (I’ve been learning for a while, I just need more structure if I want to do N5 in December) and it’s come to conjugation of ある/する/来た. I’m already familiar with the formal conjugations thanks to Genki but should I make sure I know the informal ones too?
The textbook is for N5 studying and Japanese “for everyday life”, so its unclear which category this falls into. It would be good for me to still learn the informal versions, but I’m tempted to come back to them at a later point if it’s not a priority for the exam.
Btw I reccommend this book! But it does require some prior knowledge and a consistent study routine.
**Tl;dr: Can I skip informal conjugation of ある/する/来た for N5 or nah?**
7 comments
You’re about one third into your beginner textbook that specifically targets N5 and you’re asking if you can skip stuff they make a point of teaching early on?
Anyway, assuming that by “formal” you mean です / ます etc., in the beginning it can look like those are good enough to say everything because all the sentences you learn are very short. But these polite forms are almost only used at the end of a sentence, especially in “everyday life”. Nobody really speaks in tons of really short sentences where every verb can be made polite.
You can see some example N5 questions here:
https://www.jlpt.jp/samples/n5/index.html
It would take less time to learn it than to ask.
I really suggest you don’t spend 5 more months avoiding learning it.
To answer the question directly, _there are informal verb forms on the sample N5 questions_, so you should probably know them. It’s not a mistake that your book is covering them. Comprehensive N5 materials do.
> I’m already familiar with the formal conjugations thanks to Genki
Not to be rude, but it seems to be a semi-common misconception that Genki covers only formal conjugations. If that were the case, it would not be a comprehensive N5-level textbook. _It gets to informal forms starting with Lesson 8_.
Genki 1 covers a good deal of N5. I believe N5 covers plain forms, so you should study them.
Somatome is a decent series, but I doesn’t cover everything. I’d pick up a few more JLPT prep books just to make sure you’re covering all of your bases.
ある/する/来る etc aren’t the “informal” forms. They’re the dictionary forms off which all of the conjugations are based. You can’t skip learning them if you ever want to actually learn Japanese.
It actually makes more sense to learn the dictionary forms before the ますforms. Going from dictionary to ますform is much easier than trying to reverse engineer ます back to dictionary form.
Textbooks just teach ます form first because they assume learners will be only talking with their teachers or strangers and they don’t want them to sound “rude” . Even though pretty much no Japanese person would be offended that a foreigner who is an obvious beginner is speaking casually.
For N5, yes, you need to know them.
The N5 doesn’t delve super deep into ~ています/~ている. But you should definitely know the basic present/future and past tenses, polite AND plain, which does include ある/する/来た.