Verbs

Japanese verbs end in u. -ru, -tsu, -ku, -su, and so on are the infinitive endings.
for example,
to speak is 話す(hanasu).

In 日本語, a grammatically complete sentence only needs a verb.
It is similar to Spanish in that the subject can be implied. However, in Japanese,
the object can be implied too!

For example,

Eat.
食べる。

There are two types of verbs: Ichidan (ru) and Godan (u).

with "ru" verbs, you drop the -ru to conjugate.
with "u" verbs, you change the -u to something else.

for negative, you add "nai".
RU/Ichidan: 食べる＝食べない (tabe[ru/nai])
U/Godan: 話す＝話さない (hana[su/sanai])

For past you add た. for different endings you do different things.

Ending	Non-Past	changes to...	Past
す	話す	す→した	話した
く ぐ	書く 泳ぐ	く→いた ぐ→いだ	書いた 泳いだ
む ぶ ぬ	噛む 遊ぶ 死ぬ	む→んだ ぶ→んだ ぬ→んだ	噛んだ 遊んだ 死んだ
る う つ	切る 買う 持つ	る→った う→った つ→った	切った 買った 持った

Credits for this chart go to Tae Kim at www.guidetojapanese.org

That's a lot to deal with, but it's not that bad once you get it down.
We'll continue this later :)

Looking It Up

I've been trying to learn my kanji by reading things with them.
Looking the ones I don't know up, I'll learn the common ones, the ones I need to know.
That's my theory, anyway.
Thing is, my grammar's not so excellent. So it's slow work.

I am starting to get it, though. some of the ones I've learned recently are:
存在する - sonzaisuru - being
喜び - yorokobi - joy


And I've got more to go.
I just hope I'll be able to pick them up quickly. And not forget them.

The "suru" in sonzaisuru is what you add to something to make it a verb. There's a large collection of suru verbs. You conjugate the +suru (i.e. +shita, +ta, +shimasen, etc.).
Whenever you see する, it's usually after a verb, a kanji you might not know. It's easy to recognize.