Japanese conjugation (mizenkei base)

Conjugable words are traditionally considered to have six possible.[] This article lists those from the [|negative] base, as well as the tentative base that was split off during the post‑WWII spelling reforms.

Negative

The negative form is broadly equivalent to the English word "not".

English	Japanese	Function
‘There’s no need to lose your temper with me,’ ‘If you’re upset because Isobel went back to London, then that’s not my fault! She could have stayed here overnight. It’s not as though Joseph is around to be offended. In fact, I’m sure that Joseph wouldn’t have been offended anyway.’		general negation
After all, she’d seen the old lady every day. He’d stayed away for six years.		general negation
“He hasn’t nerve enough to kill a fly.”		general negation
You cannot pass! Gandalf! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn! Go back to the Shadow. You shall not pass!		general negation
Die for me, thou shalt not. And I too shall not die for thee.		general negation
Even so, he never lost hope.		general negation
Did you walk round the city streets in America? I didn't.		past negation in non-past form
I stayed up late at night waiting, but he never came.		past negation in non-past form

Negative: Conjugation table

The negative form is created by using the mizenkei base, followed by the suffix. This auxiliary arose in eastern dialects during Late Middle Japanese and displaced the western ‑n in standard Japanese, and while having been linked to another negative auxilary,, it appears to be a grammaticalized version of the adjective. It is possible to have a double negative, as in,,, etc.
The regular negative of aru would be aranai, but it is very rarely used, for example in,, etc. In Murakami Haruki's 2017 novel Killing Commendatore, the character "Commendatore", who is characterized as having "an odd way of speaking" that is "not the way ordinary people would speak", often, but not always, uses aranai in place of nai.
‑N is a negative auxiliary that was reduced from the earlier western and classical ‑nu, but was largely displaced by the eastern ‑nai in standard Japanese. ‑N is still found in modern Japanese and thought of as "shortened" from ‑nai, although as the fact that is strictly dialectal compared to the standard shows, it is not really a "short" form. Some modern examples include,,. ‑Ns infinitive form, ‑zu, is still used in writing. is indeed shortened to especially by young people. ‑Nai and ‑nu can be used in the same sentence where ‑nai is treated as conclusive and ‑nu as attributive:.
For the negatives of suru and its compounds, the general practice is to pair the eastern shi‑ with the eastern ‑nai, and the western se‑ with the western ‑n and ‑zu for mainstream Japanese. Any of such combinations as sanai, sunai, shin, etc are considered dialectal. The writer Mori Ōgai, hailing from the western prefecture of Shimane, reportedly rigorously used senai, apparently in accordance with the classical (western) se‑, despite the dominance of sen in the west.
The current negative of ‑masu is ‑masen. The unique shapes of ‑masen and the [|hortative] ‑mashō suggest their provenance in western polite speech. Compare westernized hyper-polite adjectival expressions with gozaimasu. The easternized ‑mashinai was first recorded in its spoken form with vowel fusion as ‑mashinē in Edo Japanese. It has been attested in dialog from modern literature, for example in the speech of underclass, poor, peasant, servile or rural characters, even non-Japanese ones, notably the eye dialect of black slaves from the novel Gone with the Wind. The practice of using the stigmatized "unsophisticated" Tōhoku Japanese, in which ‑mashinai and ‑mashinē figure, to translate the stereotypical speech of black Southern Americans, has become unpopular. The use of a low-class pseudo-dialect has been claimed to contribute to the churlish stereotype of Tōhoku Japanese, although it has also been argued that such use is increasingly perceived as mere fictional rural speech without necessarily any association with real-life dialects.
‑N also happens to be a reduced form of ‑mu, whose other reduced form, ‑u, is still used to make hortative forms. ‑Nu also happens to be an archaic perfective auxiliary, with a different conjugation from the negative ‑nu; it is equivalent to ‑ta/''‑da in modern Japanese, and it is sometimes used elevatedly, as in.
The godan and ichidan-based negative endings ‑ranai, ‑rinai or ‑renai, specifically with the consonant r'', can be reduced to ‑nnai and even ‑nnē in speech, as in,,.
The expressions comes from a special use of the subsidiary verb .
The godan verb, whose kanji represents the Chinese word for "know", is often translated as "know", but a more accurate translation would be "learn", "find out", or "get to know". In order to say "I know", the construction is used instead. This is because shiru is imbued with active recognization, which relates to the archaic meaning of taking physical command or possession of somebody or something, reflected by the spellings with the kanji for the Chinese word for "rule", "govern" or "control", and for "lead". To "know", therefore, is to take psychological command or possession of outside information, hence shiru, and maintain it, hence shitte iru. While "I know" is shitte iru, "I don't know" is actually, which is morphologically the negative of shiru, but semantically the negative of both shitte iru and shiru. On the other hand, implies perpetuation of ignorance, for example in. There have been analyses on precise cases where shitte inai is interchangeable with or even preferable to shiranai, for example when paired with shitte iru in the same clause, as in ; or in cases involving the perfect aspect, only shitte inai, not shiranai, can be used, as in, Nevertheless, the question remains as to why shiranai is uniquely more common than shitte inai as the negative of shitte iru to begin with, a phenomenon not yet observable in other verbs. A recorded conversation with a young child shows that shiranai is not inherently intuitive in and of itself: when his father asked him a question with papa shiranai, he mirrored his prompt with shiranai ; yet, when his father asked him with shitteru deshō, he erroneously responded with *shitteru nai. In western dialects, there are,,, and.

Negative: Grammatical compatibility

The eastern negative ‑nai generally works like an adjective, although its gerund ‑nai de is more common than the adjectival ‑nakute. The western gerund is ‑n de.
The imperfect negative can be followed by the noun, whereby it means "while it hasn't happened" or "before it happens." Contradictorily, when it is followed by the nouns and, it can also mean the same thing, even though the literal meaning would suggest "before it doesn't happen." Thus, would mean the same as, and roughly as the affirmative which, however, may be used when the speaker has positive conviction that one will in fact come.
The classical, and thus more literary than colloquially, ‑zu is originally the infinitive of ‑n, but it is often used conclusively with a copula. It is often optionally followed by the copular infinitive particle ni as in ‑zu ni which works like a sort of adverbial gerund that means "without doing." It is possible to distinguish between coordination in and subordination in.

Extender	English	Japanese	Function
	“You good? Worst-case scenario, you get caught before you even kill anyone.”		while not having done something; before doing something
	My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty, To give up willingly that noble title Your master wed me to: nothing but death Shall e’er divorce my dignities.		while not having done something; before doing something
copulae	I do not understand a word.		elevated negative predication
copulae	Of course the largest borrower is America which takes up to 40 percent of the total; Japan is far from equaling that but is in second place.		elevated negative predication
	I slept soundly without dreaming.		elevated negative conjunction
	If you keep steady, without running risks, you are safe.		elevated negative conjunction

Passive

The [|passive] or passive [|potential] turns the patient (or target) or victim of an action into a subject, which can be marked with the nominative particle ga.
The pure passive simply expresses what act is done by the agent to the patient, thus becomes. The agent is typically marked with ni, but kara can sometimes be used instead, especially if ni might be ambiguous; for example in, it is not clear which between A and B the agent is, so kara can be used instead as in.
The adversative, "victimizing" or affective passive expresses how a victim is affected by, or suffers from, if the original verb is intransitive, the act being done by an agent, as in ; or, if the original verb is transitive, the act being done by an agent to a patient, as in. The terms adversative and victimizing are broadly correct, although the "victim" can sometimes be positively or even desirably affected by the action, so affective would be a more general term; for example,,, etc. Sometimes what seems to be positive may turn out to be negative with additional context, such as. English has some similar constructions with intransitive verbs, though not necessarily with a negative connotation, such as "I got rained on" or "I got talked to".
The passive can also have no passive meaning, but is merely a more honorific way to exalt the subject. Some verbs that come with the particle ni may be ambiguous when used this way, as it might not be clear whether it is in the passive or the honorific without context. For example, since the verb comes with ni whether or not it is in the passive, in the line, out of context, the king could be glad either if the prince is defeated by his princess, or if he defeats her ; in context, it is the subject-exalting interpretation, hence “We would be delighted if ye defeat our princess.”
Actual sentences may lack one of the said components and therefore can become ambiguous without additional context, for example. Intransitive verbs, such as and, do not have the pure passive meaning, only the other two, as in and.
Historically, the "passive" construction has also had potential use, but except for ichidan verbs and kuru, this use now has a dialectal or old-fashioned literary flavor. It has been argued that the various meanings of the passive arose from the spontaneous potential, which spawned both the regular potential and the regular passive, the latter of which came to be used additionally for subject exaltation. It has also been suggested that the pure passive came to be in its current state due to translations from the English passive.

English	Japanese	Function
Tarō was beaten by his father.
Today's America was made by immigrants.
In other words, Japanese perceptual psychologists have begun to write many papers in English, and they have been read by researchers all over the world.
Tarō's father died.
My mother read my diary.
The inspector dropped in on us without notice.
Lilischur felt the chill as if she had been rained on, while Manfred felt like he was shaken in both mind and body.
and each, in this contest, wishes to be conquered rather than conquer.
It was Mr Brown who came to see you.
What school did you go to?
When holy Harry died, and my sweet son.
No, this man could not toil, he could never exert himself, I thought with resignation.
This place called Sumita was a hot-spring town, about ten minutes by train away from the castle town, or you could walk for thirty minutes,
“ There the Blessed One may both drink water and cool his limbs.”
for the unhappiest man was he who could not die, and happy he who could.
However, as the old saying goes, “You can’t win against a crybaby or an estate steward,” even if the government does such a thing in Japan, those calling themselves civil servants cannot do anything about it.
Next to this woman whom I had left barely a moment ago, the rest of humanity looked very far-off. The doorknob of my room differed from all other doorknobs in the world in that, without my needing to turn it, the door opens all by itself. Manually turning it was so unconscious that it seemed that way. My grandmother thought it was very important to not look like we served it only when there were guests, as she held that that was a kind thing to do.

Passive: Conjugation table

The passive form is created by using the mizenkei base, followed by the suffix. For ichidan verbs and, the passive form and the [|potential form] have an identical conjugation pattern with the same suffix. This makes it impossible to distinguish whether an ichidan verb adopts a passive or potential function without contextual information.
Arareru is historically attested with potential uses, but it is now primarily the more honorific way of saying and.
Honorific verbs can be made even more polite, as in,, etc. Excessively honorific verbs have been proscribed by textbooks, but they seem somewhat tolerable by speakers, even though they are still not as frequent with options without ‑reru. There are historical precedents of such double honorifics dating back to the Edo period.
Sareru is said to be shortened from serareru, the latter of which is said to be "pseudo-literary". Shirareru is rare for Group-A verbs, and is not to be confused with the segmentally and accentually homophonous, which may also be spelt in hiragana.

Passive: Grammatical compatibility

A passive potential verb is an ichidan verb, and can be conjugated further mostly in the same way an ichidan verb can be, although its imperative is uncommon.

English	Japanese	Function
“Be a good piggy and let me eat you!”		passive imperativity
Thou sun that comfort’st, burn!—Speak and be hang’d!		passive imperativity
“……Go to the Archbishop? You’re telling me to stab the Archbishop to death?” “You get stabbed to death!”		passive imperativity
“It would take too long to get Bodie up there. I’d be arrested.” “You should be!”		passive imperativity
However, the adage popular in the aviation industry before COVID, “get better, get bigger or get bought out,” should still ring true even today among small and medium business owners in the industry.		passive imperativity
He would have offered his own head to Nobunaga in Master Nobuyasu’s stead, but Ieyasu, deeply appreciative of such sentiment, declined.		passive imperativity
If you can't beat them, join them.		passive imperativity
“Come on now, Lord Ura, pray rise in haste. ”		subject-exalting imperativity
Should you wish to make the Iliad, put yourself on diet.		subject-exalting imperativity
And the striking thing was that the aforementioned phrase also meant “Come in to my bar.”		subject-exalting imperativity
Hie you to horse: adieu, Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?		subject-exalting imperativity
Lo, in this right hand, whose protection Is most divinely vow’d upon the right Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,		subject-exalting imperativity
As you shall prove us, praise us.		subject-exalting imperativity

Potential

describes the possibility for an action to happen, whether it involves an intentional acting agent or not:

With a capable agent:
Without a capable agent:
*
*

The patient of an action is customarily marked with the nominative particle ga, which has the same appearance as the passive voice:

Active:
*Pure passive:
*Passive potential:

It is not impossible to use instead in the passive potential above, but it is less preferable in this case. However, o is more preferable to ga in the presence of a motion verb :

Active:
*~~Pure passive:~~
*Potential:

The rise of the particle ga as a marker of the patient of the action can be attributed to the, whereby the patient or the action simply comes about, seemingly in a vacuum, without a voluntary or intentional agent acting on it. This may also relate to the verb which means "come about; come into existence; materialize; form; take shape; be done/made/born/produced → be doable/feasible/possible", as in,,, etc. Thus, such phrase as, spoken in the past tense by an author who does not want to mention themself as an agent, can be translated as "the novel wrote itself", rather than "I was able to write the novel". Other examples without voluntary agents include,,,, etc.

English	Japanese	Function
“I can still shoot a bow and arrow.” She winked. “Skin a deer. Track a cougar.” She leaned closer. “Use a bowie knife.”
Leticia Dartois can read minds.
Nobody can read my hand but my brother there—so he copies for me.
Still, English or no, Galen could not justify simply attacking the party and killing the woman.
This novel is very readable.
His handwriting is messy and completely illegible.
You can’t read at a place this noisy.
“I wanna pick some edible stuff on the mountain. ” “Well, how ’bout we go pick edible plants together by the river?” Oh crap, it’d be so weird if out of nowhere a one-year-old girl could tell if a plant is edible or not! While we were looking, I found a lot more edible plants than expected. Dandelions, watercress, dropwort, mugwort. I knew dandelions were edible in my previous life, but never thought of eating them for real.
Before I knew it, it was already written.
Try as she might to hold back, tears just start to flow.
The fish were biting like crazy.
Stealing MacGregor’s bride had seemed the perfect solution to Galen at the time. Aye, except for her being English it had seemed the perfect solution... right up until he had seen how puny and frail she appeared.

Potential: Conjugation table

Potential verbs are unique to godan-based passive potential verbs, which have been said to have been shortened by removing ar from areru: → ; →. Other hypotheses of derivation include contractions from infinitives followed by, presumably as in → kakeru; or conversions of nidan attributives into ichidan potentials, such as,. Short potential verbs of this type are conventional in Tokyo Japanese, while long verbs have become largely obsolescent, elevated or non-Tokyo.
The hypothetical short potential verb * is not used. However, the non-potential intransitive, the adversative passive and [|causative] are acceptable.
Non-godan-based verbs such as remain ambiguous. Such ambiguity can be resolved, at least colloquially, by a process dubbed, thus distinguishing the short for the potential and the long for the passive. This process was originally dialectal, but has been increasingly adopted by Tokyo speakers. Preference polls have shown that even among ra‑nuki kotoba users, the likelihood of usage significantly decreases as the mora count in the verb stem exceeds two; in other words, and are highly likely, but,, are much less likely.
Shortening passive verbs for potential uses is not universal among dialects, some of which may only use long verbs instead.
Apart from the dedicated potential verbs, the less ambiguous but more circumlocutory phrase can be used, as in,, etc. Depending on usage, a particle such as wa, mo or no can be used instead of ga. Some potential verbs, such as,, etc., have meanings similar to those of ‑able adjectives in English, such as drinkable/''potable, eatable/edible, etc., which describe the patient's quality to be enjoyed by the agent, not the agent's capability of enjoying the patient; these verbs are not completely interchangeable with koto ga dekiru; compare and.
Most contemporary ‑suru verbs do not really have underlying potential verbs and must use suru koto ga dekiru, which can be shortened to dekiru only for Group-A verbs, as in,, ; but,, etc. Historically, the passive potential sareru, serareru and shirareru were seldom used for Group-A verbs, but they have been supplanted by dekiru, which figured in a trend towards disambiguating the polysemous passive potential during the Meiji era. Non-Group-A verbs, which have become more like godan, do have potential verbs, such as /, /, etc; or more like ichidan, although probably without ra-nuki kotoba, as in, or with it, as in.
Writers can make use of various ways to convey potentiality, such as how Natsume Sōseki used a short potential verb, a long passive potential verb, koto + particle + dekiru and eru/uru in the same sentence in the novel Kokoro: ; or how Miyahara Kōichirō used koto + particle + dekiru, and both the long passive potential and short potential of the same verb in his translation of Kierkegaard's Either/Or'':

Potential: Grammatical compatibility

A potential verb is an ichidan verb, and can be conjugated further mostly in the same way an ichidan verb can be, although it may resist the imperative due to semantic difficulty.

Causative

expresses how an instigator causes an agent to do something, whether by making or letting the agent do it. The instigator is marked with the nominative ga, while the agent is customarily marked with either ni or o depending on the original verb's transitivity:

Active with an intransitive verb:
*Causative:
Active with a transitive verb:
*Causative:

For some speakers, the agent can be marked with ni even with an intransitive verb, which is possibly intended to mean "I lets A come" rather than "I makes A come"; or marked with o even with a transitive verb, despite the presence of the other o marking the patient. This means that the presence of the particle o does not guarantee clear meaning, for example in,.

English	Japanese	Function
I had one of my staff attend the conference.		compulsion
“You had him killed—hired Whidden and then didn’t pay him. ”		compulsion
She disappeared down the passage while Ash soaked and resoaked the T-shirt, being careful not to touch the doe’s burns with it as he ran water over them. He gave her another drink of water and tried to coax the fawn into taking one and failed.		compulsion
Drinkers might use various tactics to try and claw you back.		compulsion
That discovery made him famous.		compulsion
As soon as he got the greenlight for marriage, Balghed exuded such vitality that doctors would put on the same level as cockroaches, and climbed his way out the chasm of death.		compulsion
The young republic sought its chief merit, not in instilling fear, but rather in being itself in incessant fear,		compulsion
In summer we used to run a shallow bath and let the children play in it.		permission
I fed the botched pizza to my dog.		permission
* In winter, even when a woman is breastfeeding her child in the corner of the bounds of a field, you are not obliged to think that her chest is made of rubber and her child of cardboard.		permission
“Mimir, I wish to enrich my wisdom even more. Please let me drink the water from your spring.” “Do you wish to drink the water from this spring so much? I cannot let you drink it so easily,” Mimir said.		permission

Causative: Conjugation table

The causative form is created by using the mizenkei base, followed by the ichidan suffix. Colloquially, the shorter godan can be used, but this may cause confusion among verbs with virtually identical forms, especially those that happen to end in ‑su already. Compare the causatives of the intransitive and its historically derived transitive, the latter of which happens to resemble the godan causative ugokasu, as well as their potentials:
In classical Japanese, ‑su was the nidan ancestor of the modern ichidan ‑seru; it became yodan sometime during Late Middle Japanese. A survey found that respondents were more likely to use ‑su, which is now godan, over ‑seru, if the original verb was already godan.
One of the negative forms of,, as in, has been attested. has also been used.
The causatives of honorific verbs do not seem to occur, although at least one author has artificially used in their literal translations of Amdo Tibetan honorific causatives.
is said to be shortened from.
The pseudo-classical causative makes use of instead of ‑seru as shown above. It has ichidan conjugation, and it is meant to emulate the true classical causative with ‑shimu which has nidan conjugation. As a pseudo-classical auxiliary, ‑shimeru combines only with classical irrealis forms, which in most cases are not different from modern ones; but in the case of suru which has three irrealis forms, only the classical se‑ is used as in seshimeru, not *sashimeru nor *shishimeru. There exists a causative form for the copular taru that is tarashimeru, as in.

Causative: Grammatical compatibility

A causative verb is either an ichidan or godan verb, and can be conjugated further in the same way those types of verbs can be.
After conjugating into the causative form, the verbs become ichidan verbs. They can therefore be further conjugated according to any ichidan pattern. For instance, a causative verb can conjugate using the ichidan pattern for the to join sequential statements, or the infinitive form to append the polite auxiliary verb.
It has been suggested that the double causative is possible, as in, although it is doubtful whether speakers would find it comfortable.
The passive can be added on top of the causative to create the passivized causative:Ichidan causative: → Godan causative: →
The passivized causative results from the passive built on the causative, but not the opposite. It can also be used on auxiliaries that append to infinitives or gerunds, for example in,, although such examples, while grammatically plausible, is probably not used.

English	Japanese	Function
I have been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother-tongue.		passivity and passive potentiality
In reading this piece again, I was compelled to reflect on what it is like to be a married couple and a family.		passivity and passive potentiality
‘ You don’t seriously expect me to believe that a multimillionaire playboy like Raoul de Chevnair would ever notice a little nobody like you, let alone marry her!’		passivity and passive potentiality
He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.		passivity and passive potentiality
The other day, some journalist came and said, “There’ll be no mission as over the top as this one. There’s just no way you could get a project like this off the ground these days.”		passivity and passive potentiality
Make your beloved child travel.		imperativity
“They took the trouble to came here. Let them taste the food for poison first.”		imperativity
It keeps Cirello up at night... well, a lot of things keep him up at night... that Darnell would want him to reveal an undercover, name a snitch, and get someone killed.		imperativity
To the privileged classes at home and to the despotic powers abroad, it was loudly proclaimed that the republic was of a peaceful nature, and “live and let live” was its motto.		imperativity
“‘Dum vivimus, vivamus!’—‘While we live, let us live!’ Yes, my love, yes!”		imperativity

Hortative

The hortative or volitional expresses the speaker's or speakers' personal or collective volition, or invitation to others, to do something. The same form, otherwise known as the tentative, conjectural or presumptive, expresses subjective speculation or supposition. The tentative meanings are increasingly outdated as later generations of speakers favor using darō, deshō, or de gozaimashō as less ambiguous tentative markers.

English	Japanese	Function
I'll put off this task for later.		personal volition
I'll overlook your mistake this time.		personal volition
Suppose that a drowning man promises to give all his fortune to whoever willing to cast a net to help, that is no other than promising involuntarily in a coercive state at hand, thus he is well within his rights to retract such promise;		personal volition
We do not have the least intention to make up trendy slang.		collective volition
The fact that man uses machines as tools means that man is to do what machines cannot.		collective volition
It's getting late, let's go home.		invitation to act together
Shall we go out for dinner?		invitation to act together
There will probably be many objections at the meeting.		speculation or supposition
Any child could do that.		speculation or supposition
“Sure. There are three ‘will it’s’ in the heavens. Whaat are they?” “Ha ha ha. Easy. I learnt this in first grade. Are they ‘will it shine,’ ‘will it rain’ and ‘will it cloud’?”		speculation or supposition
and in the middle of the land rose a vast castle that seemed a mile long, with a rows of columns rising one above another.		speculation or supposition
“ Once you sublimate your wildly unruly passion into magical power, the flame you summon will surely be beautiful, won’t it?”		speculation or supposition
If Anthony’s love had been as egoistic as love generally is, it would have been greater than the egoism of his vanity—or of his generosity, if you like—and all this could not have happened. He would not have hit upon that renunciation at which one does not know whether to grin or shudder. It is true too that then his love would not have fastened itself upon the unhappy daughter of de Barral.		speculation or supposition
I told you not to be rough with them. You are far from being their equals.		speculation or supposition

Hortative: Conjugation table

The so-called "hortative form" is actually a combination of the mizenkei and the auxiliary, which underwent systemic historical sound changes that affected all the examples below. These sound changes motivated the term godan, which replaced yodan . For non-godan verbs, during the final stage as shown in the table below, the vowels of the original mizenkei, i, e and o, were reintroduced in some dialects, especially eastern ones, which yielded the suffix ‑yō, as in iyō, eyō and koyō. Other dialects, especially western ones, did not undergo this development. Verbs with the vowel i in their stems may retain the forms ending in ‑yū in some dialects, hence okyu; or gained the normalized ‑yō in other dialects, hence okiyo, okyo. Yet other dialects have iro, ero and koro. For suru in particular, the eastern vowel i is used rather than the western e, hence shiyō rather than seyō, the latter of which is found in some Chūbu dialects.
For ‑masu and desu, the unique shapes of ‑mashō and deshō, as well as of the negative ‑masen, suggest their provenance in western polite speech. While ‑masen undoubtedly has eastern counterparts, ‑mashinai/''‑mashinē, and do not seem to have any, in spite of such historical spellings as and, which appear to be pronounced *‑mashiyō and *deshiyō, but were rather variant spellings of and, and in some older publications these spellings were inconsistently interchangeable. In contrast, suru, ‑masus conjugational relative, has both western and eastern forms, as in sen/shinai/shinē, and shō/shiyō.
Due to the said historical sound changes, all hortative/tentative forms contain the long vowel ō'', but it is susceptible to shortening into an o in speech, especially in dialects. In ichidan verbs, shortening results in the hortative/tentative and the imperative sharing the same segments, although they can still be distinguished by accent. All hortatives and tentatives are currently accentuated on the start of the ō, as in,,,, etc. Thus the hortative ichidan, are accentually distinct from the imperative ichidan,. On the other hand, since all hortatives are accentuated on the ō, ambiguity among themselves can arise, for example in and.
The common form of the hortative/tentative ends in, but occasionally a classical alternative ending in or turns up in modern writing, for example in. Both and derive from the earlier, but through different mechanisms: is from the loss of a consonant in, ; while is from the loss of a vowel,. Since also happens to represent the western negative ‑n and the nominalizing particle no, the spelling represents either or, and represents not only or but also the noun phrase, the last of which contains the Sino-Japanese noun. Accentually, verbs whose dictionary forms are accentless can be distinguished, as in for "not go" and for "let's go"; but verbs whose dictionary forms are accented are ambiguous and context-dependent, as in for both "not write" and "let's write." Some idioms derived from the classical hortative/tentative include,,,, etc.
Most verbs have hortative meanings, as in, although this can be interpreted as self-tentative. To express tentativity unambiguously, darō/''jarō, de arō or deshō, which is unambiguously tentative, is added, as in. In some cases where the subject lacks human agency, the tentative meaning is more plausible, for example, means "it'll probably be cloudy" tentatively, not *"let's be cloudy" hortatively; means "it'll probably rain", not *"let's rain"; means "probably can" not *"let's be able". These have been increasingly replaced by, and. The rise of the darō/deshō-appended tentative, as in, as a distinction in form from the original polysemous tentative/hortative, is attested from the early 19th century; the use of the original tentative, as in, has become obsolescent or elevated.
Arō/arimashō and their derivatives tend to be tentative, and can be replaced with aru darō / aru deshō / arimasu deshō. The same applies to de arō/de arimashō, which can be replaced with de aru darō / de aru deshō / de arimasu deshō. Adjectival tentatives such as with a built-in arō can be replaced with. The eastern adjectival negative tentative ‑nakarō, as in, and are to be replaced with. The past tentative ‑ta/‑da darō/deshō are preferred to ‑tarō/‑darō, deshita deshō to deshitarō, and ‑mashita deshō to ‑mashitarō. However, ‑ta/‑da darō can be shortened back to ‑ta/‑da 'rō, albeit with different accent patterns; compare for ‑tarō, and or for ‑ta darō → ‑ta 'rō. This contraction is transferable to the polite ‑mashita 'rō, which is still not quite the same as ‑mashitarō, but which does suggest an unabbreviated form, ‑mashita darō, with a mismatch in politeness, compared to the well-formed polite ‑mashita deshō. doubted the plausibility of ‑mashita darō, but it is not impossible.
The western negative ‑n and ‑zu take the classical ‑ji for occasional elevated use, mostly followed by the quotative particle to, as in, as well as in some cliches such as,,, etc. The negative tentative/hortative has been expressed with the attributive followed by mai; in the particular case of ‑masen, there is ‑masu mai. In many non-Tokyo eastern dialects, mai are the negative counterparts of the affirmative be, the regularly modernized adjectival form of beki, which the Tokyo dialect does not use for tentative or hortative meanings. ‑N darō/jarō/de arō/deshō and ‑masen deshō'' are also used.

Hortative: Grammatical compatibility

The hortative can be quoted with the quotative particle to, with in particular often being used to unambiguously convey volition, similarly to the desirative with ‑tai/''‑tagaru; compare and. The extender conveys imminent realization of volition, even for actions by inanimate agents.
The tentative can combine with ga or to to form the tentative concessive, with meanings similar to the gerundive concessive ‑te mo, the conditional concessive ‑edo and the imperative concessive ni shiro/seyo and de are.
The classical tentative is often followed by the particle bakari''.

Extender	English	Japanese	Function
	At dusk when everybody gathered at the bus to go home, we somehow seemed to be two people short.		unambiguous volition
	I'll try it out and buy it if I like it.		unambiguous volition
	I'm thinking of driving around the island in a rental car.		unambiguous volition
	I thought I'd hit him good.		unambiguous volition
	I had no thought of sleep.		unambiguous volition
	Should you wish to make the Iliad, put yourself on diet.		unambiguous volition
	Suppose that a drowning man promises to give all his fortune to whoever willing to cast a net to help, that is no other than promising involuntarily in a coercive state at hand, thus he is well within his rights to retract such promise;		unambiguous volition
	When he was about to board the train, someone called him from behind.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	He had a crack at singing.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	The electric clock in the office is about to go past three.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	But it isn't that the author couldn't get married, it is that she has no inclination to do so.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	Nobody tried/was about to open his mouth.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	The bus was not about to stop.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	The battle is about to begin.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	Heaven has an end in all: yet, you that hear me, This from a dying man receive as certain: for those you make friends And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye, never found again But where they mean to sink ye.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	But perhaps because I seemed to hit it off with Mr Andō, Mr Andō himself was not the least inclined to consult other doctors.		being about, being planning/intending, starting or trying to do something
	Whether you go or not, I’ll go.		concession
	come hell or high water;		concession
	She always listened to water boil, and whenever the pot got empty, come rain, wind or shine, she always refilled it.		concession
	Still, English or no, Galen could not justify simply attacking the party and killing the woman.		concession
	That said, whether they’re stronger or weaker than me, I still have to beat them eventually, so as long as I’m giving it my all, it doesn’t really matter…….		concession
	Whatever he does has no bearing on me.		concession
	Come wind, storm, cold or rain, ――nothing struck him down.		concession
	Wherever you are, don't forget I'll be thinking of you.		concession
	You might almost say it was your right.		almost/barely/virtually doing something; being just about to do something; being so close to doing something
	It was an apology in which he kept groveling on the floor mat and all but wailed.		almost/barely/virtually doing something; being just about to do something; being so close to doing something
	What surprised me was when the film got to the marathon part, the theater almost burst with frenzy.		almost/barely/virtually doing something; being just about to do something; being so close to doing something
	Then he looked at me for a while, as I kept on silently thinking, and finally he spoke, barely suppressing a burst of laughter.		almost/barely/virtually doing something; being just about to do something; being so close to doing something
	In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short:		almost/barely/virtually doing something; being just about to do something; being so close to doing something