Conjugation help please?
 

I'm having trouble understanding conjugation.
Mainly, because i'm using My japanes coach, and while it's good for increasing vocabulary and writing, it's doing a HORRIBLE job with the transition to japanese.
It's explaining conjugation with Romaji characters.

Anyhow. It mentions these "bases". Seven of them in total.
Could anyone be so kind as to explain Conjugation using Bases instead of Romaji? i can't seem to find a pattern there.

I've never heard of seven bases before.

The only equivalent I can think of in modern Japanese is the 5 levels of go-dan verbs, and that's not something you just explain.

Instead, you should just learn one conjugation at a time. As someone who has attempted to study classical Japanese by just memorizing all the verb endings at once, I have experience learning Japanese both ways, and I recommend just learning, for example, plain non-past form by itself.

Let me brainstorm the verb conjugations I know:
食べる plain non-past
食べたplain past
食べて te-form
食べよう volitional
食べない plain non-past negative
食べられる potential
食べられる passive
食べさせる causative
食べず zu-form
食べます polite non-past
食べまして polite te form
食べませんnegative past polite
食べました past polite
食べろ plain command form
食べぬ nu form
食べないで negative te-form
食べましょう polite volitional

There are probably a couple more. I just am getting yelled at by my fiancée: "You're on that site too long."

O_o
That's dedication i say!
MJC doesn't mentione ANY of the stuff you offered save the non past form.

I also forgot
食べなさい
and the honorific and humble forms—although 食べる doesn't particularly have "conjugations" for these like, say, 作る, which has:
お作りになる
お作りする

In the Japanese grammar which Japanese people are taught, there are seven forms of verbs, which are called the mizenkei, ren'youkei, shuushikei, rentaikei, kateikei, meireikei, and kihonkei. That might be what they meant. :confused:

Having said that, I'm not really qualified to teach you Japanese or offer advice about how to learn the language, but if you are a beginner learner I'd advise you to forget about all of the above words and stick with explanations like Kyle provided here. The reason is that these "kei" things are based on a historical grammar and take some bending to fit with modern Japanese.

Ah, that's the most likely explanation, Ben!

Yes, OP, listen to the above post: the seven forms of verb don't fit perfectly with modern Japanese. For example, the mizenkei (未然形) is the stem before 〜ず／ざり／etc. It's basically the "imperfect" form ("not yet happened" form). Or so says my copy of A Handbook to Classical Japanese by Wixted.

Right now i'm trying to reach the "can have a conversation" level.
So i'm not THAT keen on getting it 100% correct.
I'll change my speech patter once i actually understand what is being told.

In other words "I will try and speak good Japanese when I can understand Japanese"? That's a really self-destructive plan.

You should focus on getting whatever lessons you're learning correct. My opinion is that you should drop MJC and google for Tae Kim's Japanese guide. Work through that. If you can learn everything there, you'll have learned pretty much everything you learn in a year and a half or two years of Japanese taught in American universities.

I got an old college textbook and it mention 7 bases as well. It basically uses the godan and creates a couple of extra ones to explain exceptions such as 言わない, which comes off a little bit different from the regular negative base.

This happens when textbooks try to teach students using kana, but explaining things with romaji. If you simply use kana, there would be no need whatsoever to divide so many bases. But it took me a couple of years to understand that too LOL.

@Kyle: I sortof learned hebrew that way. At first i was able to speak in sortof troll-hebrew, after about a month i was already speaking rather well.
I'm sure i can apply the same to japanese. Despite the fact I KNOW that MJC kind of sucks, i prefer it because it's actually interactive. it DEMANDS attention and input. books are kind of... there. The seven bases system is pretty easily programmable, so i could theoretically, after understanding this, build me a simple engine that uses only kana.

edit: what i really want to see is sortof like
godan past formal = base n+ending of choice