User talk:JKVeganAbroad

Welcome!
Hello, JKVeganAbroad, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome!  Grey joy talk 10:30, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you! JKVeganAbroad (talk) 10:32, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Creating new articles is hard
I saw your template request. I thought you might appreciate the thoughts of a notional "experienced" editor.

First, anyone, absolutely anyone, may create an article directly into main space as an article. That's how it worked when I joined. It was a lottery to get the article fleshed out enough before someone suggested it was not viable and offered it for deletion. This caused huge frustration, unhappiness, tears, even. The new article was slain with no regard for what it might become. Even now I create new articles in a user sub page before moving my own work to be a real article

Wikipedians developed Articles for Creation. It gives a safe space to make mistakes, and insulates new editors from deletion processes. This is good. New editors may migrate their drafts to become articles, and some are good enough to remain. Many are either deleted or pushed back to Draft space.

The review process is intended to be iterative, but reviewers of which I am one, do not give false hope. Material that will never be accepted is nipped in the bud. This is sensible. False hope creates unhappiness.

This essay is one of many that give guidance in article creation. It's a difficult skill, and many give you some useful background

Fiddle Timtrent Faddle Talk to me 19:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Reviewing seems like a very challenging job, perhaps more so than writing articles. Thank you for sharing. JKVeganAbroad (talk) 03:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Re: Japanese verb conjugation
Hi JKVeganAbroad,

I'd be happy if you can add the reference to the dictionary because it is difficult for me to format properly.

I don't have a physical copy of the dictionary but I own the digital copy. All the information I added can be found by looking up the auxiliary verb よう in the dictionary. Let me know if you need access to this dictionary.

Thanks, I will keep in mind this "minor edit" thing. It is my first time making this kind of contribution to Wikipedia.

Kuronbo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuronbo (talk • contribs) 01:35, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

I love what you have done to the Japanese verb conjugation page!
The old page before your intervention made Japanese verbs so much harder than it actually is, and it's about time someone took action to change the format of that page into something that actually reflects the morphology of Japanese verbs. My hero!

That being said, I do have a couple things I would like to point out as possible considerations for the page. The first is in regards to the passive form. Similar to the causative せる・させる form, the passive form is れる in godan verbs and られる in ichidan verbs. It is not "Change る to ら then add れる", as the mizenkei form of ichidan verbs doesn't involve changing る to ら -- it simply deletes る. The same applies to the potential form of ichidan verbs (which is homophonous to the passive form). Speaking of the mizenkei form, the second thing to point out is that sections 3, 9, and 10 could be possible subsections of a proposed section about the Mizenkei/Irrealis/"a" form: the form of the verb from which the negative, passive, and causative helper adjective/verbs are derived. This can help the readers make sense of why godan verbs have their -u kana being shifted to the -a row in order to derive these helper adjective/verbs, as well as why する/くる became さ/こ. I know that the page mentions the mizenkei form to refer to the negative conjugation, but in Japanese school grammar, it actually refers to the "a" form of the verb before the addition of any helper adjectives/verbs. The next two points are minor. First, I believe ます should be included in the list of auxiliary verbs that go with the conjunctive form, with a note that ます conjugates irregularly as a verb. Second, in Hepburn romanization, even though O + U is spelled ō, E + I is always written as ei, not ē (weird, I know). Hence, 未然形 would be romanized as mizenkei, not mizenkē. Also, O + U is spelled ou if u is in the imperfective/infinitive form, as the う in words like 思う omou is pronounced う. Any feedback on these suggestions is appreciated!

Again, what you have done so far was very well done and I love it! I'd love to collaborate with you to improve the page. Is there an easier way I can get in touch with you? Excusememoi (talk) 03:05, 2 June 2021 (UTC) Thank you kindly for getting in touch with me! It's wonderful to have some validation for the… drastic… changes I made to the page, and I have been rather afraid of offending others in the process.


 * As for your suggestions, I think they're great. Thank you for taking the time to copy-edit the article, I really appreciate it. Specifically though:
 * • …It is not "Change る to ら then add れる"… — No objections, we should change it to "Remove る then add られる" and reformat the pattern column correctly.
 * • …sections 3, 9, and 10 could be possible subsections of a proposed section about the Mizenkei/Irrealis/"a" form… — I agree with this in principle, however I think the current simplicity of a 1:1 ratio of conjugation patterns to sections is more practical for readers. Also, sections 9 and 10 are somewhat more complex grammatical use-cases; I'm not sure having them appear sooner in the article is ideal for complexity progression. I believe "Present » Negative » Past » te form » Conjunctive" is a logical progression, since it starts with the basics, bulding upon the past tense with an almost identical te-form, then advancing to the important "masu form". Perhaps as a compromise, since the information is relevant (and keen readers are likely to notice the strong link between the passive, causative and mizenkei forms), an explanation could (or should) be included in the introduction of each of these sections, linking to the others? Perhaps above or below the initial example table for each respective conjugation section?
 * • …the page mentions the mizenkei form to refer to the negative conjugation, but in Japanese school grammar, it actually refers to the "a" form… — On this point, it's actually difficult. Since this is "English" Wikipedia with "English" readers, using the most approximate terms and simplified language makes the article more accessible. The technicalities on this level of detail are more appropriate for a dedicated article on the mizenkei form; however, such an article might be deemed overcategorization in the scope of English Wikipedia (speculation: I could be entirely wrong). As such, I made an effort to include a link for every verb conjugation to the appropriate specific articles in Japanese Wikipedia, and the relevant kanji so researchers could find more detailed information if they desired. I suspect this is good enough, what do you think?
 * • …I believe ます should be included in the list of auxiliary verbs that go with the conjunctive form… — What a tremendous oversight! You're absolutely right!
 * • …in Hepburn romanization… — No objections, of course.
 * If you wouldn't mind, I'd love it if you could implement your suggestions to the article. These are your suggestions after all, and I don't really want to be the only author on the page! 😅 But if you need some help with the first suggestion, I'll happily do it (the code can be daunting to look at and understand). As for contacting me, either here on my user talk page, or just adding a section to the article's talk page will be fine. Unless you had a specific purpose and preferred private communication?

I have made some changes based on your approval. The article now lists ます as one of the auxiliary verbs that take the conjunctive form. And I fixed the tables to conform with the first suggestion about られる. Hopefully I didn't do anything wrong with the tables. Brilliant! Thanks for updating the article! Looks like you understood the code and everything looks great, really appreciate it! I like the addition of the traffic sign image! It really shows that there are real-life applications to verb conguations in Japanese. Also, nice job on the romanization fix; I rarely ever edit Wikipedia articles, so these editing features take a long time for me to get accustomed to, haha. It's also why I can't bring myself to make large overhauls of existing articles because I wouldn't know where to begin. Thank you, I love your work too! It makes so much sense to have leads explaining the pattern before the conjugation tables. You can't believe how much I laughed when reading the word 作ら可愛ければ! That's definitely taking Japanese conjugation to the next level, haha. That being said, I appreciated that you had insight on keeping 〜ない in conjugation tables. I also agree that its inclusion is needed. I believe knowing how to conjugate negative verbs is important, and deriving te form, conditional, volitional, and perfective forms of a negative verb requires knowing how to conjugate 〜ない. So no arguments here :)
 * Once again, thank you so much for getting in touch! I'm delighted you love how the page turned out! How did you even know about the intervention? Did you remember how the article was and notice a difference?
 * Kind regards - JKVeganAbroad (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought about the mizenkei/"a" form for some time, and I realized that there are two mizenkei forms for する: し for しない and さ for される and させる that I figured no one would want to deal with. And I also agree that sections 9 and 10 are complex grammatical use-cases. As such, what I did as a mere temporary solution was to simply make a mention that the causative and passive forms share conjugation patterns with each other (just like the perfective and te forms). Maybe we'll make a mention for the conjugation patterns of all three (passive, causative, and negative) forms and stating the disparity for する? I just don't know how I would word it in the actual article; I'm sure you have a greater expertise on Wikipedia editing to decide that.
 * For Hepburn, if only I can find a way to search all the ē's and turn them to ei's (in Opera, finding ē on browser would highlight all e's so it doesn't work)... so for now I left it alone.
 * As for how I found about about your intervention, you have it right! I used to look in that article some years ago back when I had no idea how Japanese verbs work and I ended up being hopelessly confused. But that was because it described Japanese verb morphology in a way that was totally flawed. In fact, the Japanese grammar article had a much more accurate description of Japanese verbs. (How ironic!) And the Wiktionary appendix on Japanese verbs was also bang on and informative. I checked some days ago to see if any improvements have by chance been made on the Japanese verb conjugation article, and I was immediately stunned by the much-needed overhaul, much thanks to you! I'd definitely like to know what other plans you have for the article (even though you've been working on this for like a month), and we'll definitely keep in touch here! Excusememoi (talk) 05:34, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and corrected the Hepburn romanisation errors… I think I got them all. The Wikipedia source-code editor, if you click "> Advanced" in the toolbar, expands a sub-toolbar beneath where hiding on the far-far-far right is a magnifying glass "Find and Replace" function. Maybe you'll find it useful in the future.
 * That is ironic, how the Japanese grammar article had better information on verbs than the article on Japanese verbs. Actually I was "inspired" to overhaul the page after visiting it for a quick reference check; I was mortified at how confusing it was, and almost abandoned it forever. But then I realised that this confusing article might be so intimidating that beginners of Japanese might immediately give up due to it all being too complicated. I hate the thought of people giving up prematurely under misleading circumstances. It doesn't have to be so difficult, I believe.
 * As for improving the article further, my only real plan is to update the code of the module, so that I can remove every   from the page. The updated code is pending approval, and should probably be implemented within the week if there are no objections.
 * After that, I'm just hoping it improves organically by everybody else on the internet. In particular, I'm hoping people add more citations from reliable books. I could only make citations from the books I already own, and they're all published by The Japan Times. They're reliable sources, sure, but too many citations from the same authors/publisher may seed doubts for researchers and critical thinkers. Another way I think it could be improved is with pictures, to make the article more interesting to read through. I'm not sure what kinds of pictures would be acceptable for a grammar article, but I've just added one now by adding an image of a 「止まれ」 traffic sign in the appropriate section. Do you have any ideas on how to improve the article?
 * There is another article, however, that's begging for an overhaul. I'm not sure I have the energy to do it, but it's Japanese adjectives. Would you be up for the challenge?
 * Thanks again, Excusememoi! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 15:22, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It was so frustrating to see the article pre-overhaul mentioning how the negative form is basically replacing -u to -anai and how the potential form is basically turning -u to -eru, leading me to believe that ichidan verbs are evil as they don't exhibit such "patterns". They did not suggest that verbs have to shift the -u inflexional suffix to another kana row (or delete る for ichidan verbs) before they can attach to other applicable suffixes. As a result, I was definitely misguided back then. Thankfully, the colour-coded conjugation tables that you made make it much more clearer how verb forms are correctly derived.
 * As for the Japanese adjectives article, I also agree that it needs an overhaul. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere experienced enough to start tinkering with it. I only contribute to improve articles on a really minor scale.
 * I noticed that you added conjugations for 〜ない in tables for certain verb forms -- namely the volitional, conditional, and te forms. Because 〜ない is supposed to be a 形容詞, maybe it shouldn't be fitting to include it in an article mainly about 動詞. Regardless, the article is missing the conjugation for 〜ない in the perfective (なかった). Just in case you rather remove 〜ない from conjugation tables, I have not made the addition.
 * Overall, I really think this article is very good as it is! I find it surprising that the six stem forms (Irrealis, Continuative, ..., Imperative as mentioned in the Japanese grammar article) weren't introduced as the basis of conjugation in this article. However, I believe that the principle behind these forms are pretty outdated and did not fully catch up to the modern langauge to make them worth mentioning. I think merely mentioning that some verb forms share the same conjugation pattern should make it clear enough rather than being too technical or theoretical with all these stem forms. Perhaps you have an opinion on this? Besides that, I just tend to go around the article and fix some formatting, grammar, and add some information and examples as they fit. Hopefully you're not overworking yourself over there! Excusememoi (talk) 04:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I removed the English translation in some of these leads if the word appeared in the conjugation table (which has the translation); mainly because する and 来る appear everywhere in the article. Except for one case where you explain する and できる — the differing meanings are important to your example.
 * …maybe it shouldn't be fitting to include ［〜ない］ in an article mainly about 動詞…
 * This is an important technical observation. My first argument to keep 〜ない is that the article would be incomplete if it couldn't account for the exceptions of the verb 「ある」. My second argument is that verbs can be chain-conjugated; having 〜ない allows all types of conjugations to be negated, which seems rather useful (a weak argument, I concede this). My third argument is that it's labeled as a "special conjugation" rather than a "verb". So whilst 〜ない is an adjective, you cannot substitute other i-adjectives where 〜ない would conjugate with a verb. For example: becomes  which makes sense, but it's nonsensical to replace ない with, as in . So, since i-adjectives cannot (in principal) attach as suffixes to the  form of verbs, I argue that it's necessary to keep 〜ない on the page about verb conjugations.
 * For now, I included your vital suggestion about the absence of 〜ない in the perfective form, thank you so much! I knew I'd forgotten to include 〜ない in one of the tables, but I couldn't notice which one.
 * …I find it surprising that the six stem forms…weren't introduced as the basis of conjugation in this article…
 * Admittedly, this might be because my lack of knowledge on the subject. However, if they are indeed outdated principles that don't align with modern Japanese language, then they shouldn't be included. The Japanese grammar article itself was delisted from being a "Good Article" for several factors, one of which being "The article heavily leans towards traditional Japanese grammar. Given that modern linguistics is the most advanced (and hopefully, objective) research tradition, this is clearly non-neutral.". This means Wikipedia considers traditional grammar irrelevant except in articles or subsections that are specifically dedicated to "traditional Japanese grammar". I suppose on second thought, this information could be added at the bottom of the article in a section labeled as such? It would have to be properly cited though, since claims about historical grammar are less easily verified than any other claim made in the article.
 * You are really quite well researched on this! How did you even learn about that stuff? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 15:37, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * As for the stem forms, I would not say that the principles don't align with the modern Japanese language as you put it; it does, just no longer as perfectly as it once was. Japanese students and L2 learners alike are being taught stem forms as they're useful as a tool for conjugation. That way, learners would know for instance, that the negative form is made by "using the mizenkei stem form, then add ない". Some reasons why the stem forms as they are taught is a bit outdated are as follows:
 * - "mizenkei" means "not-yet-occured form", aka. irrealis form, which doesn't make sense because it's used to make the passive and causative forms, which is by no means irrealis. Taken from the Wiktionary appendix on Japanese verbs, it says that: 未然形 mizenkei “irrealis” is named after its use with -ba in Classical Japanese: kakaba “if one writes”, in contrast with the realis kakeba “as, when, because one writes”, which no longer reflects the modern grammar. It's like how learners of English are still being taught that the /eɪ/ vowel is the "long" form of the /æ/ vowel, as these vowels used to differ only by length (/aː/ and /a/, respectively) long, long ago, yet that notion still hasn't disappeared in schools after the vowel shifts had been made.
 * - The volitional form is considered one of the forms that makes use of the mizenkei stem form this way despite that the last kana of godan verbs shifts from -u to -o instead of -u to -a, because back then the volitional form was spelled with that -u to -a shift typical of the mizenkei stem form. I think euphony/onbin had something to do with the change from -a to -o. Even though the spelling change occured, the volitional form is still considered as being derived from the mizenkei stem form, which can be confusing for L2 learners.
 * As you know, it's mostly the mizenkei stem form that doesn't align well with the modern grammar. The rest are pretty much fine. I know that the terminal/shūshikei and attributive/rentaikei forms look pretty redundant because for verbs they're basically the same thing, but I guess it has to be like that because these two stem forms are distinguished in na-adjectives. That being said, I don't think it's fitting to have stem forms to be located at the end of the article; it kinda makes it redundant since it would come after all the sections containing completely conjugated forms, if you get what I mean.
 * How did I learn so much about Japanese conjugations? Out of pure interest! As soon as I was finally able to figure out how it works, it made me appreciate how the morphology functions so productively and agglutinatively, yet orderly. As someone who loves linguistics, I just had to learn its ins and outs. (Now... if only I can figure out how Korean verb conjugation works...) Now that I think about it, that's the question I should be asking you, JKVA! :) Excusememoi (talk) 06:23, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Oh good, 〜ない gets to live another day!

After reading your explanation about the stem forms, this does seem necessary for the article. Is after the "Verb groups", right before the conjugations, a good place for this new section? Also, what's an appropriate title for that section? Perhaps "Stem formations"? It would be great if such a section could include a brief explanation about the discrepancy between the terminologies and modern Japanese, just as you described it here. Would it be possible for the section to be short and simple, such that it gives enough information to offer clarity to the reader but without overwhelming them? I think the article would be complete after that!

Oh I don't know that much about conjugations… I only researched what I know to understand the discrepancies I noticed when having conversations at the bar, at my workplace, in anime etc. The discrepancy mainly being that people often don't use keigo. I'm honestly still a humble beginner to the language, I have so much to learn. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 15:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I've included a draft of the proposed section. Even though it won't result in another huge overhaul of the article, it may require a bit of revising of existing terminology used in the article, plus adding new additional information to existing sections in light of the new information on stem forms (that, I can certainly help with). So yeah, you can check it out, make some edits of your own in there, provide some commentary there or in here. I'd totally appreciate your help! The section is indeed intended to go after the one on Verb groups.


 * There's definitely so much to learn about the Japanese language. It's really different from English, making it an intimidating language for those wanting to learn it. Verb conjugations are just the tip of the iceberg; its syntax is a whole other beast! Excusememoi (talk) 04:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for making that draft! I spent my whole day off thinking about it and working on it. I think you're right that the article won't require a huge overhaul, and I agree that some changes in terminology are appropriate in the process. But the section your adding is very important, and I think you've created a big opportunity for this article to be better. I want to seize this opportunity to not follow in the footsteps of teaching the way we learned this stuff, but rather throw out the garbage and get straight to the point so that others don't have to suffer through confusion like we had to. In other words, if we pave an excellent, up-to-date foundation, then it won't crumble in the face of modern Japanese language for non-native learners. You weren't kidding when you said that you commented a lot! I had to take a breather to process all the commentary, but they were certainly insightful. You've given a lot of thought for the new section, thanks so much for the input! This undertaking of the new section is a first for me in Wikipedia; the help was totally needed. I know that there are tons of rules for what to include and what not to include in a Wikipedia article, so my main strategy is to check what other related Wikipedia articles and interwiki pages have already mentioned and use the information there as a fact-checking tool. One disadvantage of this is that despite this strategy, the info between wiki pages can still be really inconsistent from one another! I tried hard to reduce the inconsistency as much as possible when making the new section, but it's inevitable. しょうがないね〜 Excusememoi (talk) 04:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC) Yeah I'm really sorry about that. To be honest it is very exciting to be collaborating like this, and I'm very passionate about simplifying the learning of the Japanese language. Sorry to overwhelm you.
 * I was a little overzealous with your draft and I edited and commented a lot, I hope I haven't overstepped my welcome… 😬
 * Wow. What a rabbit hole I've tumbled into! I'm so lucky you stumbled upon this page and generously reached out to me to help out. I'm learning so much. JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed the information across pages and wikis are largely inconsistent, unfortunately. Even the Japanese Wikipedia articles on the topics themselves are limited in information, unnecessarily confusing and in my opinion underwhelming. しょうがないね〜 Oddly enough, it seems that Wiktionary covers the topics concisely and comprehensively. No idea how that happened.
 * I replied to your comments again, if you wouldn't mind reading them over that would be great. I think we're fast approaching a consensus, I'm excited! JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:27, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Summary of verb conjugations Dimanor3 (talk) 02:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
Hey, I just wanted to let you know I added the Summary of verb conjugations back into the Japanese_verb_conjugation Wikipedia page. I know you've recently been a major editor of this page, and I'm sure certain you've worked diligently to make sure that this page was as accurate as possible, but regardless I find the summary to be demonstrably important and useful and I 100% believe it was a mistake to remove it without adding a modified variant back in its place. As such I've added an older version of it back in. Feel free to remove it again if necessary, but I kindly ask that you put something similar back in its place. I am a strong proponent of having the summary of verb conjugations on this page as it's been of great help to me with my previous assignments.


 * Hi! This conversation is best shared with the community, so I'll transfer this discussion to the talk page. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 03:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

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