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Lesson 9: I want to drink
cola.
Click here for the kana version.
In this lesson, you will learn how to tell someone that you want to do something. Recall that present tense verbs have the -masu ending. In order to change these to the 'want to' ending, drop the -masu and replace it with -tai. Examples:
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| Examples: Kouen ni ikimasu. Gakkou ni ikimasu.
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I will go to the park. I go to school. |
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Now for one more twist. When you use tai with verbs that take o, you can also change the o to ga for emphasis if you want.
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Examples: |
I eat apples. I want to eat an apple. I want to eat an apple. |
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| In the above example, the second sentence just means that you want to eat apples. The third sentence means that you want to eat apples as opposed to something else. It's not really that important of a difference so you can stick with just o if you're more comfortable with it. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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o |
apple letter book park school cola object
marker particle |
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| -masu | positive present/future verb tense | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| -tai | 'want to' verb ending | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||