If you want to brush up on your casual past tense conjugations you’ll probably want to look here. But we’re going to spend at least a little time going over the “te” version of those rules so don’t worry if you only kind of remember.
Also, while there may be no such thing as the “Samurai Conjugation” fictional TV samurai and ninja often use extremely old fashioned conjugations such as “gozaru”. While fun to listen to this is something you should never use in real life. It will make you sound like a cartoon character with an embarrassingly bad Old English accent (on top of your default American accent) and it’s hard to imagine a situation where you would want that.
Transcript
言語ガールズ #101
It’s Grammar Time!
Yellow: For the next several strips we’re going to be talking about one of the most important conjugations in 日本語: The Samurai Conjugation.
Blue: That’s… not a real thing.
Blue: What we’re actually going to be talking about is the て conjugation.
Blue: The て conjugation is important because it allows you to combine verbs with other verbs and phrases.
Yellow: Why would I want to mix my verbs with other things?
Blue: Because mixing verbs is important for making requests, giving instructions and even normal present tense conversations.
Yellow: And why is it called the て conjugation?
Blue: Because it follows the same rules as the casual past tense but the verbs all end in て instead of た.