Talk:Japanese consonant and vowel verbs

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In addition to the duplication and the linguistically questionable terms "consonant verb" and "vowel verb", there is an actual serious error here. Godan verbs are what are usually considered to be group 1, not ichidan verbs. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 07:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment and finding my mistake. About the terms used, the only linguist I know is the person who introduced me to them, so I doubt your supposition that they are linguistically questionable. In fact, the linguist in question actually said that the terms "godan" and "ichidan" were "artifacts of a syllabic writing system", and thus his opinion was that the terms "godan" and "ichidan" were the "linguistically questionable" ones. --DannyWilde 10:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Here at least is one thing I can agree with Mathias about! I can't see any problem with these terms (I use them myself), especially if you take them as shorthand for "consonant-final-stem verb" and "vowel-final-stem verb". RJCraig 04:36, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Pardon me if I'm just confused as I'm a fairly new student to Japanese, but the way I've learned thus far is that verbs that must end in eru or iru are part of the group known as either Group II, Ichidan, -ru, vowel, or weak verbs, while all other regular verbs are known as either Group I, Godan, -u, consonant, or strong verbs. In your introduction this seems confused as you list consonant verbs in the former group and vice versa for vowel verbs. Incidentally this is the first resource I've encountered that uses the consonant/vowel nomenclature instead of Group I/II or Godan/Ichidan.

Welcome to Wikipedia and the Japanese language. Thanks for your comments. I have altered the page to add your nomenclature. Unfortunately there are lots of different nomenclatures for these verbs. A similar situation can be seen on the page Japanese adjectives, with four names for the same thing. The problem then is what to call them. The "consonant stem/vowel stem" one here is not my idea, I learnt it from a linguist called Bart Mathias on the sci.lang.japan newsgroup. I don't know if it was his idea or not. However, I think it's a very intuitively clear way of naming the two different types of verbs. Thanks for suggesting some corrections and additions to the article. There seem to be so many names that a table is needed. --DannyWilde 03:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that calling them consonant and vowel verbs is the most intuitive option available; hopefully Wikipedia will help popularize this nomenclature for English speakers. My first introduction to Japanese grammar was via a native speaker who listed all the possible terms but seemed to prefer using Godan/Ichidan. The only other suggestion I can think of for this page is perhaps a note somewhere stating how complete these two lists are. --Norfenstein 23:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC) (same user as above, now registered)

It seems that in the initial classification, the terms wovel and consonant are swapped. They apply to the stem, not to the ending. For -u verbs, the stem ends in a consonant, and for -ru verbs, the stem ends in a wovel. See also the source cited in the previous comment. MartinVidner 17:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thought of something else: some explanation of how the "missing w" in words like arau qualifies them as consonant verbs might be helpful, perhaps by including one such verb in the example table at the top with a brief explanation following. --Norfenstein 01:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments to everyone. I will try to sort out the article in response to all your comments. --DannyWilde 00:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology: 5 vs 1

According to this page: de:Fünfstufiges Verb#F.C3.BCnfstufige_Verben the godan verbs are called that because after cutting off the -u the final kana from the stem is thought to span all five lines in the kana grid as it were, that is to say, the vowel of the last kana of the stem is indeterminate until an ending is added. Is this the correct etymology? Or is the real reason these are called godan and ichidan verbs something different still? Shinobu (talk) 00:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)