Verbs - Plain Present Tense

I've been studying and studying to reach this point for what seems like ages! (In reality it's only been a month or two, but still.) This is where I delve into the meat of the language. Obviously I'm not going to know everything about the language just by learning about verbs, but this will finally give me a great deal more expressive power. After awhile it's frustrating to only construct sentences with nouns and adjectives.

I'll note that I'm going to be learning verbs in their original dictionary form. I know that some people like to learn verbs in ます form, but I think that's a bad approach. This way allows you to see the original verb so other conjugations are easier to perform, such as past, negative, and て form. If you've only seen the ます form, you have to essentially un-conjugate that word to get to the original verb before you can proceed to perform other conjugations. That's not sensible.

One other note - Japanese verbs don't have to be conjugated based on the subject or topic. For example, in English we would say "you go" but "he goes." In Japanese, the verb would not change in those cases. That's really nice, in my opinion! Even Spanish became overwhelming with all its different forms due to varying subjects. It made speaking a lot more difficult  (not that Japanese speaking isn't difficult in its own ways).

Moving on from that... In Japanese, verbs will always come at the end of the sentence. This means that the subject/topic, direct object, and any other details like time or location will all come before the verb.

They can be divided into two categories: ichidan and godan. I know some people like to classify them as ru- or u-verbs, but I think that gets confusing due to overlap. Ichidan verbs must end in る. Godan verbs can end in any number of う sounds, including る. If the verb ends in an いる or える sound, it's probably an ichidan verb (though there are exceptions). Otherwise it must be godan. This distinction is important because conjugations vary based on which category the verb falls into.

There are also two verbs that are exceptions for nearly every conjugation: する and 来る. Frankly I don't mind this at all because other languages (including English) typically have far more exceptions when it comes to verbs (ex: went, made, slept, ate, etc). Those two verbs will always have their own separate conjugations listed. I suspect they won't be hard to remember since they're so common.

I'll write a couple practice sentences with verbs now. One thing I'll note - initially I was confused as to whether there was any conjugation required with these original verbs, or if I could just use the word 食べる and have that be considered correct. And it is correct, just as the plain or casual form.

リーさんは食べる。
Lee-san eats.

アリスちゃんが泳ぐ。
Alice-chan swims.

アヤトは寝る。
Ayato sleeps.

These are extremely basic, but still, they're actions! And I can always jazz them up in a lesson or two with some direct objects.

Credit goes to Tae Kim's lesson seen here.