Fun facts/grammatical quirks about your language of study!

Let's share something you find interesting about the grammar of a language you're studying! I'll start:

In Japanese, there are five phonemic vowel qualities, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. Fascinatingly, when conjugating verbs changing the final vowel of the stem to any of these five gives you a different meaning which you then build on with suffixes. For instance, take the verb ''iku", which means 'to go':

Basic -u form: iku

Example: tōkyō-e iku (I go to Tokyo)

Negative -a form: ika(nai)

Example: tōkyō-e ikanai (I don't go to Tokyo)

Stem form -i: iki(tai)

Example: tōkyō-e ikitai (I want to go to Tokyo)

Potential form -e: ike(ru)

Example: tōkyō-e ikeru (I can go to Tokyo)

Volitional form -o: iko(u) Example: tōkyō-e ikō! (Let's go to Tokyo!)

Some of these vowel stems have many uses. For instance, the -i stem can be used to build polite verbs, express the purpose of another verb, etc.

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