Japanese is Posibble Lesson by Evy Mukriani - HTML preview

Part 25

q -ZU : without doing (intro)

q Example Sentences

q Useful Words

q Japanese Resource Links

-ZU: without doing (intro)

If you wanted to say "He didn't eat, but went right to the store." you wouldn't be

able to right now. You need one more grammar item to be able to say it properly.

As you can tell by the heading, that grammar item is -ZU. It roughly means

"without doing".

Very frequently, you will conjugate suru (to do) into this form. As suru is one

of two irregular verbs, you will need to be told what suru turns into. (Being

irregular, it doesn't follow the normal pattern)

suru (to do) becomes sezu (without doing)

benkyou sezu ni, sugu dekaketa.

study without doing, right away went out.

(He) went out right away, without studying.

nanimo tabezu, mise e itchatta.

nothing without eating, store (toward) up and went.

Without eating anything, he went off to the store.

You'll notice that sometimes the particle ni is added after the verb in -zu form. It

doesn't change the meaning, but it's nice to know why it's there. In the first

sentence, it's telling in what way he "went out right away". That's why the

particle ni is used.

Here are some examples:

taberu - tabezu

korosu - korosazu

sorasu - sorasazu

This form isn't among the most popular, but it's nice to know it. That's why we're

only touching on it right now. If you hear someone say a word that ends in -zu,

you'll at least know it's a verb form. You then remove the -zu and see if you can

recognize the verb stem. Usually that isn't too difficult, if you know enough

verbs.