得る (eru) conjugation
to get, to gain, to win, to learn
得る (える, eru) is an ichidan verb. Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes. Every form below is tappable — hear it, then say it back.
Conjugation table
| Form | Plain (casual) | Polite (~ます) | When you use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dictionary / plain | 得る eru | 得ます emasu | The form you look up. Also the casual present and future. |
| Plain negative | 得ない enai | 得ません emasen | “doesn’t / won’t”. From here it conjugates like an i-adjective. |
| Plain past | 得た eta | 得ました emashita | The casual past — same ending as the te-form, with た/だ. |
| Plain past negative | 得なかった enakatta | 得ませんでした emasendeshita | “didn’t”. The negative past, still i-adjective-shaped. |
| Te-form | 得て ete | — | The connector: requests, linking clauses, ~ている. |
| Progressive (~ている) | 得ている eteiru | 得ています eteimasu | “is ~ing”, or an ongoing resulting state. |
| Desire (~たい) | 得たい etai | 得たいです etaidesu | “want to ~”. Behaves as an i-adjective. |
| Volitional | 得よう eyou | 得ましょう emashou | “let’s ~” / “I think I’ll ~”. |
| Potential | 得られる erareru | 得られます eraremasu | “can ~”. What you could do; the object often takes が. |
| Passive | 得られる erareru | 得られます eraremasu | “is ~ed”. Also the honorific and the suffering passive. |
| Causative | 得させる esaseru | 得させます esasemasu | Make or let someone do it. |
| Causative-passive | 得させられる esaserareru | 得させられます esaseraremasu | Be made to do it — the long one. |
| Imperative | 得ろ ero | 得てください etekudasai | Blunt order. Use ~てください in real life. |
| Prohibitive | 得るな eruna | — | “don’t!” — dictionary form + な. |
| Conditional (~ば) | 得れば ereba | — | “if ~”. General rules and hypotheticals. |
| Conditional (~たら) | 得たら etara | — | “if / when ~”. The everyday conditional. |
🔊 Tap any Japanese word to hear it spoken.
Why it conjugates this way
Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes.
See the full rules on the verb conjugation guide.