生きる (ikiru) conjugation
to live
生きる (いきる, ikiru) 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 | 生きる ikiru | 生きます ikimasu | The form you look up. Also the casual present and future. |
| Plain negative | 生きない ikinai | 生きません ikimasen | “doesn’t / won’t”. From here it conjugates like an i-adjective. |
| Plain past | 生きた ikita | 生きました ikimashita | The casual past — same ending as the te-form, with た/だ. |
| Plain past negative | 生きなかった ikinakatta | 生きませんでした ikimasendeshita | “didn’t”. The negative past, still i-adjective-shaped. |
| Te-form | 生きて ikite | — | The connector: requests, linking clauses, ~ている. |
| Progressive (~ている) | 生きている ikiteiru | 生きています ikiteimasu | “is ~ing”, or an ongoing resulting state. |
| Desire (~たい) | 生きたい ikitai | 生きたいです ikitaidesu | “want to ~”. Behaves as an i-adjective. |
| Volitional | 生きよう ikiyou | 生きましょう ikimashou | “let’s ~” / “I think I’ll ~”. |
| Potential | 生きられる ikirareru | 生きられます ikiraremasu | “can ~”. What you could do; the object often takes が. |
| Passive | 生きられる ikirareru | 生きられます ikiraremasu | “is ~ed”. Also the honorific and the suffering passive. |
| Causative | 生きさせる ikisaseru | 生きさせます ikisasemasu | Make or let someone do it. |
| Causative-passive | 生きさせられる ikisaserareru | 生きさせられます ikisaseraremasu | Be made to do it — the long one. |
| Imperative | 生きろ ikiro | 生きてください ikitekudasai | Blunt order. Use ~てください in real life. |
| Prohibitive | 生きるな ikiruna | — | “don’t!” — dictionary form + な. |
| Conditional (~ば) | 生きれば ikireba | — | “if ~”. General rules and hypotheticals. |
| Conditional (~たら) | 生きたら ikitara | — | “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.