食べる (taberu) conjugation
to eat
食べる (たべる, taberu) 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 | 食べる taberu | 食べます tabemasu | The form you look up. Also the casual present and future. |
| Plain negative | 食べない tabenai | 食べません tabemasen | “doesn’t / won’t”. From here it conjugates like an i-adjective. |
| Plain past | 食べた tabeta | 食べました tabemashita | The casual past — same ending as the te-form, with た/だ. |
| Plain past negative | 食べなかった tabenakatta | 食べませんでした tabemasendeshita | “didn’t”. The negative past, still i-adjective-shaped. |
| Te-form | 食べて tabete | — | The connector: requests, linking clauses, ~ている. |
| Progressive (~ている) | 食べている tabeteiru | 食べています tabeteimasu | “is ~ing”, or an ongoing resulting state. |
| Desire (~たい) | 食べたい tabetai | 食べたいです tabetaidesu | “want to ~”. Behaves as an i-adjective. |
| Volitional | 食べよう tabeyou | 食べましょう tabemashou | “let’s ~” / “I think I’ll ~”. |
| Potential | 食べられる taberareru | 食べられます taberaremasu | “can ~”. What you could do; the object often takes が. |
| Passive | 食べられる taberareru | 食べられます taberaremasu | “is ~ed”. Also the honorific and the suffering passive. |
| Causative | 食べさせる tabesaseru | 食べさせます tabesasemasu | Make or let someone do it. |
| Causative-passive | 食べさせられる tabesaserareru | 食べさせられます tabesaseraremasu | Be made to do it — the long one. |
| Imperative | 食べろ tabero | 食べてください tabetekudasai | Blunt order. Use ~てください in real life. |
| Prohibitive | 食べるな taberuna | — | “don’t!” — dictionary form + な. |
| Conditional (~ば) | 食べれば tabereba | — | “if ~”. General rules and hypotheticals. |
| Conditional (~たら) | 食べたら tabetara | — | “if / when ~”. The everyday conditional. |
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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.
