Free Japanese Verb Conjugation Quiz

How the Japanese conjugation quiz works

You set it up in two steps. First tick the forms you want, from the present, past and te-form to the potential, the passive and the causative. Each one has a plain-English example under it, so you can pick a form even if you don't know its grammar name. Then choose the word types: る-verbs, う-verbs, the irregular verbs, noun + する verbs, い-adjectives or な-adjectives. Each question gives you the style (plain or polite, positive or negative), the word and the form. Type the answer and it's marked right or wrong at once, and a running score stays on screen. When you've had enough, you see your score and the forms you missed, and you can go through just those again.

Typing Japanese without a Japanese keyboard

You don't need a Japanese keyboard. Type romaji into the answer box and it turns into hiragana as you go, so tabemasu becomes たべます. With a Japanese keyboard installed, type as you normally would. The quiz accepts the answer in kanji or in kana, so 食べます and たべます both count. It accepts the other correct forms too: 食べないです for 食べません, 静かではない as well as 静かじゃない, and the long causative passive 書かせられる next to the short 書かされる.

Plain and polite, verbs and adjectives

Japanese conjugates for politeness as well as tense, so most forms come in four styles: plain, plain negative, polite and polite negative. For 食べる in the present, that means 食べる, 食べない, 食べます and 食べません. Some forms have fewer. The te-form has a plain and a negative (食べて, 食べないで), and the volitional a plain and a polite (食べよう, 食べましょう). Adjectives are asked only the forms that apply to them: the present, the past, the te-form, both conditionals and the adverb. So an い-adjective comes up as 高くない or 高ければ, and いい as よくない or よかった, but never in the passive. Tick only the adjectives and the quiz becomes Japanese adjective conjugation practice on its own.

How accurate are the forms?

The forms are built by the standard rules, with the irregular ones written out: する, 来る, 行く (行って), ある (ない), くれる (くれ), くださる (ください, くださいます) and いい (よくない). We tested them against textbook forms for every class of verb and adjective. One answer the quiz won't take is the colloquial potential without ら. You'll hear 食べれる in casual speech, but the quiz expects 食べられる, the form textbooks teach.

A quiz for you, a worksheet for the class

The quiz is made for one person at a keyboard, checking answers as they go. If you have a test coming up, tick only the forms it covers and finish each run on the forms you missed. For a class, the same words and forms print as Japanese verb conjugation worksheets: fill-in boxes, a printed quick quiz and a conjugation chart, with answer keys on separate pages. To look up one word, every form of all 884 is in the Japanese conjugation tables. And if you learn another language too, the Spanish, German and Russian verb conjugation quizzes work the same way.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

Verbs, adjectives and their meanings come from JMdict, the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used in conformance with the Group's licence. The forms are built by the standard rules, with the irregular ones written out.