Potential form
Published
ふりがな:
This page is a hub for the potential form, or 可能形. It describes how to conjugate verbs to their potential form, and links out to other articles about its use. See backlinks at the bottom for notes linking to this one.
一段 verbs
Remove the trailing る and replace it with られる. In a casual context the ら in the られる can be dropped so the appended part becomes れる.
- 食べる: to eat
- 食べられる: can eat
五段 verbs
Replace the last kana in the dictionary form of the verb with it's -e sound companion in the same row of the kana table and append る after.
- 遊ぶ: to play
- 遊べる: can play
する
- する: to do
- 出来: can do
来る
- 来る: to come
- 来られる: can come
ある
ある is irregular for this conjugation and becomes:
- ある: to be (inanimate)
- あり得る: can be (is possible)
Where 得る means to gain, which is interesting!