Page 178 - Basic Japanese

It rains a lot.

Koko wa taifū ga yoku kimasu.
Typhoons often come here.

The meanings ‘often’ and ‘a lot’ are similar to English ‘a

good deal’ as in ‘it rains a good deal’ and ‘she goes to the
movies a good deal.’

The verb infinitive is easy to find: just remove the -masu

from the polite forms such as tabe-masu, nomi-masu, shi-masu,
etc. The verb infinitive is used to make compound verbs. For

example, you can add the verb tsuzukeru ‘continues
something’ to any verb infinitive to make a compound verb

with the meaning ‘continues to do something’:

hanashi- continues talking
tsuzukeru

nomi- goes on drinking

tsuzukeru

mi-tsuzukeru keeps on looking

Another kind of compound verb is made with the verb
naosu ‘repairs, fixes, cures’ added to the infinitive; this

means ‘does something again (correcting one’s error)’:

kaki-naosu writes again, corrects

yomi-naosu reads again (correctly
this time)

Somewhat similar are compound verbs made by

attaching kaeru ‘changes something’ (do not confuse kae-ru