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As a studies of Japanese I've come across two distinct ways to group verbs for
purposes of remembering how to conjugate them.

う動詞 / る動詞  
Group1 / Group 2

Pacerier mentioned a verb1 and verb5, can someone explain to me how the verbs
are divided for this system?

Also, how do Japanese people learn the different conjugations patterns? What
system for verb classification do they use?

this question may boarder on off-topic, but i think as a Japanese learner, I'd
like to be able to ask verb related questions to a Japanese person, but if i
say う動詞, unless they are familiar with non-foreigners learning Japanese, they
don't know what I'm talking about.
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2011-06-20T01:33:16.160
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2011-12-27T01:11:05.387
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question
verbs parts-of-speech
Verb classifications by japanese learners
The two main classifications of regular verbs are 一段 and 五段, named after the
number of forms their base takes.

  * 食べる -> 食べ
  * 入る -> 入ら・入り・入る・入れ・入ろ

Within 一段 there are two further classifications, although both are conjugated
the same way.

  * 上一段: 見る, 落ちる, etc.
  * 下一段: 寝る, 当てる. etc.
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2011-06-20T01:42:48.050
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2011-06-20T01:42:48.050
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The two types are:

**[五段動詞]{ご・だん・どう・し}** ー means "5-level verbs". This is the group where the
conjugations match the 5 vowel sounds of their respective kana ending. A
common 五段動詞 is 書く. It conjugates along the k- column of the hiragana table:

> 書 **か** ない 書 **き** ます 書 **く** 書 **け** ば／書 **け** る 書 **こ** う

We can see that its conjugations hit all 5 of the k-kana:   か き く け こ

Note that 五段動詞 that end in 〜う (like 会う) have a conjugation of **_わ_ い う え お**
(会 **わ** ない for the negative). This is not arbitrary, and there are historical
reasons for this, but I will not attempt to get into them here.

The other type are the **[一段動詞]{いち・だん・どう・し}** (your るverbs). However, these
can be broken down based on (I believe) the last character of their "base
form" (the part before the る). The kana columns go -a -i -u -e -o, where the
-u is considered the "center". They are classified as "upper" ([上]{かみ}) or
"lower" ([下]{しも}) based on the center.

>   * 着る is 上一段 since き is one level "above" the center (which would be く)
>   * 食べる is 下一段 since べ is one level "under" the center (which would be ぶ)
>

There are such things as 上二段 and 下二段 verbs, but I don't think they exist in
modern spoken Japanese. At least that's what 広辞苑 implies.
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2011-06-20T01:52:31.980
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There is a pretty good and complete overview of the two groups (一段/五段, which
can also be seen as "U-dropping" and "RU-dropping" in romaji) [on this
page](http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/grammar/data/uniform.htm).

する and くる have separate, exception-filled, conjugations of their own
(sometimes referred to as サ行変格活用/カ行変格活用).

Note that, like many technical grammatical question, I really don't think you
will get a very useful answer from a non-specialist native. Japanese verb
conjugation rules are fairly straightforward (though filled with exceptions)
and most Japanese simply "know" which is which, without necessarily knowing
why. Quite the same way your average English speaker would be at a loss
explaining which verbs are regular and which aren't, and how irregular verbs
work.
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2011-06-20T01:58:42.213
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answer