Japanese Potential Form Practice Exercises
Practise potential form with quick prompts before moving into the free interactive game.
About the author
Luke McLaughlin created Constructing Language after living in Japan and later learning Mandarin Chinese from scratch. The lessons, games, and guides are built from that first-hand learner experience and checked against native-speaker course work with Hiro for Japanese and Xiang for Mandarin Chinese.
- Lived in Japan and studied Japanese through immersion and structured self-study.
- Learned Mandarin Chinese from scratch as an adult learner.
- Created the Construction Method: audio-first sentence building, grammar graphics, and active recall.
- Built Japanese course material with Hiro and Mandarin course material with Xiang, both native-speaker collaborators.
What this exercise trains
The potential form expresses ability. Ru-verbs often add rareru, while many u-verbs shift to the e-row plus ru. The particle ga often appears with the thing someone can do or understand.
- Taberu becomes taberareru.
- Iku becomes ikeru.
- Use ga naturally with ability: nihongo ga wakarimasu.
Practice sequence
Answer the sample prompt, explain the grammar role in your own words, then repeat the pattern with a new noun, verb, time word, or location.