普通形

## What it means Japanese has two main 'settings': **polite** (丁寧形), which uses です and ます, and **plain** (普通形), which drops those endings. Plain form is what you use with close friends and family, and it's also the form hiding inside other grammar points, like 〜と思います or 〜と言います.

## When to use it For verbs, plain form covers four shapes: dictionary form (present, 行く), ない-form (present negative, 行かない), た-form (past, 行った), and なかった-form (past negative, 行かなかった). For い-adjectives: 良い／良くない／良かった／良くなかった. For な-adjectives and nouns, just attach or drop **だ**: 学生だ／学生じゃない／学生だった／学生じゃなかった.

## Don't confuse it with Plain form is not the same as sounding rude — it's simply informal, and totally normal with people you're close to. It's also easy to mix up with **casual speech** in general: plain form is about how the sentence ends, while casual speech also involves dropping particles and changing intonation. The two usually appear together, but they're separate features.