Introduction to ある and いる

So you probably already know the standard ‘to be’ verb, です, that is used for saying that something exists and is used to describe things. It is one of the most important Japanese verbs to know as a beginner. If you don’t know it already, you can learn about it in this special article. Right now, we are following up on です with two more verbs that, wouldn’t you believe it, also mean ‘to be’. Today were talking about ある and いる. Both also mean ‘to be’ although each in a different way. ある refers to the existence of inanimate objects like a building, a computer or money. いる is used for animate objects like people, but also animals. Think of it like this: いる is used for everything that has a pumping hart and can move around on its own, ある is used for the rest. They differ from です in that です is used more for describing things and ある and いる are purely for the existence of something. Furthermore, いる and ある can sometimes mean ‘to have’. 

• 1. ある and いる both mean ‘to be’. ある is used for inanimate objects, いる for animate objects.

How to use ある and いる

ある and いる are used when speaking about the existence of something, Simple enough right? But there are two things you have to remember for using ある and いる. When using ある and いる the subject of a sentence is often marked with the particle が.  Sometimes the object is marked with the particle は, when you want to emphasize contrast, but we will not go into this in this lessen. Furthermore, the place that something exists is marked with the particle に. You may have seen places followed by the particle で, but で is mainly used in this format to mark the place where an action takes place. In this instance there is only existence in a place.  A standard simple sentence would therefore look like this

Let’s look at some examples. 

Using ある

So first of all, you see how ある gets conjugated into あります to make it formal. In this lesson about verb conjugation it’s explained how to get the standard formal version of a verb. In this case you can see ある is a う verb because it has an あ before the る. In that case you swap the る for り and add ます, ending up with あります. 

As far as these sentences go, it’s not too difficult right? Notice that the first sentence can mean that there is a smartphone as well as that you have a smartphone. 

Using いる

So as you can see. が notes the objects you are referring to with あります or います. Notice the last two conversations here. When you are asked if there is something with ある or いる, the standard way of answering yes or no is just by saying repeating the verb in the positive or negative clause. So in these cases you see いません (there is not) and います (there is) as ans answer to いますか (Is there a?). Let’s look at how to conjugate ある and いる further. 

Conjugating ある and いる

Just like any other verb you can conjugate ある and いる for tense (past or present) and polarity (positive or negative) and as with other verbs there are formal and casual conjugations. First we’ll look at the formal conjugations. 

So if you already know how to conjugate verbs into the formal ます form, this will be familiar to you. ある followes the same pattern as any other う verb, while います is a true る verb:

Now for the informal casual conjugations: 

So you can see here that especially ある has an irregular conjugation in the casual form. There are actually multiple ways to express the negative of ある but for a beginner, knowing ない is enough. 

More examples

Let look at some more examples: