死ぬ: Full 五段 -ぬ Paradigm

This is the reference paradigm for a 五段 (godan) verb ending in -ぬ, and there is a remarkable fact to state up front: 死ぬ（しぬ, "to die") is the only verb in all of modern Japanese that ends in -ぬ. Classical Japanese had a few more (往ぬ／去ぬ, "to depart"), but they died out, so today the entire -ぬ conjugation class is a class of one. That sounds like a lot of rules for a single word — except its te-form and past use the exact same nasal 撥音便 (hatsuon-bin) as -む and -ぶ (死んで, 死んだ, mirroring 読んで, 遊んで), so 死ぬ costs you almost nothing new. Learn 死ぬ and you've confirmed the んで/んだ pattern from a third angle.

The complete paradigm

The な-row ladder

The consonant n stays fixed; the vowel walks the な行 column. Because there is only one -ぬ verb, this single ladder is the whole class.

撥音便: the te-form and past nasalize, then voice

The te-form is 死んで and the past is 死んだ. The final ぬ turns into ん, and — the part everyone forgets — the connector voices from て/た to で/だ. This is the nasal 撥音便 that -む, -ぶ, and -ぬ share; the ending's own voicing (nu is a voiced sound) carries through into で/だ. Writing ×死んて or ×死んた is the one real trap.

That third example shows a useful register point: 死ぬ applies figuratively to batteries, engines, and gadgets ("go dead"), where English also says "die." The te-form there is doing ordinary sequencing.

The passive 死なれる is the "bereavement" passive

The passive 死なれる is worth a full stop, because it is the textbook example of the indirect (adversative) passive. Since dying isn't something done to an object, 死なれる can't be a direct passive. Instead it marks someone as adversely affected by another's death — that is, bereaved. English has no grammar for this; we need a whole clause ("to have someone die on you / be left behind").

The causative 死なせる ("let/cause to die") and its contracted causative-passive 死なされる ("be made to die") round out the derived stems. These carry heavy meaning and appear mostly in serious, literary, or historical registers.

The negative, potential, conditional, and volitional

The negative sits on the あ-row (死なない); the potential 死ねる, conditional 死ねば, and imperative all sit on the え-row 死ね; the volitional 死のう is the お-row. Several of these are semantically constrained — you rarely need the potential of "die" — but the forms are perfectly regular, and figurative or idiomatic uses do occur.

The plain imperative deserves a blunt warning: 死ね ("drop dead") is a serious insult in Japanese — genuinely cruel, associated with bullying and abuse. Learners must be able to recognize it, but should never produce it.

How this differs from English

Two things have no English parallel here. First, English "die" is a single fixed word that never re-vowels its stem, whereas 死ぬ walks the whole な-row (死な・死に・死ぬ・死ね・死の) before any ending attaches. Second — and this is the deeper gap — English has no grammar for being harmed by someone else's action; we have to say it in a whole clause ("to have someone die on you"). Japanese folds that meaning into a single passive verb, 死なれる, so the bereaved person becomes the grammatical subject of "die." When you meet 親に死なれた, resist translating it as "the parent was died" — the passive here is about the speaker's loss, not the parent's dying. That mismatch, plus the fact that 死ぬ is the lone survivor of a whole conjugation class, is why this small word earns a full page.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• 死ぬ is the only -ぬ verb in modern Japanese — the entire class is one word, so learn it as a companion to 読む rather than an exception to memorize.
• Te-form and past take the nasal 撥音便 with voicing: 死んで, 死んだ — identical in shape to 読んで／読んだ and 遊んで／遊んだ.
• The connector voices to で/だ, never て/た — ×死んて is the classic slip.
• 死なれる is the adversative "bereavement" passive (the deceased takes に), and 死ぬ is blunt about people — use 亡くなる for respect.
• The imperative 死ね is a genuine insult (vulgar); recognize it, never produce it.
• Cross-check the identical nasal pattern on 読む and the full map on the te/ta sound-change chart.