問う・請う: The Archaic -う te/ta

The -う godan class has exactly one footnote, and this is it. A tiny, bookish set of -う verbs — chiefly 問う（とう, "to ask, to call into question"） and 請う（こう, "to request, to entreat"） — build their te-form and past with the older ウ音便（う-sound change） rather than the modern 促音便: 問うて／問うた, not the ×問って you would predict from 会って or 買って. Everything else about these verbs is a perfectly ordinary ワ行五段. This page is the reference for that single irregular cell, and for why it exists at all.

Why 問う keeps its う

The irregularity is not random — it is a fossil. In the older language, all -う verbs formed the te/past by keeping the う and letting the vowel lengthen: 買う → 買うて, 会う → 会うて. That pattern is still fully alive in Western Japanese (Kansai): a native of Osaka says 買うて（こうて）, 会うて（おうて）, もろて every day. Standard Eastern/Tokyo Japanese, however, generalized the 促音便 — the small-っ doubling — for its everyday -う verbs, giving 買って, 会って.

The switch never reached a handful of low-frequency, literary verbs. 問う, 請う, 恋う, 乞う stayed behind with the older ウ音便 and fossilized there. So when you write 問うて, you are not learning a bizarre exception — you are using the same sound change that the entire western half of the country still applies across the board, preserved in standard Japanese only in its most bookish corners.

The full paradigm — 問う

Note how the negative reaches for the わ-row (問わない) exactly like 会う — the hidden w of the -う class is fully present here. The verb is regular in every cell except the te-form and the 〜た family, which is where the ウ音便 surfaces.

会う vs 問う: same verb, two cells apart

Both are ワ行五段 -う verbs. Line them up and the difference is surgically narrow:

The everyday verb doubles into っ; the bookish verb keeps its う. That is the whole story. (In careful speech 問うて is pronounced with a long "o" — roughly tōte — but it is written with う, and the point of the page is that the う never collapses.)

問う in real use — mostly formal and set-phrase

You will meet 問う far more often in its passive 問われる and in fixed expressions than in the plain past. Its home register is news writing, law, and formal argument.

The plain past 問うた and te-form 問うて are genuinely used, but they read as literary or journalistic — in casual speech people reach for 聞いた or 尋ねた instead.

請う（こう）— te 請うて, past 請うた

請う "to request, to entreat, to beg for" behaves identically: the te/past keep the う (請うて／請うた), everything else is regular ワ行五段 (請わない・請います・請える). It lives in dignified, humble-sounding requests — asking for forgiveness, guidance, or instruction.

Its most famous survival is the frozen tagline 請うご期待（こうごきたい, "please look forward to it / stay tuned"）, tacked onto trailers and serialized stories:

恋う and 乞う — the archaic tail

Two more -う verbs belong to the club, both now firmly (archaic) or (literary):

• 恋う（こう, "to yearn for, to long for"） — you almost never see the finite verb today; it survives as the ます-stem 恋い（as in 恋しい "dear, missed"）. When inflected in old prose it is 恋うて.
• 乞う（こう, "to beg, to pray for"） — near-identical to 請う in sound and sense; te-form 乞うて. It lives on in compounds like 雨乞い（あまごい, "rain-praying"）and 命乞い（いのちごい, "begging for one's life"）.

You do not need to produce these — just recognize that when you see うて on a -う verb, it is one of this closed set, never an everyday word.

How this differs from English — and the trap

English changes tense by reshaping the whole word ("meet / met") and has no notion of a verb that resists the change its neighbors accept. Japanese does: 会う and 問う are the same conjugation class, yet one doubles and one does not, purely because 問う is a bookish survivor. There is no rule to derive this from — it is a lexical fact about four specific verbs.

The trap is analogy. Having drilled 会って, 買って, 使って, 言って, your instinct fills in ×問って — and that instinct is wrong for exactly these verbs. Conversely, do not over-apply 問うて to the everyday verbs: 買うて and 会うて are correct in Kansai but nonstandard in Tokyo Japanese, where the standard is 買って, 会って.

Common mistakes

The pattern to internalize: 問う・請う (and archaic 恋う・乞う) are the only -う verbs that keep the う in the te/past. Meet them mostly in formal and written Japanese, and never let 会って's doubling leak onto them.

Key takeaways

• 問う（とう）and 請う（こう） take the archaic ウ音便: te-form 問うて／請うて, past 問うた／請うた — never ×問って／×請って.
• Only the te-form and the 〜た family (past, たら, たり) are irregular; every other form is a plain ワ行五段 (問わない・問います・問える・問おう).
• The verb 問う is read とう, not もん; its natural home is the passive 問われる and set phrases (〜を問わず, 罪に問う, 責任を問う).
• 請う survives above all in 請うご期待 and in humble requests (許しを請う, 教えを請う); 恋う and 乞う are (archaic)/(literary).
• Do not over-correct: 買うて／会うて are Kansai, and standard Japanese keeps the doubling (買って, 会って). See the master roundup of irregular te-forms and the sound-change chart.