来る: 'to come' (くる・きた・こない)

来る ("to come") is the second of Japanese's only two truly irregular verbs, and it is notorious for one reason: the single kanji 来 is read three different ways depending on the grammatical form. The dictionary form 来る is kuru, the past 来た is kita, and the negative 来ない is konai. The kanji never changes on the page — but the sound hidden underneath it does. The whole difficulty of this verb, and the whole solution, is learning to attach the reading to the form, not to the character.

The kanji lies; the grammar tells the truth

Most Japanese verbs keep a stable stem and only swap the trailing kana (書く kaku → 書いた kaita → 書かない kakanai — the 書 is always ka). 来る breaks that promise. Its stem vowel shifts through three sounds — く (ku) → き (ki) → こ (ko) — and the kanji 来 silently absorbs all three. That is why you cannot "read off" 来た from the kanji: you have to know which form you are looking at first, then supply the reading the form demands.

Think of it as three stems living under one roof:

The full paradigm

Here is 来る across the forms you will meet first. Read down the "Reading" column and watch the vowel travel く → き → こ.

The three readings in real sentences

Start with the three the whole guide keeps coming back to. Say them out loud — the point is to hear kuru, kita, konai as three separate words that happen to share a kanji.

Now the polite side, where the き stem carries the ます:

The te-form 来て (kite) is everywhere — it makes requests and links clauses:

And the こ stem drives the volitional and the blunt imperative:

Why textbooks write くる in kana at first

You will often see 来る printed as くる in kana in beginner materials, and the reason is exactly the problem above: writing it in kana makes the sound visible on the page, so the learner isn't tempted to lock one reading onto the kanji. Native writing uses the kanji 来 freely — 来る, 来た, 来ない are all completely standard — so you must eventually read the kanji in all three ways. But at the very start, kana spelling is a kindness. Once the く/き/こ alternation is automatic, the kanji stops being a trap and becomes just a compact way to write a verb you already hear correctly.

Compounds inherit the alternation

来る is one of the most productive verbs in the language because it bolts onto the te-form of other verbs to add a "…and come (toward here)" meaning: 持って来る ("bring"), 帰って来る ("come back home"), 出て来る ("come out"), 買って来る ("go buy and bring back"). Crucially, the 来る half conjugates exactly as it does alone — same three readings — so everything you just learned transfers for free.

Notice 買って来た is katte kita (き stem, past) and 帰って来ない is kaette konai (こ stem, negative) — the same shifts, just riding on a compound.

How this differs from English

English also has an irregular "come / came / come," but the irregularity lives out in the open: the word visibly changes shape (come → came). Japanese hides the whole thing inside one unchanging character, so a learner reading 来た with English instincts sees a stable-looking kanji and assumes a stable sound. That assumption is precisely the error. The fix is to stop treating 来 as a pronunciation and start treating it as a slot whose sound is filled in by the grammar around it — a mental move English never forces you to make, because English never separates a verb's spelling from its sound this severely.

Common Mistakes

1. Reading 来た as ×くた. The past tense uses the き stem: 来た is kita, never kuta.

2. Reading 来ない as ×くない. The negative uses the こ stem: 来ない is konai, never kunai (×くない looks like an i-adjective negative, which this is not).

3. Reading 来ます as ×くます. The polite form uses the き stem: 来ます is kimasu.

4. Locking the く reading onto every form. The volitional, like the negative, uses the こ stem: 来よう is koyō, never ×kuyō. Whenever a form isn't the dictionary/ば or the polite/past/te set, check whether it wants こ.

Key Takeaways

• 来る is irregular because one kanji 来 has three readings — く (来る), き (来ます・来た・来て), こ (来ない・来よう・来い) — chosen by the grammatical form, not by the character.
• Attach the reading to the form: past → kita, negative → konai, polite → kimasu. The endings themselves are ordinary; only the stem vowel is the trick.
• Textbooks often write くる in kana early on to make the sound visible; native text uses 来 in all three forms.
• Compounds like 持って来る, 帰って来る inherit the exact same alternation — 買って来た (kita), 帰って来ない (konai).
• The one deep move to make: stop reading 来 as a sound, and start reading it as a slot the grammar fills in.