Japanese 272 - Listing multiple things with ~たり

We’ve previously looked at connecting clauses with the て-form, for example: あらってべてください。 The て-form implies that the things mentioned are the only things involved.

If you want to imply that there are other things as well, we can use the suffix 〜たり. It is constructed in the same way as the て-form, so the only thing we need to do is replace 〜て with 〜たり.

Plain formべるする
て-formべてんでしてって
たり-formべたりんだりしたりったり

A verb in the たり-form is used in combination with the verb する to make sentences.

We can change the tense of the sentence by changing the tense of the する verb.

〜たり can also be used with nouns and adjectives in the following ways:

VerbsVerb + たりする
NounsNoun + だったりです・だ
い-adjectivesい-adjective + かったりです・だ
な-adjectivesな-adjective + だったりです・だ

See the table below for some examples of using 〜たり with nouns and adjectives.

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