〜たい～tai
"want to (do something)" — saying what you feel like doing.
What it means
Add 〜たい to a verb to say you want to do that action. It's for your own desire — what the speaker wants. The neat trick: once you attach 〜たい, the whole thing behaves like an い-adjective, so it conjugates exactly like 高い → 高くない → 高かった.
How to make it
want to
don't want to
wanted to
didn't want to
Examples — real lines from the library
Every one of these is a real line from a real episode in our podcast transcripts — pulled by the finder and verified against the live library. Tap "hear it →" to open the app at that exact second.
Watch out
Study 〜たい in real Japanese
You can drill this pattern today, the way Wakatta works right now — with real audio, not textbook sentences. Beginner channels like Japanese with Shun, Nihongo con Teppei and Comprehensible Japanese are full of 〜たい.
🎧 Listen & tap
Open a real podcast or YouTube video and follow the tappable transcript. Tap any word — a 〜たい verb, anything — for its reading + meaning, without leaving the audio.
🔖 Save & review
Save the words you didn't know. They come back later in spaced-repetition review, with the original sentence for context — so they actually stick.
Stuck on a whole sentence? The AI sensei breaks it down for you — right there in the transcript.
Related N5 grammar: 〜てください · 〜が欲しい · 〜ましょう