Oh, do you have a kanji dictionary on it, too?

That sounds handy. I haven't used my 漢和辞典（かんわ　じてん） much since I got my 電子辞書（でんし　じしょ）

I like being able to write kanji into it :-)

@kinyo くださる is one of the dozen or so irregular verbs in Japanese...

(Probably a little more than that, depending on how you define it, I suppose...)

Never minded! :-)

@Anthony I guess it depends on which ones you're talking about (and what you count as irregular). Generally, more common words tend to be more likely to be irregular in language, I think

Those honorific verbs all lose the /r/ from their 連用形（れんようけい） for some reason

It's the thingy before ます, among other things.

So, with ください and なさい

Imagine you were using the 連用形 because you wanted to add ます.

They lose their /r/s.

Now, turn it into a command form! 〜ませ

いらっしゃいませ！

But that ませ gets dropped sometimes. It's as though it's still there, still a polite imperative form

いらっしゃい！ still means いらっしゃいませ！

ください is from くださいませ and なさい is from なさいませ

@Anthony I missed the reason why you brought up ろ

The irregular verb which is missing ろ is くれる. Instead of the expected imperative *くれろ, you have くれ

Unknown.

日国 lists an alternative theory for those ませ-dropped command forms, which is that they come directly from the classical command forms: くだされ→ください, なされ→なさい

But 大辞林 only lists the ませ-dropped theory. It seems like the mainstream theory...

(Of course, I'm no expert.)

@DariusJahandarie If the 連用形 were くださり, the form with て would of course be くださって now.

@Anthony Well, it's easier to describe what language looks like that come up with explanations why it looks the way it does. When something's part of a very large change like the Great Vowel Shift in English, we can come up with an explanatory generalization. When one word ends up くれ instead of くれろ, it's harder to come up with a reason why it happened because there's less evidence to test any explanatory hypothesis against...

It's easier to come up with generalizations about irregular inflections as a class, like "they appear more commonly in common lexemes"

I guess something like "people like shortening words, particularly common words" might be enough motivation? I don't know.

@Anthony Good luck with your homework!