In Japan, if a Japanese person sees a new verb ending in ru, what would they do to try and infer if it's a ichidan or godan verb before just looking it up or asking someone?
Answer
When native Japanese speakers encounter or coin new verbs, such verbs are assumed to be godan verbs, despite the fact that many ordinary verbs that end with -i-ru/-e-ru are ichidan-verbs. Here I'm talking about native Japanese adults who can conjugate common verbs like 切る/着る/帰る/変える without thinking. And native speakers don't usually think about verb types; verb types are something we learn at middle school, but most people forget about that soon after they graduate.
For example, when you present an imaginary verb あべる to a native speaker and tell them to conjugate it in various ways, the response would be 「あべらない」「あべります」「あべって」「あべれ」 rather than 「あべない」「あべます」「あべて」「あべろ」. Likewise, the conjugation of an imaginary verb れぴる would be 「れぴらない」「れぴります」「れぴれ」「れぴろう」 rather than 「れぴない」「れぴます」「れぴろ」「れぴよう」.
This I think is because all verbs that were recently coined from loanwords are godan-verbs. コピる is an example of godan verbs that may look like ichidan at first (We say コピれ but not コピろ).
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