Learn how to make and use the past tense of i and na adjectives
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| Welcome to learn Japanese grammar absolute beginner. In this video series, you learn basic Japanese grammar patterns and phrases through easy to follow audio and visual cues. Here is what we will cover in this lesson. |
| Ready? |
| Let’s get started. |
| Naomi: よかったです。 (Yokatta desu.) |
| Peter: In this lesson, you learn how to create the past tense of adjectives, It was. There are two different types of adjectives, they are |
| Naomi: I-adjectives and na-adjectives. |
| Peter: How we conjugate these adjectives depends on the type. Let’s illustrate with an example. Can we have an i-adjective? |
| Naomi: 楽しい (tanoshii) |
| Peter: Fun. |
| Now we are going to conjugate it. First, drop the final "i". |
| Naomi: 楽し (tanoshi) |
| Peter: Now add かった (katta) to it and we get |
| Naomi: 楽しかった (tanoshi katta) |
| Peter: And this means, it was fun. Let’s try another example. Remember, it’s super easy. To form the past tense of an adjective, we take the final syllable, drop it and add かった (katta). Naomi-sensei, what’s the word for delicious? |
| Naomi: おいしい (oishii) |
| Peter: Drop the final "i" |
| Naomi: おいし (oishi) |
| Peter: Now add かった (katta) |
| Naomi: おいしかった (oishikatta) |
| Peter: It was delicious. But if you are out with your boss or teacher, how do we say it was fun politely? |
| Naomi: おいしかったです。 (Oishikatta desu.) |
| Peter: It was delicious politely. |
| Naomi: おいしかったです (Oishikatta desu.) You need to add です (desu) to the end. |
| Peter: There is one i-adjective we should point out here, and that adjective is |
| Naomi: いい (Ii) |
| Peter: Long "i" which means good or well. The past form of this is not |
| Naomi: いかった (ikatta) |
| Peter: But rather |
| Naomi: よかった (yokatta) 良い (ii) becomes 良かった (yokatta) for informal past. The formal past will be 良かったです (yokatta desu) |
| Peter: Please remember that です (desu) only serves to make the phrase polite and it is not needed when speaking Japanese informally. |
| Naomi: よかったです。 (Yokatta desu.) |
| Naomi: きれいでした。 (Kirei deshita.) |
| Peter: Onto na-adjectives, the conjugation is quite simple. For informal speech, just add |
| Naomi: だった (datta) |
| Peter: To the dictionary form of a verb to get the informal past. For formal speech, add |
| Naomi: でした (deshita) |
| Peter: To get the polite past. I think we can illustrate this best with an example. Naomi-sensei, can we have a na-adjective? |
| Naomi: ひま (hima) |
| Peter: Free as in free time. Now if you want to say, I was free in informal speech, just add だった (datta) to the word. ひま (hima) becomes |
| Naomi: ひまだった (hima datta) |
| Peter: How about I was free using formal speech. |
| Naomi: ひまでした (hima deshita) |
| Peter: I was free. Here we just add でした (deshita) to the word. Can we have another example of a na-adjective? |
| Naomi: きれい (kirei) |
| Peter: Beautiful. |
| Now this adjective ends in "i" but it’s actually a na-adjective. It’s an exception to the rule you are just going to have to remember. So it was beautiful using informal speech, |
| Naomi: きれいだった (kirei datta) |
| Peter: It was beautiful, or he or she was beautiful. |
| Using formal speech, |
| Naomi: きれいでした (kirei deshita) |
| Peter: It was beautiful, he or she was beautiful. |
| Naomi: きれいでした。 (Kirei deshita.) |
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