Japanese Day 13 – Adjectives In The Past Tense

I have covered both the い -adjectives and な -adjectives already, but you have probably noticed I missed one thing out …how to use them in the past tense, which is what I will be going over here today.

Again there are slight differences between the two types of adjectives, but it’s all very straight forward, so let get to it.

い Adjectives In The Past Tense

To createい adjectives the past tense, we simply have to remove the final い from the end and replace it with the ending that will form the past tense, which is – かった ka- (small) tsu- ta.　

This will now allow you to say that an adjective “was” something, like “was cute” “was big” and so on.

赤い – red

赤かった  – was red

If you need to make this more polite, you can of course just add です(desu) as needed.

The Past Negative

You might want to say an い adjective “was not”, which is both in the past, and a negative.

If you remember, to form a negative withい adjectives, you just have to drop theい and addedくな (kunai)

A similar thing happens for the negative in the past tense, you drop the い and instead of くな, you add くなかった (kunakatta)

And then as always, you can make this more polite by adding です.

赤 – red

赤くなかった– was not red

Quick Recap:

Remove the い from the word , and then add one of the following endings:

くない(kunai) – is not (negative, present tense)

かったよ(katta) – was  (past tense)

くなかった (kunakatta) – was not (negative, past tense)

The Exception – “Good”

I already discussed this exception when I introduced you to い adjectives, so it should be no surprise that “good” is showing up again when we want to put things into the past tense.

If you remember the adjective for “good” is いい, but this is a sort of modern adaptation of the word, which organically comes from the older version –  良い (yoi)  and when we want to change the form of the word “good” …even if it is the modern いい, we treat it like the older original word, and apply the rules to this version.

This does mean things are straight forward; we just need to remember that the word goes back to the original version before we do anything and then we simply remove the い and add on whatever ending we need.

良い  (yoi)  – good

良かった  (yo-katta) – was good

良くない  (yokunai) – not good

良くなかった (yokunakatta) – was not good

As it is only this one word, it is probably just easier to learn it and its various version, but also it does follow the normal rules, you just have to remember to use the older version of the word as such.

な Adjectives In The Past Tense

When it comes to な adjectives in the past tense, it is also pretty straight forward.

As these are technically nouns, it means we just need to add on the ending which will make it the past tense, which is:

だた (tada) which is less formal or でした (deshita) which is more polite

簡単 (Kantan) – easy

簡単だた(kantandata) – was easy (casual)

簡単でした  (kantandeshita)- was easy (formal)

The Past Negative

If you want to say a な adjective “was not”, which is both in the past, and a negative, then this again is pretty simple as we treat な adjectives like a noun.

To remind you, to create a negative な adjective in the present tense, we just add janai. じゃない

簡単 (Kantan) – easy

簡単じゃない (Kantan janai )- not easy

To create a negative な adjective in the past tense, we just addじゃなかった (janakatta)

簡単じゃなかった (Kantan janakatta) – was not easy

So in this way, it is similar to the  いadjectives, there is just some minor differences.

Quick Recap:

Add one of the following to the end of the word:

だた (data) – was (casual past tense)

でした  (deshita) – was (formal past tense)

じゃない (janai) – is not (negative)

じゃなかった (janakatta) – was not  (negative, past tense)

Making Adjectives More Descriptive

Adjectives by themselves are descriptive words, which give more detail to a sentence …but you can make these even more descriptive by adding a few extra words, like the following.

You will notice these all the time in your immersion, so they are good to be aware of and they simply just go before the adjective.

ちょっと(chotto) – little

とても (totemo) –  very

すごく (sugoku) – extremely  (can also mean “very” …as in “very much” …so “extremely”)

(Return To: The Full List of All The Japanese Lessons)

Today’s Vocabulary

四 (し, よん, よ) – Four

五 (ご; いつ; い) – Five

六 (ろく) – Six

日曜日 (にちようび) – Sunday

女 (おんな) – Woman

パン – Bread

新しい (あたらしい) – New

する – To Do

 来る (くる) – To Come

Today’s Immersion Videos

It is taking me time to find/add more immersion videos. This section will be updated shortly!

(Go To The Next Lesson: Day 14 – Like And Dislike)