{"id":3746,"date":"2014-06-18T06:54:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T06:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/?p=3746"},"modified":"2018-07-25T15:38:58","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T15:38:58","slug":"how-to-talk-about-past-in-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/how-to-talk-about-past-in-japanese\/","title":{"rendered":"How to talk about past in Japanese?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this article, I thought it will be interesting to cover &#8220;how to express past events in Japanese&#8221;. In English, each verb has its own past tense form, and that some of them are a bit unique in that you have to know how to &#8220;convert&#8221; from present tense to past tense. \u00a0In Japanese, grammar is a bit more simpler believe it or not. \u00a0I will show you using the examples below.<\/p>\n<p>The basic rule is to convert<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;~ masu (\uff5e\u307e\u3059)&#8221; to &#8220;~mashita (\uff5e\u307e\u3057\u305f)&#8221;\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Example 1:<\/p>\n<p>Benkyo shi<strong>masu<\/strong> (\u3079\u3093\u304d\u3087\u3046\u3057<strong>\u307e\u3059<\/strong>) ===&gt; Benkyo shi<strong>mashita(<\/strong>\u3079\u3093\u304d\u3087\u3046\u3057<strong>\u307e\u3057\u305f)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa Nihongo o benkyo shimasu. &#8211; I study Japanese. ==&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa Nihongo o benkyo shimashita &#8211; I studied Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>Example 2:<\/p>\n<p>Sushi o tabe<strong>masu<\/strong>(\u3059\u3057\u3092\u305f\u3079<strong>\u307e\u3059<\/strong>) \u00a0==&gt; Sushi o tabe<strong>mashita<\/strong>(\u3059\u3057\u3092\u305f\u3079<strong>\u307e\u3057\u305f<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa kono sushi o tabemasu.- I eat this Sushi. ===&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa kono sushi o tabemashita. &#8211; I ate this Sushi.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Example 3:<\/p>\n<p>shigoto o shi<strong>masu<\/strong>(\u3057\u3054\u3068\u3092<strong>\u3057\u307e\u3059<\/strong>) \u00a0==&gt; shigoto o shi<strong>mashita<\/strong>(\u3057\u3054\u3068\u3092<strong>\u3057\u307e\u3057\u305f<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa imakara shigoto o shimasu- I start working now\u00a0===&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Watashi wa kinou shigoto o shimashita.- I worked yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Example 4:<\/p>\n<p>undo shimasu(\u3046\u3093\u3069\u3046\u3057\u307e\u3059) ==&gt; undo shimashita(\u3046\u3093\u3069\u3046\u3057\u307e\u3057\u305f)<\/p>\n<p>Watashiwa kyo undo shimasu. &#8211; I will exercise today. ==&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Watashiwa kinou undo shimashita. &#8211; I exercised yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Example 5:<\/p>\n<p>nomi<strong>masu<\/strong>(\u306e\u307f<strong>\u307e\u3059<\/strong>) == &gt; nomi<strong>mashita<\/strong> (\u306e\u307f<strong>\u307e\u3057\u305f<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Watashiwa sake o nomimasu. &#8211; I drink Sake. ==&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Watashiwa kinou sake o takusan nomimashita. &#8211; I drank lots of sake yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the rule is pretty simple here. As long as you know the rule to change <strong>~masu to ~mashita<\/strong>, you can covert from present tense to past tense. Try practicing by creating your own sentences using the verbs above.<\/p>\n<p>Short video for your review:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Japanese Grammar - Japanese Past tense Verbs ~mashita (~\u307e\u3057\u305f)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EHJF92bKjHk?start=27&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this article, I thought it will be interesting to cover &#8220;how to express past events in Japanese&#8221;. In English, each verb has its own past tense form, and that some of them are a bit unique in that you have to know how to &#8220;convert&#8221; from present tense to past tense. \u00a0In Japanese, grammar&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/how-to-talk-about-past-in-japanese\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3746","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6127,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/6127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}