Learn how to form past tense sentences using adjectives and nouns
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Alisha: Hi everyone! アリッシャです！ Alisha here! |
| Natsuko: こんにちは！ナツコです！Hi everyone, I'm Natsuko. |
| Alisha: Welcome to Lower Beginner Season 1, Lesson 20 – “Are You Having a Bad Time in Japan?” |
| Natsuko: In the last lesson, we learned the past tense of verbs; do you remember? In this lesson, we’ll learn past tense sentences using adjectives and nouns. |
| Alisha: Where does this lesson’s dialog take place? |
| Natsuko: Ken is now back from his holiday. He is having a conversation with his colleague at the office.では、聞きましょう。 |
| Alisha: Let’s listen to the conversation! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Alisha: I wonder what Ken bought as souvenirs… |
| Natsuko: Me too; he went to Kagoshima, and is now back with lovely “omiyage”, which means “souvenirs”. We usually buy special sweets or snacks from the places we visit, and offer them to our colleagues. |
| Alisha: That's not something we do. Sometimes we might buy postcards or a small gift for friends. |
| Natsuko: Oh, I see. If we have some days off work, which means we have to ask our colleagues to take care of our job. Bringing some “omiyage” from your holiday trip is considered a common courtesy, or natural appreciation. |
| Alisha: We can see how kind gestures such as souvenirs create smooth communication in the workplace! Okay, now onto the vocab. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Alisha: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. Natsuko, what’s the first word? |
| Natsuko: さいあく. The literal meaning of さいあく is “the most terrible” or “the worst”. We often use this word to describe something that was terrible, or that a situation is very bad. |
| Alisha: In the dialog, Ken was asked how his trip was, and he answered… |
| Natsuko: さいあくでした。His trip went badly, because he lost his wallet. Do you remember that? |
| Alisha: Oh yes. He had to ring the credit card company. So, that’s why he described his trip as さいあく |
| Natsuko: Exactly. We can use this さいあく to describe quite much anything, even as a reply to お元気ですか“How are you?” if you’re not doing well at all. |
| Alisha: I see. Can you give us some more examples? |
| Natsuko: Sure! If we’re travelling to a resort tomorrow and you’re checking the weather, I’d ask you 天気はどうですか。 How is the weather? And, let’s say it seems to be very bad, you can say, さいあくです。Meaning, “very bad” or “it couldn’t be worse”. |
| Alisha: Well, I hope I won’t have to use it in that way!! Still, it’s true that things don’t always go well, so you might need this useful word to express that you’re not happy with a situation. Okay, now on to the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alisha: In this lesson, you’ll learn about past-tense sentences with adjectives and nouns. |
| Natsuko: Right; we studied the past tense of verbs in the previous lesson. When a sentence has a verb in it, we can conjugate the verb to the past tense, to describe something that happened in the past. |
| Alisha: Japanese sentences might not have verbs, and that’s the point of this lesson. |
| Natsuko: For example, Ken’s colleague asked Ken 旅行は楽しかったですか。This means “was the trip fun?” 楽しい is an i-adjective. To say “it was fun” in the past tense, we have to conjugate this i-adjective 楽しい to 楽しかった |
| Alisha: Can you explain how to conjugate in more detail? |
| Natsuko: From たのしい, drop the final い, and add かった；たのし・・かった。楽しかった。 |
| Alisha: So, if the adjective was ちいさい… |
| Natsuko: Drop the final い, ちいさ・・・then add かった; ちいさ、かった。小さかった。 |
| Alisha: Good! Does this rule apply to any i-adjective? |
| Natsuko: There’s one exception. The i-adjective for “good” is いい, and the past tense for this いい is よかった |
| Alisha: Okay; this is the only exception, so we can remember easily, right? Listeners, let’s practice; please repeat after Natsuko. “Being fun”, たのしい, in the past tense is… |
| Natsuko: 楽しかった |
| Alisha: [wait 5 sec.] Being good, いい, in the past tense becomes… |
| Natsuko: よかった |
| Alisha: [wait 5 sec.] Well done! Now listeners, do you remember that Japanese has two types of adjectives? Let’s see the past tense for na-adjectives. |
| Natsuko: Ken described his trip as さいあくでした。さいあくな is a na-adjective. To say “it was terrible”, we drop the final な from the na-adjective, and then add でした。さいあく・・・でした。最悪でした。 |
| Alisha: Please remember; for both the i-adjective and the na-adjective, you have to drop the final sound, い or な, and then add the past ending for adjectives. |
| Natsuko: That’s right. Other examples of the na-adjective are; きれいな, “beautiful”, and かんたんな, “easy”. In the past tense these are: きれい、でした and かんたん、でした。 |
| Alisha: Okay, let’s practice those two. First, “it was beautiful”. |
| Natsuko: きれいでした |
| Alisha: [wait 5 sec.] “It was easy” |
| Natsuko: かんたんでした |
| Alisha: [wait 5 sec.] How was it? |
| Natsuko: Before wrapping up this lesson, we have also past tense sentences with nouns, but this is easy かんたんです。After the noun, we replaceです with でした |
| Alisha: That’s the same ending as na-adjectives. |
| Natsuko: Yes, it is! So, if we had a festival yesterday, 昨日は、まつりでした。 |
| Alisha: Listeners, make sure you practice the past tense with adjectives and nouns to get used to these conjugations! |
Outro |
| Alisha: Okay everyone. That’s about all we have time for this lesson! See you next time. |
| Natsuko: じゃ、また。 |
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