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I’ve been going through Season 5, and I hit a small snag of confusion. The chapter translates 「noun + だった はずです」 as “supposed to have been something”, and it translates 「noun + の はずだった」 as “was expected to be something”.
What’s confusing to me is that “supposed to have been something” is present perfect tense in English, not past; and “was expected to be something” is simple past tense. Assuming I’m not getting my tenses mixed up, anyway.
But I’m going to assume I’m missing something obvious. Any ideas?
There’s a subtle difference between the two sentences, and the synonym-ity of “supposed to” and “was expected to” is not really helping.
noun + だった はずです = “I am currently expecting that [the noun] used to be [main clause]” (but who knows if it still is).
noun + の はずだった = “I was expecting that [the noun] (at the time) was [main clause]” (but maybe I’m not expecting that any more).
Ah, that makes perfect sense. Thanks much!
Looks like I just have to remember that whatever だった is closer to is what has its temporal state changed, and the verb being changed inevitably makes it past tense.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
MagmarFire.
You can do that with a lot of grammar structures, actually. In some ways, Japanese can be more explicit about tenses than English is. For example:
ここでは高いビルがありました = There was a tall building here (but it’s not here any more)
ここでは高かったビルがあります = There was a tall building here (but it’s not tall any more)
It’s pretty much the difference between “there was a building that is tall” and “there is a building that was tall”.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
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