LET’S DO SOMETHING! (Verbs Pt. 2)
Just Did It – Nike, Past Tense
Now that you’ve had a little bit of time to absorb Japanese verbs as a whole, let’s take a look at modifying them into past, negative, and past negative forms. You’ll get to continue to practice the verb vocabulary from last chapter and learn something new at the same time. First, though, in the spirit of these “verb” chapters, I want to continue where we left off in the previous “Let’s Do Something” chapter and talk about creating a ‘not-to-do list.’
One of the most important things I’ve learned isn’t how to create an effective getting-things-done list (though that has been pretty useful). The most important thing that I’ve learned to do is to create a “not-to-do list.” There are always so many things to do, making the important things harder to achieve if you let everything else distract you. There are two ways to do a not-to-do list. One of them is to make a generalized daily one, and the other option is to create one for a specific occasion. We’re going to talk about the first one. Try it out for a couple of weeks and see how you feel. You may have some withdrawal symptoms for a little while, but I promise it’s for the best, especially if you’re a busy person. It’ll help you avoid those “temptations” that unnecessarily take up so much of your time. Here’s what my generalized “not-to-do list” looks like. I look at it often and do my best to stick to it. You’d be surprised at how much harder it is to not do something versus actually doing something.
- Don’t answer the phone between 7am – 7pm (listening to messages is okay to make sure nothing is an emergency, depending on who’s calling). This trains people to not call me – especially since my voicemail message recommend people send me e-mails because I don’t actually check my phone messages very often. Of course, “important” people know that they can leave me messages and I will check them.
- Don’t check e-mail, unless it’s between 11:30am – 12:00pm or 3:30pm – 4:00pm. I want to cut this down to only one e-mail session per day, but I’m still working towards that. Magically, my e-mail gets done during the time allotted, rather than taking several hours over the course of the day.
- Do not check Twitter / other social networks more than once per day. I have a little time in the morning that I check it right after I wake up (helps me to get up in the morning). Tweeting, however, is a little different. Since it’s used for marketing, I’m allowed to Tweet, but I don’t read other tweets unless it’s during my allotted time.
- Only check my RSS reader once per day, and only if there’s time after checking e-mail (within the e-mail allotted time). Also, no adding new feeds to my reader without removing another. I have a feed following cap of 20 websites. If I miss some news, no big deal. The world won’t come to an end (and if it does, then at least I didn’t worry about it). That way, only the things that are really important to me get through to me. Otherwise, it’s too easy to keep adding feeds until you’re spending hours a day reading news you probably forget about an hour later. I’d rather put in the extra effort to be on someone else’s feed instead of reading hundreds of articles I really don’t care about.
- Do not work in the evenings, unless it’s an emergency. And luckily, usually it’s not. By setting a limit on when I can work, I somehow get the important things done on time and get to enjoy myself, recharge, and do things I like for a good portion of the day.
- Do not do something someone else could do. It’s all about virtual assistants, Mechanical Turk, and interns. Even though it costs money to hire someone, I’m very happy to spend $50-$200 a week so I can enjoy life more. Still haven’t quite figured out how to outsource learning… though luckily learning is something I really enjoy, which means I can outsource other things to continue spending time learning about the things I’m interested in.
- Do not listen to music with words unless I’m in the car (at which point I’ll usually listen to an audiobook on a subject I’m interested in learning about), relaxing, shopping, or cooking. When it’s work time, I either listen to Mozart, or nothing at all. Mozart is the only thing that’s been shown to not slow work / study (though it still doesn’t make it better), and all others have been shown to be distracting. Therefore, no music, podcasts, or audiobooks allowed while working or studying because it takes away from studying time.
Although there are variations added for specific instances on a daily basis, depending on the situation, by creating your own “not-to-do list” you’ll find yourself getting things done more quickly and efficiently, whether that’s work or study, so you can focus on the things you want to do in your life. When you have more time for the things you enjoy, the things you enjoy are a lot more fun, and you can really focus your efforts effectively. Take some time right now to put together your own “not-to-do list” and watch your efficiency soar.
〜ました PAST TENSE
For the new conjugations we’ll be learning in this chapter, I’ll be using the same verbs in each so you can see how the conjunction (specifically) changes. I don’t want to focus too much on the actual vocabulary itself (you can do that), and I want you to have a solid understanding of the grammatical changes that are taking place and then be able to replicate them afterwards.
The first verb conjugation we’ll be looking at is 〜ました. I put the 〜 symbol there, because that shows that something else should come before the ました. In the case of the last chapter we learned 〜ます, where you could put any number of things before it to make it into a present/future verb. いきます, します, たべます, to name a few.
NOTE: The pronunciation of ました is kind of like でした. The “i” sound in the し is silent, so you want to end up pronouncing it more like “mashta.” Remember (and I hope you do!) how でした is pronounced “deshta” instead of “deshita”? It’s exactly like that. If you didn’t remember how でした was pronounced, re-cog that as a high priority. I don’t want you pronouncing でした incorrectly!
Conjugating verbs in polite form is very easy, as long as you understood ます form. Essentially, all you need to do is replace ます with the new conjugation. In the case of ました, all you need to do is take it and replace ます with it to make the verb past tense. You still will have to learn the first part of the word (i.e. the actual word part), but all-in-all, this is much simpler than in English, where words totally change when you change tenses (for example, “eat” goes to “ate,” and “run” goes to “ran”). Let’s take a look at some examples.
食べます → eat
食べました → ate
As you can see here, we’ve just replaced the ます of 食べます with ました, which makes it past tense (“ate” instead of “eat”). Let’s look at a few more.
飲みます → drink
飲みました → drank
習います → learn
習いました → learned
行きます → go
行きました → went
Now, if we look at some fuller sentences, we can see these differences “in action.” haha, get it? In “action…” Because they’re verbs… ahem.
すし を 食べます
I will eat sushi / I eat sushi
すし を 食べました
I ate sushi
とうきょう に 行きます
I will go to Tokyo
とうきょう に 行きました
I went to Tokyo
I imagine this makes a good amount of sense to you, so let’s move on to the next example and get through these quickly so you can practice.
〜ません NEGATIVE
ません, just like ました, is as simple as replacing ません with the originally learned ます to make a verb negative. Examples of “negative” verbs include things like “will not go,” “will not eat,” and so on. Let’s take a look at the same words we looked at before to make it more clear.
食べます → to eat
食べました → ate
たべません → to not eat
This should be pretty simple as long as you understood ました okay, so let’s look at some more examples.
飲みます → to drink
飲みません → to not drink
習います → to learn
習いません → to not learn
行きます → to go
行きません → to not go
And then, let’s look at some full sentence examples.
すし を たべます → I eat / will eat sushi
すし を たべました → I ate sushi
すし を たべません → I do not eat sushi
It’s amazing how such a small change can make all the difference in what you’re saying. Just by altering the ます on the end of the verb, you have yourself a completely different sentence. Just be sure you don’t say “I eat sushi” when you mean to say “I don’t eat sushi,” otherwise you’ll be getting a (wonderful) plate of raw fish. Mmm, yum.
日本語（にほんご）を習います → I will learn Japanese
日本語（にほんご）を習いました → I learned Japanese
日本語（にほんご）を習いません → I will not learn Japanese
Finally, let’s move on to the last verb conjugation: Past negative. See, this is pretty easy, right?
〜ませんでした PAST NEGATIVE
ませんでした is a bit of a mouthful, but not as much of a mouthful as our favorite noun modifier じゃありませんでした. Wait a sec, do you see some similarities?
じゃありませんでした
〜ませんでした
Woo hoo, that won’t be too hard after all (as long as you remember stuff from the past)! If we look at the ありませんでした portion of じゃありませんでした, we’ll see that it’s actually a verb! Can you conjugate ありませんでした to it’s other forms?
Past Negative: ありませんでした
Past:
- ありました
Present:
- あります
Negative
- ありません
We’ll learn more about the verb あります by the end of this season (it’s a bit… “special”), but for now I just wanted to make sure you could conjugate this word using the information you learned just moments ago. It’s pretty easy, right? All you need to do is replace the ます／ました／ません／ませんでした with something else, and you have yourself a conjugation. Sadly, it will get more difficult as we learn “dictionary” form of verbs, but that’s not until Season 3, so enjoy being extra polite for now!
Let’s take a look at more examples using ませんでした.
たべます → to eat
たべました → ate
たべません → to not eat
たべませんでした → didn’t eat
By this point, this should all be pretty much straight forward, but here are the standard set of examples anyways.
飲みます → to drink
飲みませんでした → didn’t drink
習います → to learn
習いませんでした → didn’t learn
行きます → to go
行きませんでした → didn’t go
Also, here are some practice sentences.
ビールを飲みませんでした。オレンジジュースを飲みました。
I didn’t drink beer. I drank orange juice.
日本に行きませんでした。アメリカに行きました。
I didn’t go to Japan. I went to America.
ハンバーガーを食べませんでした。
I didn’t eat (a) hamburger.
Let’s quickly review. You learned ます (present form), ました (past), ません (negative), and ませんでした (past negative). All you need to do is switch out the ます with any of the other conjugations to get the tense you want to use. It’s only a matter of remembering which one is which, which shouldn’t be too difficult with practice (not to mention with the similarities between “です and friends” that you can use as well).
PRACTIC(ING)
Just to solidify the different tenses, here is an opportunity to practice before you get to the worksheet. Look up any words you don’t know using Jisho.org or another Japanese dictionary.
手紙（てがみ）を 送りました
- I sent a letter
手紙（てがみ）を 書きました
- I wrote a letter
本 を 読みませんでした
- I didn’t read the book
日本 に 行きます
- I will go to Japan
アメリカ に 行きません
- I will not go to America
卵（たまご）を たべません
- I don’t eat / I will not eat eggs
家（いえ）に 帰りました
- I returned home
パソコン を 買います
- I will buy a computer
英語（えいご）を 教えませんでした
- I didn’t teach English
野球（やきゅう） を します
- I will play baseball
The important part isn’t to learn the new words (on the left side), but to make sure you know the verbs, as well as how to do each conjugation. Go ahead and move on to the worksheet, where you’ll be getting more practice with conjugating verbs.
Extra Content:
Before You Move On:
- Know how to use 〜ます
- Know how to use 〜ました
- Know how to use 〜ません
- Know how to use 〜ませんでした
- Know how to pronounce them all properly (especially ました and ませんでした)
- Have an “80%” knowledge of the common verbs list.
- Feel moderately comfortable with the particles を and に in terms of how / when they are used.