It Was: でした
“We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.” – Charles R. Swindoll
You’ve learned “it is,” you’ve learned “it is not.” Now it’s time to learn “it was.” As you can probably guess, to say “it was” you’ll want to use でした.
So, here are the things you need to know.
- でした means “it was”
- でした is pronounced “deshta” not “deshita”
These would be good things to add to your language log / notes. We’ll keep hammering these two things into your brain throughout this lesson, though.
Let’s take a look at the nouns you just learned and use them to practice でした. でした is used in the exact same way as です or じゃありません, which means this should be pretty simple for you!
| Hiragana | English |
|---|---|
| ともだち | friend |
| みず | water |
| でんしゃ | train |
| せんせい | teacher |
| ねこ | cat |
| いぬ | dog |
| じてんしゃ | bicycle |
| くるま | car |
| りんご | apple |
| しんぶん | newspaper |
Let’s start by looking at some examples using previously learned grammar points, and then do a nice little cross dissolve into でした.
みずです It is water
みずですか Is it water?
みずじゃありません It is not water
Of course, I imagine you see the pattern up there. Now, let’s apply でした to it.
みずでした It was water
How about some practice. Can you translate the following (hint: Not all of them use でした… dun dun dunnn).
It is a cat
ねこです
It was a cat
ねこでした
It is not an apple
りんごじゃありません
It was a train
でんしゃでした
しんぶんでした
It was a newspaper
ねこじゃありません
It is not a cat
いぬでした
It was a dog
These kinds of sentences should be simple for you, so how about we make them a bit longer and more conversationish?