Past Tense い Adjectives

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” - John F. Kennedy

Just by looking at the last page, I imagine you have some idea how this works. First, let’s take a look at something you’ve already learned (from the last chapter).

audio.mp3この　ほん　は　あたらしい　です
This book is new

So far so good? All we want to do right now is change あたらしい from present tense to past tense.

〜い　present/future tense
〜かった　past tense

All you need to do is take the い at the end of the い adjective and change it to かった. That’s it. So, the sentence would look like:

この　ほん　は　あたらしかった　です

Let’s practice conjugating first, though. All you need to remember is…

い　→　かった

As long as you know that, you’ll be able to conjugate any い adjective to past tense that you can get your hands on.

audio.mp3たかどうさん　は　たかい　ですね
Takadou-san is tall, isn’t he/she?　Conjugate to past tense →

audio.mp3あの　ねこ　は　かわいい　です
That cat (over there) is cute　Conjugate to past tense →

audio.mp3この　えいが　は　おもしろい　です
This movie is interesting　Conjugate to past tense →

Now so far we’ve only looked at い adjectives coming after the noun. い adjective conjugation also holds true when preceding a noun. As before, though, try to think of the いadj+noun combination as a single entity. They are together, they are one. For example, if you were doing this to describe the noun “day” …

さむい日
Cold day

さむかった日
Day that was cold

あつい日
Hot day

あつかった日
Day that was hot

If you think of these as single entities, it makes a lot more sense. Basically, you can think of these just as nouns. A “hot day” is a thing, just like “a day that was hot” is a thing.

Before moving on, there are two things I want you to do.

1. Make sure that you know how to conjugate an い adjective into past tense.
2. Go through and complete the worksheet to make sure you know how to do that.

When you’re all finished, move on to the next page, where you’ll learn how to conjugate an い adjective into negative form.

Past Tense Adjectives Practice

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