Past Negative い Adjectives

“The one charm of the past is that it is the past.“ - Oscar Wilde

Hey! This is the last conjugation you have to learn. Make sure you remember い adjective’s present, past, and negative forms before you learn the last one:

Present What is it? →

Negative What is it? →

Past What is it? →

The last conjugation, past negative, goes like this:

い　→　くなかった

Like several other past-negative conjugations, it’s just a combination of both past and negative into one easy to remember lump.

くない　＋　かった　＝　くなかった

So, if we took the word つまらない (boring) and conjugated it in all the ways possible, it would look like this:

つまらない
Boring

つまらなかった
Was boring

つまらなくない
Not boring

つまらなくなかった
Was not boring

You’ll have to memorize that past negative form with い adjectives is くなかった. Once you do that, you can conjugate any い adjective by replacing the い with くなかった (or whatever other form you want).

Go ahead and give it a try before starting on the practice sheet.

audio.mp3この　ほん　は　つまらない　です
This book is boring Conjugate to past, negative, and past negative →

audio.mp3にほんご　は　むずかしい　です
Japanese is difficult Conjugate to past, negative, and past negative →

audio.mp3レストラン　は　ちかい　です
The restaurant is close Conjugate to past, negative, and past negative →

By now, conjugating the い adjectives shouldn’t be too hard for you. It’s mostly about knowing the adjectives themselves and knowing the three other conjugations (past, negative, past negative). If you can do that, as well as combine this knowledge with past grammar, you should be pretty golden. I’m not saying it should be really easy, but the conjugation part itself should be good.

There’s one more worksheet to round up the conjugation lessons – then, we’ll look at the one main (and very important) い adjective exception.

Past Negative Adjectives Practice

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