Past Negative Dictionary Form
“There was never any fear for me, no fear of failure. If I miss a shot, so what?” – Michael Jordan
I like the above quote. It might not seem inspirational at first, but it’s really great when you think about it. If you have fear when you shoot the ball (we’re talking basketball here, but it carries over to Japanese learning and life as well) you won’t be able to shoot at all. That’s zero points. If you shoot, and you miss, so what? When you shoot and miss, you get better, you don’t get worse. Every time you shoot and miss, you’re getting closer to shooting and not missing. If you care too much about missing, you’ll get afraid, and if you are afraid, you don’t shoot at all (then you’re back to square one). Shoot, shoot, and shoot again. Missing is all part of getting better, so don’t fret about it. Just focus on shooting.
Speaking of which, you have a lot of mistakes to make before you get really good at speaking Japanese, so get to it. Every mistake gets you closer to being awesome.
Anyways…
Past negative dictionary form is a combination of a few different things. “a-form,” “nai” and “katta” (which you probably remember from past tense i-adjectives).
Group 1: a-form + なかった
Group 2: v.stem + なかった
Depending on the Verb Group, you’ll have a different pattern. Let’s look at some examples for both of these.
いきます → いか → いかなかった (didn’t go)
たべます → たべ → たべなかった (didn’t eat)
のみます → のま → のまなかった (didn’t drink)
あそびます → あそば → あそばなかった (didn’t play)
The なかった is something you learned during your time with i-adjectives, and the rest (a-form and stem form) is stuff you’ve recently learned along with verbs. The best way to solidify this, I’m afraid, is to practice, though there are a couple of exceptions we’ll need to cover, though they should be pretty easy.
くる (to come) → こない → こなかった
する (to do) → しない → しなかった
ある (to have) → ない → なかった
The above is both the ない (negative dictionary) and the なかった versions of the “exception” verbs. As always, you’ll need to learn these straight up, because there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to why they’re this way. I’d jot these down somewhere, and at the very least make sure you’ve memorized which verbs are exceptions, so when you come across them you’ll know that the normal rules don’t apply.
Okay – last fill in the blank sheet for this chapter, I promise. Just get through this one and you’ll start feeling fairly solid with your verbs and conversions. If you need more practice, there are plenty more verbs out there you can work with on your own! Just keep doing it until you have the basic idea down.
Past Negative Dictionary Form (PDF)