ない and いない
“Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening!” – Gertrude Stein
There’s one last little thing we need to look at before you move on. You’ve seen this a bit when you were looking at past tense verbs, but there’s a good chance you don’t remember the exceptions as well as some other things. For negative (and past negative, and things like that) ある does some funny things. We’ll look at both of these as a pair though (just like they’re meant to be.
ある → ない
いる → いない
These are the negative dictionary form versions of these verbs. You can sub one for the other when changing tenses. Also, if you want to see, this is past negative:
ある → なかった
いる → いなかった
And, to round things out, we can look at past tense too (which turns out is pretty standard).
ある → あった
いる → いた
One cool thing about 「あった」is that you can say 「あった！」when you’ve found something, and that means “I found it!” (though, literally it means “it exists!” The “I found it” translation tends to make more sense to English speakers I think, though.
Let’s look at some examples of different tenses, mostly past tense ones, to hit home the funny exception here.
a 水 が ない。
There’s no water / (I) have no water.
a ともだち が いない。
I don’t have any friends :(
a あの レストラン に すし が ない。
There is no sushi at that restaurant (over there).
a 今日、ステファニーさん は いなかった。
Today, Stephanie was not here (lit. Today, Stephanie did not exist).
a おかね が ない。
I don’t have money.
Make sure you write down the past tense versions of ある and いる in your log / note-taking device. It’s a weird exception and not one you can get yourself out of purely with logic alone (unfortunately, that’s why they’re called exceptions).
When you know the past tense version of ある and いる, move on to the next page. We’re going to continue to practice these on the practice page, but for now I want you to take a quick break to study the next set of kanji. The break will be good so you can process some of this information, and then when you come back you’ll be able to fill in the gaps / things you’ve forgotten and then solidify the rest!