Grammar Info

N5 Lesson 6: 4/13

だった・でしたWas, Were (Past tense)

い-Adjectives cannot be used with だった・でした

Structure

Noun + だった
［な］Adjective + だった

Details

  • Part of Speech

    Auxiliary Verb

  • Register

    Standard

About だった・でした

In order to say that something 'was' a certain way in Japanese, you will need to use だった (casual) or でした (polite) attached to the end of a noun or な-Adjective. This is simply a combination of two auxiliary verbs, だ (or です when polite) with た. For だった, we will need to add った to the base form of だ. For です, す will change to し before adding た.

Caution

The past form of い-Adjectives cannot be linked with だった or でした, as they have their own set of conjugation rules.

Examples

--:--

    綺麗(きれい)だった。

    It was beautiful.

    トムだった。

    It was Tom.

    それは、昨日(きのう)でした。

    That was yesterday.

    猫(ねこ)が大(だい)好(す)きだった。

    I really liked cats. (Cats were loved by me)

    大変(たいへん)だった。

    It was terrible.

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