Help with JAPANESE.

Started by shu October 14th, 2009 1:11 PM
  • 569 views
  • 5 replies

shu

so alone so lost inside

Seen April 19th, 2017
Posted July 22nd, 2011
118 posts
15.1 Years
Hello there,I am learning japanese,and when you are using a sentence what are the tenses for words like iku(go) when you use masu it changes to ikimasu.does it change to something else when you use mamuka or masen?
Female
USA
Seen May 2nd, 2010
Posted October 21st, 2009
215 posts
13.9 Years
Ikimamuka means 'went'. Mamuka is past tense, positive. So, watashi wa, gakkou ni ikimamuka means 'I went to school'.

Ikimasen means 'not going'. Masen is present tense, negative. So, watashi wa, gakkou ni ikimasen means 'I'm not going to school'.

Another ending is masen demuka, which is past tense, negative. So, watashi wa, yuubinkyoku ni ikimasen demuka means 'I didn't go to the post office'.

Tenses can be difficult when first learning Japanese.
Asking your teacher for extra help is often times a very beneficial idea.

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
All verbs end in u, tsu, ru, mu, bu, nu, ku, or gu.

With the exception of some special verbs (kuru, suru and certain ru verbs like taberu) when you're using the -masu forms they all change by dropping the 'u' sound and adding an 'i' sound. So you get:

i
, chi, ri, mi, bi, ni, ki, or gi.

For example: kau (to buy)

kau -> kaimasu (present/future tense), kaimasen (negative present/future tense) kaimamuka (past tense), kaimasen demuka (negative past tense)

there's also kaimashou (let's "---") which can sometimes work as a future tense, but that's a bit advanced.