Page 3 Previous page Today's lesson: Situation Dialogue Say It Out Loud Vocabulary Grammar Exercise In Lesson 3, you learned how to make the affirmative (yes) and negative (no) forms of verbs in the non-past tense. Now let's take a look at the affirmative and negative forms of verbs in the past tense. Unlike English, Japanese does not have separate tenses for present and future--both "I eat" and "I will eat" are covered by the verb form (tabemasu). But anything that took place in the past is covered by the past tense, which ends in (shita). (If the past tense sentence is negative--for example, "I did not go"--then the past tense is formed by attaching (deshita) to the negative form of the verb.) Another difference between the languages is that in Japanese you do not conjugate verbs differently for different subjects. In other words, while in English you would say "I eat" but "she eats," in Japanese you only have to use one form of the verb no matter who is doing the action. Aff.(yes) go ikimasu went ikimashita Neg.(No) do not go ikimasen did not go ikimasendeshita Asking a past-tense question: Did you go? ikimashitaka. Direction particle : When is used as a direction particle, it is pronounced the same as (e), and indicates direction, just like the word "to" in English. to Tokyo Tokyo e I go to Tokyo Tokyo e ikimasu. I went to Tokyo. Tokyo e ikimashita. Did you go to Tokyo? Tokyo e ikimashitaka? Where did you go? Doko e ikimashitaka? Direction particle and verbto come come from kara kimasu I came from Canada kanada kara kimashita. Did you come from France? furansu kara kimashitaka Where did you come from? dokokara kimashitaka.