Lesson 72
Ta Form: The Plain Past

We finally arrive at the Ta Form, whose major purpose is to make things plain, past, and simple. Let's first make sure we can convert all the verb types into the Ta Form. It will be easy if you have mastered converting into the Te Form, because the Ta Form is the same except that the final e is instead an a. Just for a quick check, let's drag out the tables used to introduce the Te Form and convert them to show the Ta Form:

Yodan verbs:

Ichidan verbs:

Irregular verbs:

As with the Te Form, there are a few weird ones among the yodans that will take some getting used to. Also, iku (to go) remains an oddball: it becomes itta.

Once again, the Ta Form's major role is to make things plain and to put them in the past tense. This is what you use when you don't need the politeness of Base 2 with mashita. Let's do some real basic everyday phrases — ones so familiar that the particles are left out:

• Watashi shita. (I did it.)
• Kami kitta. (I got a haircut.)
• O-hiru tabeta. (I ate lunch.)
• Terebi mita. (I watched TV.)
• Hon yonda. (I read a book.)
• Boku no kingyo shinda. (My goldfish died.)

Let me say here that even though certain particles have been omitted in the above examples, there are limits. There are cases where particles would never be cut, even by the fastest-talking Japanese. Please be sure to learn the particles and get comfortable using them, and only omit them when everyone else does. In the long run, you will impress far more Japanese friends and associates by speaking proper Japanese than by using shortcuts and slang.

The Ta Form is also used as a noun modifier. For example, hon yonda means "I (or someone else) read a book." If we switch these around to yonda hon, yonda modifies hon like an adjective, hon becomes the subject, and the meaning becomes "the book I (or someone) read." Very handy, right? Let's make some more of these:

• Watashi ga karita kasa wa Kimiko no. (The umbrella I borrowed is Kimiko's.)
• Shinda kingyo wa, roku nen kan katta. (The goldfish that died I had six years.)
• Joy ga yaita keeki wa oishikatta. (The cake Joy made was delicious.)
• Boku ga katta PC wa, juu hachi man en deshita. (The PC I bought was one hundred eighty thousand yen.)
• Bob ga benkyou shita koto wa totemo yakudatta. (The things Bob studied were very helpful.)

Just as the Te Form is sometimes called Base 6, the Ta Form is sometimes called Base 7. But since I hear it called the Ta Form more often, that's what I'll be calling it throughout these lessons.

Word Check

kami: the hair on one's head ¹
kiru: to cut ²
o-hiru: lunch (This is "midday" with the honorific o prefix, and is less formal than chuushoku.) ³
kingyo: goldfish
nen: year(s)
yaku: to cook; to bake; to burn ⁴
keeki: cake (wasei eigo)
oishikatta: was delicious (This is the adjective oishii [delicious] combined with its past tense forming conjugation -katta.)
juu hachi: eighteen (juu [ten] + hachi [eight])
man: (a unit of) ten thousand
en: Japanese yen ⁵
benkyou suru: to study
koto: thing(s), usually intangible ones
totemo: very
yakudatsu: to be helpful or useful

(Verbs are shown in their plain form.)

Notes

1. Kami no ke is the literally correct and complete way to refer to the hair on your head. Ke alone is hair — any hair, anywhere, even on a caterpillar. (Caterpillar in Japanese is kemushi, literally "hairbug.") To refer to your hairstyle or the hair on your head as a whole, use kami.

2. Kami kitta is always a puzzler to students of Japanese. Although it literally means "I cut my hair," it actually means the passive "I got a haircut; I had someone cut my hair." There are a few of these which are commonly used, where it is acceptable to say you did something that you actually had someone else do. You could call it an understood and accepted inaccuracy. Another one you will often hear is ie o tatete iru for "I'm having a house built."

Incidentally, there is another kiru which means "to wear."

3. Interestingly, the words asa, hiru, and yoru (morning, noon, night) are also used to mean the meals associated with those times, especially in casual speech. The strange thing is that only hiru gets the "honorific o" prefix: asa: breakfast; o-hiru: lunch; yoru: dinner.

4. Yaku is a multi-purpose verb, and has to do with fire, whether it's cooking or burning something. Even "sunburn" uses it: hiyake. If something has been baked in an oven, yaku is the verb usually used with that object.

5. Although Japanese currency is known to everyone in the west as "yen," in Japanese there is no "y" sound at the beginning. It is just en.

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