2.4 です and its forms

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Overview

Learn how to describe the past and the present, and how to say “not” in Japanese, using polite sentence endings.

Japanese shows tense and negation by changing the sentence ending. In this case, the copula です changes.

Present: です → ではありません

Past: でした → ではありませんでした

The word もう is often used with negative sentences to mean “not anymore”.

Time words like “a year ago”, “yesterday”, and “today” usually appear at the beginning of the sentence.

A year ago, Taro was not a teacher. He was a student.

Now, Taro is not a student anymore. Now he is a school teacher.

Yesterday was a day off. He was free.

Today is a school day. He is not free.

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