N5 grammar

〜ました

mashita

Polite past

Formation

ました puts a polite verb in the past. Same stem, different tail. It covers both did and have done, since Japanese does not split those the way English does.

Examples

〜ました is marked in each sentence. Tap any word for its dictionary entry.

  1. I lost myself for a moment.

  2. Then twelve o'clock came.

  3. I'm from Zambia.

  4. My electric razor is on fire.

  5. Did you talk for a long time?

The explanation is ours, written for this site. Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), each machine-checked to actually contain the pattern. Furigana is generated automatically, so a rare reading may be imperfect.