N5 grammar

〜たことがある

takotogaaru

Having done it before

Formation

たことがある reports experience: at some point in your life, this happened. It is not for the recent past, so something you did yesterday takes the plain past instead. Use it when the point is that you have done it at all.

Examples

〜たことがある is marked in each sentence. Tap any word for its dictionary entry.

  1. Have you ever seen a koala?

  2. Have you ever written a book?

  3. Have you ever eaten Japanese food?

  4. Have you ever been to the Tokyo Dome?

  5. Once I had a very bad disease.

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.