Basic Structure, conjugation practice

I see, that I can’t use the adverb before the を. How would I say this then? You song pretty good, the day before yesterday.

Is that what that is saying? Because there’s a couple of mistakes right off the bat. The past tense of 歌う is うたった not うった (this lead me to be confused on what verb you could possibly be using). Day before yesterday is おととい not おとうとお. At first I thought you were talking about something related to a younger brother so I was even more confused. Also, I would think you would use something like 上手 for saying ‘sing well’.

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Thats a good question but honestly im not too comfortable answering, sorry. Im sure @Leebo can help you if he has time.

My attempt at rewriting that sentence would probably be something like

一昨日、あなたはとても上手に歌った。

or in kana to match yours:

おととい、あなたはとてもじょうずにうたった。

Obviously, I wouldn’t actually use あなた if I was talking to a person, but I’m leaving it in because you had it in the original sentence.

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Oh oke, thxx for all the correction, I though you always need to end an sentences with を + verb.

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You do know that, barring an exception like phrases such as 家を出る, を isn’t used with intransitive verbs, right? So that rule definitely does not work and would be outright ungrammatical with many verbs.

Edit to add:
In that specific sentence there is no direct object of sing, so を is not necessary. Now if your sentence was something like you ‘sang a song’ then you would need an を to mark the direct object and would write something like

歌を歌った

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Not a conjugation issue, but this is a bit of an odd verb to use in this context. Probably more typical to say たのしんでください.

The を is attached to the direct object, not the verb. If the sentence has a direct object, it can be anywhere in the sentence without changing the meaning, provided the を stays attached, though it’s typical for it to be fairly close to the verb.

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Your guide explains it fairly well:
Past indicative(ーた、ーました)

The past indicative mood is actions completed in the past (I ate, I worked etc) and also for the equivalent of the present perfect in English (I have eaten, I have worked etc)

Past progressive(ーていた、ーたいました)

Used for past continuous action or state of being.

It’s the difference is between “He said something and I believed it” and “I use to believe what he said”.

Disclamer: I’m not 100% sure of the following, in the sense that it’s more of a feel I’ve built up rather than something I’ve learnt formally.
To me, 信じた implies that an event happened that caused you to start believing something, while 信じていた implies that you were in a state of believing something for a period of time (but not anymore).

If I’m reading Tae Kim correctly, he says the same thing.

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I was hoping this would also be the case in Japanese. Yay!
Difference between
I read a book / I have read a book (you completed the book) and
I was reading a book (but got interrupted).

信じていた thus seems more fitting here.

Thanks to the OP for posting these, these kinds of questions and their answers help us other learners as well :slight_smile:

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Relative clauses don’t work the same way as they do in English. In English, when we make sentences with phrases like “when I was young”, we’re creating what I believe are called prepositional phrases (if I remember my highschool grammar correctly). You can’t directly translate these kinds of phrases word-for-word into Japanese. いつ only means “when” in questions, you can’t use it to say things like “when I was young.”

I would translate that sentence as something like
若い頃、そのものがたりが事実だと信じていた
“When I was young, I believed that that legend was true.”

Also it’s a bit hard to explain, but ものがたり has a certain sound to it, like an ancient legend or epic. Depending on the story, はなし might be more appropriate.

“You sang well (for us), the day before yesterday.”
一昨日、うまく歌ってくれた
(or more bluntly)
一昨日、あなたがうまく歌った

Another thing to point out is that often you can express this kind of sentence without a verb in Japanese.
一昨日、あなたの歌はとっても上手でした
“The day before yesterday, your song/singing was very good.”

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@izildop, Just to followup using something like Weblio’s English-Japanese dictionary might be helpful. It’s made for Japanese people learning English, but it’s also a good resource for doing reverse searches. You can search for phrases in English and it can often give you a more natural Japanese equivalent along with example sentences of usages.

For example if you search for sang well the first result has a very similar example sentence to what @phyro posted:

She sang remarkably remarkably well.
彼女はとてもうまく歌った.

Unfortunately, like with some other resources, I would often be careful of any examples that Weblio has that are labeled as ‘Tanaka Corpus’ as those are often of debatable quality. The example sentence I quoted was labeled as sourced from Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary which is a fairly authoritative J-E Dictionary source.

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I thought they were trying to say “Please like my page.” I don’t know that たのしんでください would be the way to say that, if that’s what he was saying. Maybe 私のページをいいねして下さい。

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Aye, indeed. And honestly, it comes across a bit weird in English too, unless you’re asking them to Facebook-Like the page (in which case, as you noted, the word is いいね, though I’m not entirely clear if that’s a する-verb).

In essence, what OP is trying to say is “please enjoy my page”, hence たのしんで.

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今日に sounds weird to me. The に particle is like an arrow; it points to something. If I were to rewrite your sentence, I’d write it as

Also, you don’t really need 私たち. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks a lot I’m learning from this.
Also if I’m right there was a N4 grammar point for: when something / then something?

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You mean like ~たら?

山田さんが来たら、私は帰る
When Yamada-san comes, I’ll go home.

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Oh yeah, now I’m looking at it. I don’t think that would make sense for, when I was young, I believed in that tale.
Anyway, do you think this is close? そのやまを試していませんでしたをのぼる。- I haven’t tried climbing that mountain yet.
I tried here to use double を。

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When referring to social media いいね is a する-verb. OP could clear up what they were trying to say though.

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Double を is usually a sign that something’s wrong. Verbs can’t usually act on multiple objects (unless you “and” them together of course)

を must come directly after the object, which must be a noun. 試していませんでした is a verb.

To have done something is past tense+ことがある. To not have done it is ~ことがない

To try to do something can be ~てみる (to try and see what it’s like) or ~おうとする (to make an attempt)

Putting this together I’d say something like

そのやまをのぼろうとしたことがありません

EDIT:
To clarify: ことがある/ない means to (not) have done something ever.

Compare:
おすしをたべたことがありますか? = “Have you (ever) eaten sushi?”
ゆうしょくをたべましたか? = “Have you eaten dinner (yet)? / Did you eat dinner?”

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Oh, no. “When I was young” is ~とき or ~ごろ.

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