It’s two basic grammar points being used together:
食べる + たい = 食べたい (want to eat)
-い adjectives on past form = かった
Hence:
食べる → 食べたい → 食べたかった
The fact that 食べたい behaves grammaticaly as an adjective and not a verb can be a bit surprising at the beginning, but it’s actually pretty common in Japanese.
I know, right? Classic example of “making things simpler can actually make them more complicated”.
In the end, more than verbs behaving like adjectives, I feel like -い adjectives behave pretty much like verbs in Japanese. Specially when you consider that any verb in Japanese can be added before a noun to modify it.
OK, I’ve finally had the chance to read through this and to think through the sentences I asked you about. In mathematical terms, I guess 分 is something like a ‘is proportional to’ sign. ほど is more like ‘so…that’, which can imply causation in the way you mentioned. I get it now. Thanks.
One of my favorite things that happened recently was a guy in a server being like omg they said をしたい in my game which makes no sense since it’s an adjective. Other people were confused and he doubled down and was like “yeah u idiots, like you can’t just say を好き and you have to say が好き”. I helped him out at that point, but his confidence cracked me up.
I never really thought too much about this stuff but I can see how it would be confusing.
It’s more that ~てすみません is a set expression for apologizing for doing some action. すみません is a verb, technically, but you can also use て constructions with words that aren’t verbs.
You can’t put けど after て like that. Here you could just use 食べなかった.
No, you need けど (or something) to act as a conjunction there, but it can’t follow て. It can follow a verb in sentence ending forms.
What I said just applies if you want to use けど as a conjuction.
If you want to use て as a conjunction, then you would drop けど. However, て as a conjunction doesn’t really imply the proper nuance for what you wanted to express.
食べなくて、間に合った would mean something like “I made it because I didn’t eat.”
て has many meanings and context can determine which one it is, but without anything surrounding it the “causal relationship て” seems most obvious in this sentence.
@HamAndYam What is the sentiment your sentence is trying to convey?
Is it “I didn’t eat, but on the bright side I made it on time” or is it as @Leebo suggested “I made it, because I didn’t eat”?
There is also the nice structure 〜てから which works directly with 〜て forms, but arranges events in time, rather than logically.
However, I’ve seen it translated to the English “since”*:
私は食べなくてから、間に合った。 Since I didn’t eat, I made it on time.
or I didn’t eat and made it on time.
* But according to Genki at least, the “since” makes more sense if 間に合った were to define a state.
Thanks @Leebo for the clarifications. I don’t know why BunPro or Genki didn’t mention the negative て form when it was introduced. That was my guess, but I didn’t find it when I went back to look it up.
More of the former, like “I was like running late, skipped breakfast, but arrived on time”, but they seem pretty similar. I guess this is a bit confusing because the English is vague. I went to て form because I was thinking “Didn’t do X, then did Y”. Improper use of けど didn’t help.
(I see you figured it out, but I’ll post what I was about to say anyway)
てから means “after”, not “because”. “Since” in English is ambiguous, but the Japanese is not. If you want to say “Since/Because I didn’t eat, I made it on time” you probably want 私はたべなかったから、間に合った or something along those lines.
Just for fun, thought I would throw something else your way to continue our conversation earlier. Heres an example I just came across in my book where ほど is being used in the ば~ほど way. Its kinda rare by itself and I’ve only seen it after nouns, but you can see how it feels very similar to 分 in this case. Of course, you couldn’t replace it with 分 because if you did it wouldn’t make any sense grammatically, but regardless its got a similar use like you mentioned earlier.
Fun font version if you wanna try giving it a read: