Tag Archives: instructions

Using the non-past in Japanese when giving instructions

Japanese has relatively few verb tenses, at least compared to English, and you can get a lot across just with the past tense (i.e. shita), non-past (i.e. suru), and te-form (i.e. shite), plus their polite forms (shimashita, shimasu, shimashite [this last one is pretty rare though]). However, while this lack of tenses makes less conjugations to memorize,… Read More »