66 CHAPTER 2. VERB GRAMMAR
irregular meaning + past tense of actual past tense
good +
negation meaning + past tense of actual past tense
So now we can also form the plain negative past for verbs, using
+ ”past tense of ”, , noting that for the verb things
are, of course, different:
negative negative past tense
past tense negative past tense
Irregular past tense negative past tense
Again, of the irregular verbs is the most irregular, its negative
past form simply being the past form of , rather than the typical
inflection. In several major dialects this isn’t actually the case,
and for instance in the Kansaiben dialect (where the word is used in-
stead of ) inflects like any other verb, with a negative form
. Why standard Japanese has this ’dual nature’ for is mainly
because of historic use (languages serve the people using it, and if the use
changes, the language changes). However, we can at least look at why this