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Well, I was pretty sure the moment I used “だから” without any prior knowledge of it’s grammar something was gonna go wrong, but I wasn’t expecting THIS.
だから、 食べ物 を 買い に 行きました。
got corrected to this tongue-twister:
だから、 食べ物 を 買い に 行かなければいけませんました。
ikanakerebaikemasenmashita. What in the seven hells is this then ? :)
Are you sure you copied that right? If so, the correcter made a mistake. It should not be
行かなければいけません<b>ました</b>, but
行かなければいけません<b>でした</b>.
And it means “had to go”; in this case, when combined with 買いに…, it means “had to go eat”.The form is quite common, so you should get used to it. If you break it down, it takes the first verb （行く in this case) and makes it negative (行かない), then makes the negated verb conditional (行かなければ), then adds “can’t go” to the end (行かなければいけません). The the whole thing translates to “if I don’t do (the verb), it won’t go” or “It’s no good if I don’t do (the verb)” or “I have to do (the verb”). The でした just makes it past tense.
Some more examples using this construction:
食べなければいけません: have to eat
飲まなければいけません: have to drink
待たなければいけません: have to waitSome other constructions with the same meaning:
食べなければなりません in casual speech shortened to 食べなきゃない or 食べなきゃ
食べなくてはいけません in casual speech shortened to 食べなくちゃI don’t know the context that sentence was in, but there is nothing grammatically wrong with your original. Perhaps the ‘correction’ was just a suggestion.
Your original: “And because of that, I went to buy food.”
The correction: “And because of that, I had to go buy food.”In any case, you don’t seem to have misused だから at all, so congratulations on a successful first deployment.
Thank you very much. It might have just been a suggestion, I’m having trouble deciphering the added comments of the correctors, but that’s normal at this point. I was quite proud of myself for managing to do so using a dictionary, at first I couldn’t even tell where words began and ended. There was another person who told me (in a different journal entry) not to use ですぞ because it makes me sound like an old man, whereas here I learned that it would be normal to use it to create a masculine assertion. Could I get a little clarification on that ?
I’d avoid that kind of stuff in general until you have a much deeper understanding of the language and the culture. Just stick with the plain polite and casual (です and だ) forms without adding any of those masculine/feminine/macho/whatever little modifiers. Imagine a Japanese person who knows very little English trying to use slang mixed from today and 30 years ago with a thick accent, he’d sound like an idiot. Chances are you will too.
then adds “can’t go” to the end (行かなければいけません).
Psst: while it’s true that いけない is indistinguishable from the potential form of 行く, 行ける is actually also a verb in its own right, meaning “to be good at, to go well, to look good”. いけない means “wrong, not good, of no use, hopeless, must not do”.
at first I couldn’t even tell where words began and ended.
Sadly, this is something you’re going to need to learn how to do fairly soon. Japanese doesn’t use spaces at all.
Thank you both for your help. I’ll stay away from sketchy gendered language in the future. Also Joel, it’s not something you learn how to do as much as it’s something you get used to (I think).
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