Can I use the kanji 下 to express the past tense?

5 comments

1. No. The word 下 (した) means “down”, you can’t just substitute it any time the syllables した occur in a word.

2. Like words with 2 meanings

3. No. Kanji aren’t just combinations of sounds, they convey tangible meanings. Even though 下 is pronounced した it carries with it the meaning “below” and cannot be used for the grammar した meaning past tense

4. Another perspective (which I kind of touched on in another post) is to keep in mind where words (単語 たんご) end and begin. In the case of でした、ました, the first comprises two tango でし (a conjugation of です) and the past tense “helping verb” た; the second similarly comprises the tango まし and た.

   Through this lens, you can clearly see that し belongs to one word, and た belongs to another word.

   By the way, this is also why you shouldn’t (and can’t) use something like 高 for たか in ましたか、でしたか. か is a separate tango (word) and not in the same word as た.

   Edit: Kanji express meaning and not sound. So, an analogy I’d make is if someone thought in English “1 is spelled one” then made words like “h1y” or “m1y” or “ph1”, using 1 as shorthand for the letters “one”. It’s creative, but it’s not particularly understandable.

5. I hope it’s okay for me to say that I was able to read and understand that sentence!