Currently going through Tae Kim’s guide and it’s been amazing thus far, however i don’t quite understand where じゃない and だった should be used. From what i understand I assume じゃない is used for describing someone (A) being surprised that someone else (B) doesn’t have something which they thought that B did. But i still don’t really get it, neither だった. Any help would be appreciated 🙂
4 comments
please link to exactly where you are seeing じゃない means “surprised”
Anyway,
**じゃない** means “is not”
if トラック is “truck”, then this means:
トラックじゃない = not a truck
**だった** means “is” but it is in the past tense. So it becomes “was”
トラックだった = it was a truck
じゃない is just the casual short form of ではない which is the negative form of です。です means “being” and ない kind of means “not”。
だ is the causal form of です。The past tense of だ is だった which is formally でした。
Is well – 元気です
Was well – 元気だった
Isn’t well – 元気じゃない
Wasn’t well – 元気じゃなかった
Don’t know if this is what you meant. This is the moat basic grammar. Tae Kim’s guide is great for this stuff.
じゃない is simply the non-past negative. Or rather a contraction of the full ではありません
くるまじゃない – It is not a car.
だった is the past positive.
くるまだった – It was a car.
That’s it. For だった, that’s *truly* it. It’s the past positive couple (だ/です) and nothing more.
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じゃない(か/?) as a question can sometimes be mapped to something like “Is it not?/Isn’t it?”. It’s usually a casual usage, but remember that sometimes the casual line is blurry.
**Aさん:** なんだあれ… – What is that thing?
**Bさん:** くるまじゃない? – [Huh?] Isn’t it a car?
In this usage, it can sometimes be shortened even further to じゃん. While the casualness of the first can be blurry sometimes, じゃん is certainly casual .
This is one of the few times where English is used in Exactly the same way.