copula N5 common casualwritten
だった — plain past copula 'was / were'
だった
Builds on だ
Meaning
- was / were — the plain past tense of the copula だ
Key sentence
昨日は休みだった。
Yesterday was a day off.
Formation
| Attaches to | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | N + だった | 学生だった |
| na-adjective | stem + だった | 静かだった |
When: Plain register. The polite past copula is でした.
Examples
あの店は有名だった。
That shop was famous.
子供の頃、ここは森だった。
When I was a child, this was a forest.
テストは思ったより簡単だった。
The test was easier than I'd thought.
When you can't use it
- Like だ, だった attaches only to nouns and na-adjectives. The past of an i-adjective is its own 〜かった form (高かった), and a verb's past is 〜た (行った) — never ×高いだった, ×行くだった.
Easily confused with
See だった in real sentences
Jengo shows だった the way you actually meet it: inside real Japanese sentences, so it sticks instead of staying an abstract rule.
Study it in JengoSources Compiled with reference to A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar.