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I said to a Japanese person last night, meaning to say "I'm tired":

つかれたです。

She corrected me to:

つかれました。

I'm curious as to why this is. I thought つかれたです was grammatically correct. Does it sound strange or unusual? And why would using the past tense "I felt tired" be preferable to the present tense "I feel tired"?

Please reply in kana or kanji with furigana only.

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Usually, です is a polite copula, similar to だ but more polite:

それはリンゴだ　　That is an apple
それはリンゴです　That is an apple (polite)

But です can also be a politeness marker added to adjectives:

あかい　　　　is red
あかいです　　is red (polite)

When it's a politeness marker, です doesn't inflect for tense:

あかいです　　　　is red (polite)
あかかったです　　was red (polite)

The adjective before it already inflects for tense.

This is a relatively recent innovation in the Japanese language and not too long ago was considered unacceptable. Some people still try to reword things to avoid it, but it's probably caught on because it filled a useful gap in the language: making adjectives polite, like です with nouns or 〜ます with verbs, but without going as far as 〜うございます.

However, verbs already have a way to make them polite:

つかれた　　　　(past)
つかれました　　(past, polite)

So there's no motivation to start saying *つかれたです, and there's no reason for people to start treating it as an acceptable part of the Japanese language. As a result, it's ungrammatical.

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    I see, so つかれた is a plain past tense verb, not an adjective?
    – Lou
    Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 11:09
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    Yes, it's the past tense of the verb つかれる "be / become tired".
    – user1478
    Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 11:11
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    It was never grammatical to add です to verbs. There was a motivation to add です to adjectives, so over time it became acceptable. But there was no such motivation for verbs, because verbs already had the 〜ます ending to make them polite. That is what I tried to explain.
    – user1478
    Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 11:20
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    "there's no motivation", motivation or not, people still use it. There are looooads of hits on Google for "疲れたです" by native speakers. "there's no reason for people to start treating it as an acceptable part", what, people using it isn't a good reason? It's not standard, you're right about that, but what you're saying about reasons and motivation doesn't make much sense.
    – dainichi
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 0:35
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    @dainichi Almost any rule can be broken and I hear つかれたです often enough. I don't like telling people "this is wrong", when it is in fact used by native speakers. In this case, though, I thought that something to the effect of "It's technically wrong, but people use it" would be misleading, considering the OP didn't yet understand the difference between an adjective and a verb and I thought it wise to label つかれたです simply as ungrammatical.
    – Earthliŋ ♦
    Commented Apr 15, 2014 at 2:29
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To form the polite past tense, you can't just add です to the non-polite past tense つかれた.

You need to make the polite present tense つかれます into the past tense (i.e. ます -> ました) つかれました.

That the ending ます inflects like any other verb, e.g. (present) はなす -> (past) はなした, is no accident. ます can be thought of as an auxiliary verb.

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  • I know that つかれまひた is polite past tense. I'm not asking what it is, I'm asking why I need to use it. Why can't I simply use the adjective つかれた with present tense sentence ending です?
    – Lou
    Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 9:52
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    Because it's ungrammatical. (BTW, つかれた is not an adjective.)
    – Earthliŋ ♦
    Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 9:53
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Japanese grammar works in a different way when it comes to forming polite forms of verbs and i-adjectives.

For verbs, you add ～ます to the verb and then you form all other verbs forms from combined polite verb:

つかれる -> つかれます plain -> polite

つかれます -> つかれました polite -> polite past

つかれます -> つかれません polite -> polite negative

It is different for i-adjectives though. In that case, you use the plain form of adjectives and just add です.

おいしい -> おいしいです plain -> polite

おいしかった -> おいしかったです plain past -> polite past

おいしくない -> おいしくないです plain negative -> polite negative

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I think you have the grammar right, what might have escaped you is that つかれた is not an adjective like "tired" is in English (ex: He is tired.) . When you realize that it's a past tense of a verb and you have to treat it like 食べる・食べた, everything will make sense to you. You'd say, 食べました but not 食べたです。

To repeat everyone here, 「です」applies only to adjectives. That's why

つかれたです

....is actually gramatically incorrect. And if I may, it's the kind of wrong that really, really sounds wrong so you want to get this right.

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