was for Japanese speakers — pronunciation and common errors

Pronunciation

Japanese has no /ʌ/, so speakers substitute /a/. Japanese also allows no word-final consonant except /ɴ/, so an epenthetic /ɯ/ follows the /z/: 'was' surfaces as /wazɯ/ — ワズ (wazu), two moras rather than one closed syllable.

Grammar

Japanese verbs do not conjugate based on grammatical person (first, second, or third), only for tense and formality. The distinction between 'was' and 'were' is frequently missed because Japanese uses 'deshita' (でした) for all persons in the past tense, leading to the use of 'was' for all subjects regardless of number.

Collocations

Japanese uses the past tense of 'aru' (ある) to indicate existence (existence verbs). Because 'there was' translates to 'atta' (あった), learners often produce 'It was a fire' or 'I was a fire' when attempting to express 'There was a fire', mapping the Japanese subject marker 'ga' (が) incorrectly to the English subject position.

Examples

• I was very tired after work yesterday.
• The weather was perfect for our outdoor wedding last Saturday, despite the forecast for rain.