Japanese "since" cause and time reference

[スーゼン]

"１時間がかかた　　is the plain past form of かかる　not かかった　 (かかる、かかって、かかった)

Huh? Where did you get this from? The past form of かかる is definitely かかった。 The past tense form of every single verb that ends with -aru is -atta.

- Kef

read the few posts above mine. We were discussing "take time"

EDIT: I should have quoted them, but I was in kind of a hurry. Sorry.

[furrykef]

Yes, but none of those posts had かかた or 掛かた. Hence I was confused when you asked, "１時間がかかた　　is the plain past form of かかる　not かかった　 " -- I was wondering where かかた came from.

[スーゼン]

OMG furrykef, I see what I did. You know what I think happened? I had copied Nilecat's examples into my notebook from the computer and I was working out of that when I misspelled it. ARGH. How embarrassing Sorry, everyone. Don't mind me! (Nilecat is probably wondering what this is all about.)

I've corrected my notes, and I'm gonna go study up on these conjugations. Thanks!

[furrykef]

Don't worry about it. We all make mistakes.

[NileCat]

I have no idea how you study Japnese though, in Japan, children must memorize the verb conjugations at school. There is no other way but rote learning. I remember that was terribly boring.

For instance, "かかる" is categorized as a form called "ラ行五段活用". (well...I'm not sure. I might be wrong)
I used to repeat after my teacher, going like "ra, ri, ru, ru, re, re", over and over again.

かからない・・・未然形
かかります・・・連用形
かかる・・・終止形
かかるとき・・・連体形
かかれば・・・仮定形
かかれ・・・命令形

I had to do a similar thing when I learnd French, like "je mange - tu manges - il mange - vous mangez -nous mangeons"...(I eat, you eat, he eats...)
In that respect, English seems much more logical than Japanese to me.