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In my JLPT practise book, the following exchange between a man and a woman is
part of a longer exchange in a listening section:

> 女{おんな}：先日{せんじつ}は町内{ちょうない}集会{しゅうかい}、お疲{つか}れさまでした。
>
> 男{おとこ}：お疲{つか}れさま。次{つぎ}の役員{やくいん}が決{き}まらなくて、随分{ずいぶん}長{なが}くかかりましたね。

So, the woman first thanks the man for his efforts at the _previous_ meeting.
Then, if I understand correctly, the guy says that if they don't decide the
staff for the _next_ one, then it will _have gone_ on long. The tenses don't
add up.

I'm confused because he says `次{つぎ}`, as if he's talking about the next
meeting, but the sentence ends with the past tense, as if he was talking about
a previous meeting.

Is the man talking about the next or previous meeting? And what exactly is he
saying about it?
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2014-05-28T03:32:09.323
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2014-05-28T04:02:23.910
2014-05-28T03:44:54.100
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question
tense
How can this sentence using 次 be in the past tense?
There are a couple issues here.

First off, the 次 here is about the next 役員 or board / committee member, not
about the next meeting.

> **次の役員** が決まらなくて  
>  **the next board member(s)** が not decided  
>  随分長く掛かりました  
>  it [the meeting] took a really long time

So basically, the man is saying that the _last_ meeting (that the woman
mentions) took a really long time, because the meeting couldn't / didn't come
to a decision about the next member(s).

There is no mention of the next meeting.

Secondly, Japanese doesn't really have grammatical tense in the same way that
English does. (This part is more tangential to your question, so if your eyes
glaze over reading this, no worries. :) ) Strictly speaking, [grammatical
tense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense) is where verbs
conjugate depending on the completedness of the action in relation to **now**.
What Japanese has is more specifically [grammatical
aspect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect), where verbs
conjugate depending on the completedness of the action in relation to **the
timeframe of the current context**. (Read the [Aspect vs. tense
section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect#Aspect_vs._tense)
for a comparison of the two.)

As such, it's grammatically possible to say things in Japanese like 昨日起きるところで
"yesterday just before I **wake up** " (the context is _yesterday_ , and the
speaker, at the point being described, has not yet woken), or 明日あの本を読みきれた後で
"tomorrow after I **finished reading** that book" (the context is _tomorrow_ ,
and the speaker, at the point being described, will have finished reading).
English doesn't work this way, so just translating word-for-word might get you
confused. It took me a while to wrap my head around this difference.
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2014-05-28T04:02:23.910
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answer