Indicating length of time of an action.

[yukio_michael]

I can't find in any of my books how to indicate the length of time that some action has occured... for my example, I am using the word すむ　to live, to describe an action in the past.

私は８月2005に行きました、１月2006まで住んでしました。

Basically I'm trying to say, I went to Japan in August, and I lived there until January of 2006.

Watashi wa hachigatsu 2005 ni ikimashita, ichigatsu 2006 made sunde shimashita.

Is this correct? I pieced this together from the gammer of a similar sentence that described one action that began at a certain time, and another action that continued until another time.

Thanks!

[Mike Cash]

The order is year:month:day

One simple construction is ~kara ~made (from~ until~)

[yukio_michael]

So looking at some examples,

私は日本に２００５八月から、２００６一月まですんで いる。

I'm just wondering, this form I suppose is better, the te-iru verb form, though I'm not sure why it's not a past tense form of iru. In my other sentence, I used suru, sunde-shimasu, which might be incorrect because it's a verb modifying another verb? Does it work only as noun-verb, like benkyou-shite?

Thanks again.

ed: corrected an obvious gramatical ommision, but overall the sentence structure is the same.

[KrazyKat]

Using the form that Mike Cash gave it would be
私は２００５年８月から２００６年１月まで日本に住みました。


ーてします　isn't any construction that I have heard of.

[JimmySeal]

Using the form that Mike Cash gave it would be
私は２００５年８月から２００６年１月まで日本に住み ました。

私は２００５年８月から２００６年１月まで日本に住ん でいました。

[yukio_michael]

Using the form that Mike Cash gave it would be
私は２００５年８月から２００６年１月まで日本に住み ました。
ーてします　isn't any construction that I have heard of.Thanks, yes, I found where I had misread the tense of another example of 住む、　thanks for your help in this.

ed: Am I correct in thinking sunde imashita is prefered?

[KrazyKat]

Yes, that was my mistake.