VocabularyJLPT N5 · core

去年

きょねん

hepburn kyonen

last year

Part of speech · noun

Pattern visualization

年year

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Numbers6 strokes · 4.1s

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Examples

去年日本に行きました。
I went to Japan last year.
去年の冬は寒かったです。
Last winter was cold.

Collocations

去年 (kyonen, last year)去年の (kyonen no, last year's)昨年 (sakunen, last year — more formal)去年の今頃 (kyonen no imagoro, around this time last year)一昨年 (ototoshi, year before last)

Mnemonic

去年 kyonen — 去 (go-away) + 年 (year) = "the year that went". Same 去 in 立ち去る (tachisaru, walk away), 過去 (kako, the past). Formal/written contexts prefer 昨年 (sakunen); conversation favours 去年. Korean only uses jaknyeon (= 昨+年); Japanese keeps both 去年 and 昨年 in parallel, split by register.

Quick check

In a company report, "last year's sales" — which Japanese word?