I guess you could have a language with zero conjugations, but you would have to have a ton of context in every sentence. You couldn’t just say “I went to the store”, you’d have to say “ I [go] to the store in the past”. Which would be just as much work as conjugating your verbs. So hooray for conjugation!
Transcript
言語ガールズ #68
Some Things Never Change
Blue: When conjugating “AはBです” patterns with い adjectives you change the adjective but leave the です alone.
Blue: For example: To make a past tense sentence you change the adjective’s い to かった.
Yellow: So 新しい would become 新しかった?
Blue: That’s right.
Yellow: And we don’t use でした even though we’re in the past tense?
Blue: Right. We stick with です.
Blue: “The smartphone was new” would be スマホは新しかったです
Yellow: Not conjugating です is nice, but having to conjugate the adjective is lame.
Blue: But if you didn’t conjugate anything how would people know what tense you’re using?