Introduction
By now you probably know some Japanese vocabulary and more importantly you know how to conjugate verbs. If not, you can recap verb conjugation in this lesson. In the following lesson you are going to learn how to handle adjectives in Japanese.
Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. For example when you say someone is tall (たかい) or something is blue (あおい), the words tall and blue are adjectives. Same for when you say something is funny, hot, good or new for example. In Japanese this works the same way, but there are two important aspects to adjectives that you have to know as a beginner.
- There are two kinds of adjectives, い-adjectives and な-adjectives.
- Adjectives can conjugate for tense (past and present) and polarity (positive and negative)
い-adjectives versus な-adjectives
Japanese has two different kinds of adjectives that don’t differ in general meaning but do differ in how you use them. You can identify them by their last hiragana character when they say something about nouns. As you would expect, い-adjectives had the last hiragana character い while な-adjectives have the last syllable な. Some examples
| おもしろい | = Interesting | ||
| たのしい | = Fun | ||
| おおきい | = Big | ||
| わかい | = Young | ||
| やすい | = Easy, cheap |
| げんき(な) | = Energetic, Healthy | ||
| めいわく(な) | = Annoying, inconvenient | ||
| さかん(な) | = Thriving | ||
| すき(な) | = To like | ||
| しずか(な) | = Quiet |
Some examples of how you use adjectives in sentences.
| い-adjectives: | ||||
| きょう, おもしろい ほん を よみました | ||||
| Today, I was reading an interesting book | ||||
| あの おとこ の こ は わかい ですね | ||||
| That boy over there is young, isn’t he? | ||||
| ここ の ばんごはん は やすい です | ||||
| Dinner here is cheap | ||||
| な-adjectives: | ||||
| ウィンｓトン は げんきな いぬ ですね | ||||
| Winston is an energetic dog isn’t he | ||||
| そら は きれい です | ||||
| The sky is beautiful | ||||
| くるまはめいわくなことがあります | ||||
| Cars can be annoying | ||||
| きょう | = Today | |||
| よみました | = Have read | |||
| あの | = That …. | |||
| おとこ の ひと | = Boy | |||
| わかい | = Young | |||
| ここ | = Here | |||
| ばんごはん | = Dinner | |||
| いぬ | = Dog | |||
| そら | = Sky | |||
| くるま | = Car(s) | |||
| こと | = Thing(s) | |||
In the following chapter we will go more indepth into each category of adjective.
Conjugating い-adjectives
In contrary to adjectives in English and a lot of other European languages, in Japanese adjectives can conjugate for example for past or present (tense) and polarity (positive or negative). This makes it possible to make a sentence without using a verb. Take for example the following two sentences:
| えいがはたのしい | |||
| The movie is interesting | |||
| えいがはたのしかった | |||
| The movie was interesting | |||
| えいが | = Movie | ||
| たのしい | = Interesting | ||
As you can see, there is no verb. You could add です to the ending of both sentences to make it sound more formal, but speaking with friends you would use the sentences above and if you listen very closely you can hear it used often in daily speech. You can also see, that by conjugating the ending of たのしい to たのしかった you alter the meaning just as when you would conjugate a verb. Mind you, when you want to say something was funny, you have to conjugate the い-adjective. Conjugating the verb is not grammatically correct. This is pretty counterintuitive for most English speakers.
- When the い-adjective comes at the end of a sentence, always conjugate the adjective and not です
So in the sentences before, たのしい でした is not correct. I has to be たにしかって です. Below is the chart for conjugating an い-adjective.
| たのしい (fun) | Present | Past | |
| Positive | たのしい | たにしかった | |
| It is fun | It was fun | ||
| Negative | たにしくない | たのしくなかった | |
| It is not fun | It was not fun |
Conjugating な-adjectives
Conjugating な-adjectives is something different as you are not really conjugating the adjectives as much as です that follows it.
| げんき(な) | Present | Past | ||
| Positive | げんきです | げんきでした | ||
| He/she is energetic | he/she was energetic | |||
| Negative | げんきじゃないです | げんきじゃなかったです | ||
| or げんきじゃありません | or げんきじゃありませんでした | |||
| He/she is not energetic | He/she was not energetic |
One important rule to know is that although they are called な-adjectives, the な is only used when they are directly modifying nouns like in the energetic dog (げんきな いぬ) or annoying things (めいわくな こと). These adjectives lose the な when used in any other way.
- な-adjectives only use the な when directly modifying nouns.
Irregular Adjectives
There is one adjective that does not conjugate like the rest: いい (good, nice)
More Examples
So some more examples so you know how to use the different kinds of adjectives
| Examples with い-adjectives: | |||
| ねこがかわいいです | |||
| The cat is cute | |||
| きょうがさむくない | |||
| Today is not cold | |||
| ふゆがさむかった | |||
| The winter was cold | |||
| わたしはこわくなかった | |||
| I was not scared | |||
| ねこ | = Cat(s) | ||
| かわいい | = Cute | ||
| きょう | = Today | ||
| さむくない | = Not cold | ||
| ふゆ | = Winter | ||
| さむかった | = Was cold | ||
| わたし | = I, me | ||
| こわくなかった | = Was not scared | ||
| Examples with な-adjectives: | |||
| このひとはしんせつです | |||
| This person is kind | |||
| きょうがさむくない | |||
| Today is not cold | |||
| ふゆがさむかった | |||
| The winter was cold | |||
| わたしはこわくなかった | |||
| I was not scared | |||
| ねこ | = Cat(s) | ||
| かわいい | = Cute | ||
| きょう | = Today | ||
| さむくない | = Not cold | ||
| ふゆ | = Winter | ||
| さむかった | = Was cold | ||
| わたし | = I, me | ||
| こわくなかった | = Was not scared | ||