To see a vocabulary list of basic Japanese adjectives click here. So if you want to say ‘was good’ you say ‘yokatta desu’, and ‘not good’ would be ‘yokunai’ and so on… For clarity, this is the case for all its forms.Īdjective Exception: いい (Good), whenever its form is changed, become よい. ** ‘dewa nai’ is written ‘deha nai’ (ではない), but the ‘h’ is pronounced as a ‘w’, much like the particle ‘wa’ (は) which marks the topic. The casual forms are janai and janaikatta (じゃない and じゃなかった). NOTE: you can also use – instead of the forms of desu – jaarimasen and jaarimasen deshita ( じゃありません and じゃありませんでした) for polite, past and past negative adjectives. Past Negative (wasn’t): tanoshikunakatta desu genki dewa arimasen deshitaįor ‘i’ adjectives conjugations are the same the only difference is you can drop the desu.įor ‘na’ adjectives, you can put the ‘desu’ and it’s forms a more casual way: ‘desu’ to ‘da’, ‘deshita’ to ‘datta’, ‘dewa arimasen’ to ‘dewa nai’, and finally, ‘dewa arimasen deshita’ to ‘dewa nakatta’. Negative (isn’t): tanoshikunai desu genki dewa arimasen ** Past (was): tanoshikatta desu genki deshita Applying them to simple situations is one thing, but speaking Japanese goes beyond present, past and negative tenses. chisai inu or chisa na inu – both mean small dog), though this is less common. * The adjectives chiisai and Ookii -small and big- can be used also as ‘na’ adjective with no change in meaning (eg. Healthy = genki (元気), pretty = kirei (きれい), convenient = benri (べんり) Quick guide to Japanese verbs Present Indicative Past Indicative Passive voice More tenses coming soon. Negative : is cold isnt cold Present Indicative Plain: tsumetai. ‘na’ adjectives don’t always end in ‘i’ and conjugate in a different way. Japanese verbal adjective details tsumetai - cold. ‘i’ adjectives always end in an ‘i’, but never ‘ei’.įun = tanoshii (楽しい), small = chiisai (小さい) *, cold = samui (寒い) To see how to use the ‘na’ adjective click here. The ‘i’ adjective and the ‘na’ adjective. This table will organize the differences between how we use primary colors ( i-Adjectives) and secondary colors ( na-Adjectives).First of all, there are 2 classifications of adjectives in Japanese. We can use “ no” to connect the adjective with the noun but we are not required to do so. Primary color i-Adjectives are also flexible. We are familiar with i-Adjectives now so this should be easy. Primary colors are i-Adjectives and are treated as such. We are required to use “ no” to connect the adjective with the noun. Non-primary colors are no-Adjectives, but they are treated exactly the same way as na-Adjectives. I will be adding to this section soon to show you how to make na-adjectives negative!Ĭolor adjectives can be split into Primary colors (i-Adjectives) and Non-Primary Colors (no-Adjectives): This next na-Adjective is placed before the noun, modifying it. For non-modifying adjectives (when the adjective comes after the noun), nothing changes: It is important to note that we are only required to change add な (na) like this if it is modifying a noun. For example, if we want to attach kiken (dangerous) to road (michi), it will look like this: We call them na-Adjectives because we attach “ na” between the adjective and noun. If the adjective does not end in い( i), then it’s probably a na-Adjective. Let’s apply these to our i-Adjective, takai:įinally, let’s build some sentences using our conjugated i-Adjective: Negative -adjectives can appear directly before a noun. When an i-Adjective modifies a noun in the negative or past tense, we need to replace the い (i): * Some of the “sneaky na-adjectives” posing as i-adjectives can be exposed by looking at the Hiragana rather than Romaji spelling (eg. You will have to memorize their true identities. As you can see, some na-Adjectives are disguised as i-Adjectives. Here is a list of common i-Adjectives and na-Adjectives. It’s a special category I will cover at the end of this lesson. For example, taisetsu is a na-Adjective and becomes taisetsu na when we use it to modify a noun.Ĭolor-Adjectives are also called no-Adjectives, and treated the same as na-adjectives. Unlike the i-Adjectives, we have to add the na on our own. Na-Adjectives all end with な ( na) before they modify a noun. They need to be conjugated a special way for the negative and past tense, but we will get into that later. Before we get into such rules, let’s separate adjectives into the three different types. When an adjective modifies a noun, we need to follow different rules for different types of adjectives. They describe the state of things and people (strong, cheap, cold, etc). Japanese Adjectives have the same function as English adjectives.
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