For the next part of this japanese language course we’re gonna have fun with adjectives. Adjectives can either modify the noun that immediately follows or connected in much the same way that a particle is used. There are two categories of adjectives: “na” and “i” adjectives. Let’s get started then.
The na-adjective
Na Adjectives act very much like nouns which makes them fairly easy to learn. In reality they basically act like nouns except that they can modify a following noun by placing 「な」 between the adjective and noun. (Hence the name, na-adjective.)
（１） 静かな人。- Quiet person.
Besides direct noun modification (which requires a 「な」), you can use a [Noun][Particle][Adjective] structure which esentially allows you to use an adjective as a noun by implementing the topic or identifier particle. For example 「人は静か」. It’s basically the same as the situation with state of being and nouns. But it makes no sense to say that an adjective is a noun so you can’t use an [Adj][Particle][Noun] structure (i.e, 「静かが人」). To put it another way a person can be quiet but a quiet cannot be a person.
（１） 友達は親切。- Friend is kind.
（２） 友達は親切な人。- Friend is kind person.
Now lets see how adjectives function as nouns.
（１） ボブは魚が好きだ。- Bob likes fish.
（２） ボブは魚が好きじゃない。- Bob does not like fish.
（３） ボブは魚が好きだった。- Bob liked fish.
（４） ボブは魚が好きじゃなかった。- Bob did not like fish.
If you’ve been paying attention, the conjugations are identical to the state of being conjugations. What is a little odd is that in these examples, “like” is an adjective and not a verb. Though you could always think of the word 「好き」 as meaning “desirable”. This also demonstrates how well the topic and identifier particles work together since the sentice states that the topic is about “Bob” and “fish” is what he likes.
Those last three conjugations can also be used to directly modify the noun (don’t forget to use 「な」 for positive non-past tense.)
（１） 魚が好きなタイプ。- Type that likes fish.
（２） 魚が好きじゃないタイプ。- Type that does not like fish.
（３） 魚が好きだったタイプ。- Type that liked fish.
（４） 魚が好きじゃなかったタイプ。- Type that did not like fish.
In tis case the entire phrase 「魚が好き」、「魚が好きじゃない」、etc. modifies “type” to discuss types (of people) that like or dislike fish. This kind of sentence is alot better because the sentence 「タイプは魚が好きだ。」 would mean “The type likes fish”, which doesn’t make any logical sense.
In fact the entire descriptive noun clause can be treated like a single noun. For We can even treat the whole descriptive noun clause as we would a single noun. Let’s make the entire clause a topic. For example:
（１） 魚が好きじゃないタイプは、肉が好きだ。
- Types (of people) who do not like fish like meat.
The i-adjective
The i-adjective always ends in the hiragana 「い」. This is the part that allows conjugation of the adjective. Unfortunately some na-adjectives also end in the same character and there really isn’t any surefire way to tell the difference. Fortunately that’s rare and there are two major examples: 「きれい」 and 「嫌い」. The other na-adjectives that end in 「い」 are usually written in kanji and so you can easily tell that it’s not an i-adjective. For example 「きれい」, which is 「綺麗」 or 「奇麗」 in kanji, because the 「い」 part of 「麗」 is part of the kanji, you know that it can’t be an i-adjective. That’s because the whole point of the 「い」 in i-adjectives is to allow conjugation without having it affect the kanji. In fact, 「嫌い」 is the only na-adjective off the top of my head that ends in hiragana 「い」 without a kanji. That’s because 「嫌い」 is actually derived from the verb 「嫌う」
Remember how the negative state-of-being for nouns end in 「い」? Well, you can treat i-adjectives the same way. That being said you can’t attatch the declarative 「だ」 to i-adjectives either.
| Do NOT attach 「だ」 to i-adjectives. |
Alright so let’s look at the conjugation rules for i-adjecives. There are two new rules for i-adjective conjugations. To negate or set to past tense, we first drop the 「い」, then add 「くない」 for negation or 「かった」 for past tense. Since 「くない」 ends in an 「い」, you can also treat the negative just like another i-adjective. Therefore, the rule for conjugating to negative past tense is the same as the rule for the positive past tense.
- Negative: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective and then attach 「くない」
- 例） 高い → 高くない
- Past-tense: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective or negative i-adjective and then attach 「かった」
- 例） 高い → 高かった
- 例） 高くない → 高くなかった
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Non-Past | 高い | 高くない |
| Past | 高かった | 高くなかった |
You can directly modify nouns by just attaching the noun to the adjective.
（１） 高いビル。- Tall building.
（２） 高くないビル。- Not tall building.
（３） 高かったビル。- Building that was tall.
（４） 高くなかったビル。- Building that was not tall.
You can also string multiple adjectives successively in any order in any form.
（１） 静かな高いビル。- A quiet, tall building.
（２） 高くない静かなビル。- A not tall, quiet building.
Note that you can make the same type of descriptive noun clause as we have done with na-adjectives. The only difference, of course, is that we don’t need 「な」 to directly modify the noun. In the following example, the descriptive clause 「値段が高い」 is directly modifying 「レストラン」.
（１） 値段が高いレストランはあまり好きじゃない。
- Don’t like high price restaurants very much.
An annoying exception
There is one i-adjective meaning “good” that acts slightly differently from all other i-adjectives. This is a classic case of how learning Japanese is harder for beginners because the most common and useful words also have the most exceptions. The word for “good” was originally 「よい（良い）」. However, with time, it soon became 「いい」. When it is written in kanji, it is usually read as 「よい」 so 「いい」 is almost always hiragana. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, all the conjugations are still derived from 「よい」 and not 「いい」. This is shown in the next table.
Another adjective that acts like this is 「かっこいい」 because it is an abbreviated version of two words merged together: 「格好」 and 「いい」. Since it uses the same 「いい」, you need to use the same conjugations.
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Take care to make all the conjugations from 「よい」 not 「いい」.
Examples
（１） 値段があんまりよくない。
- Price isn’t very good.
（２） 彼はかっこよかった！
- He looked really cool!