All You Need to Know About Japanese Adjectives

Japanese adjective behaves differently than English adjective which we are familiar with. But these are all you need to know about it.

BASIC CONJUGATION RULES FOR JAPANESE ADJECTIVE:

Conjugation is very important in Japanese. You need to conjugate to show the +/- or current/future/past state of a noun/verb/adjective. So the first important thing to know is how to conjugate adjective.

Note that there are 2 types of adjectives い Adjective and な Adjective and they conjugate with different formula.

How to Conjugate い Adjective

Check out how to conjugate い Adjective such as 早い (hayai: fast) below

How To Conjugate な Adjective

Check out how to conjugate な Adjective such as きれい (kirei: beautiful) below

BASIC ROLES OF ADJECTIVE

Now we’re going to learn the roles of adjective. First is as noun modifier.

As a Noun Modifier

Noun modifier means that we are using adjective such as BIG to modify CAT. The word then become A BIG CAT (A cat noun with big attribute).

As you can see, when you use Japanese NA-adjective as noun modifier. We need to add な between the adjective and noun. Now you know as to why the な-adjective is named that way.

As Predicates

Predicate is when we use an adjective to describe a noun. As in [THAT CAT IS BIG]. Used as predicates, the only rules you need to remember is to never put だ after I-adjective.

As Adverbs

We can create adverbs from adjective as what we can do in English slow – slowly or easy – easily. Below are the rules to turn Japanese adjective into adverb

CONNECTING ADJECTIVES

Connecting Japanese adjective isn’t hard. The rules are quite simple. You just need to conjugate all the adjective except the last one.
You simply remove い and turn it into くて for I-adjective and add で for Na-adjective.

AND THAT’S ALL ABOUT JAPANESE ADJECTIVE BASICS YOU NEED TO KNOW

But for you who are looking for a thorough explanations regarding Japanese adjectives and adverbs to understand more about the logic, difference in nuance, and how they work, you can check out this book here. The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs

The book is written to explain the background and logic of Japanese adjective and adverbs, and the similarity / difference between Japanese and English version. So it will help you to understand how Japanese adjective and adverbs works.

The best part about the book is explanation regarding subtle difference of nuance between each word choice. For example, 時々 (tokidoki means once in a while) and たまに (tama ni also means once in a while, but the time period is longer than tokidoki). So you use 時々(tokidoki) when you say that you sometimes work overtime (a few days within a month) and たまに (tama ni) when sometimes means (a few days within a year).

Japanese adjectives and adverbs is one of the most important key to understand Japanese, so if you’re the type of person who need textbook reference to guide you to study Japanese, The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs is one of the book you should read.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT ADJECTIVE

Ooki vs Ookina – Chiisai vs Chiisana

You might hear words similar to ookii and chiisai , which are ookina (大きな) and chiisana (小さな) . What is the difference?

Eventhough they have な in the end ,it doesn’t make them a な Adjective. Just think of them as adjectives which posses an unusual behaviour, and you only need to remember what you can do with them. They can only be used as noun modifier

This image below will help you to understand the difference between 大きい and 大きいな

Tips To Differentiate I-Adjective And NA-Adjective

People often ask “How do we know if an adjective is the I-adjective or Na-adjective?”. There are a few things that can help you to differentiate い Adjective and な Adjective.

Here’s the list below:

1. For 100% accuracy, use your dictionary.

Below is links to offline Japanese dictionary you can download for free that have entry for い Adjective and な Adjective :
Takoboto for Android | Imiwa for IOS

2. Most of the time, い Adjective end with い obviously…
But you might notice that in rare case, there are some な Adjective that end with い such as きれい or きらい. But don’t worry to much about them since they are only a few of words like this.

3. Note: Treat this one as “fun fact” only.

If you get a list of common い Adjective and な Adjective. You will grasp that most い Adjective are attribute that can be seen at glance and can be measured. While Na-adjective are attribute that are more complex, can be felt with heart or what you feel about something/someone as time goes by or by experience it, and most of it are people personality .

For example, い Adjective are big, tall, fast, etc…
While, な Adjective are likeable ,special ,quiet , etc…