What are Japanese adjectives like?
Two types of adjectives
In Japanese, there two types of adjectives:
i-adjective:
adjectives whose final sound is “i” and are usually written by hiragana い
na-adjective:
adjectives which are not i-adjective
This distinction will be very important to remember for our future lessons.
Here are some examples,
i-adjective:
おいしい
oishii
Delicious
安い
yasui
Cheap
高い
takai
Expensive
High
na-adjective:
便利
benri
Useful
親切
shinsetsu
Gentle
綺麗
kirei
Beautiful, clean
Watch out that the last adjective 綺麗 (kirei: beautiful, clean) ends with the sound “i” but as you can see there is no hiragana い (i) in it, this is not an i-adjective.
Use adjectives indirectly in Japanese sentences
Before talking about adjectives that directly modify nouns, let’s talk about indirect adjective sentences for easy understanding.
We can create an indirect adjective sentence by
Nous + は + Adjective + です
For example,
寿司はおいしいです。
sushi wa oishii desu
Sushi is delicious.
スマホは便利です。
sumaho wa benri desu
A smartphone is useful.
Intensify the adjective meaning
We can add before an adjective
とても
totemo
very
To intensify the meaning of the adjective in an affirmative sentence.
For example,
寿司はとても高いです。
sushi wa totemo takai desu
Sushi is very expensive.
ニコール・キッドマンはとても綺麗です。
Nikooru kiddoman wa totemo kirei desu
Nicole Kidman is very beautiful.
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