んばんは！ 今、私 は もちアイス を たべます！ I greet you whilst eating mochi ice from the convenience store – it’s soooo yummy!! (Although not quite as yummy as the one I tried from the really nice store at Nagoya Station… mmm…
Anyway, yesterday I had another Japanese lesson. I had lots of fun, as usual, and felt super-genki when I finished! We studied adjectives (or けいようし) this week. I’ve studied adjectives a lot before, as you will know if you’ve been reading my blog since the MySpace days. However, I still need some practice on them, and it seems there’s some new stuff to learn too!
So, I’ll start at the beginning, I guess. There are 2 types of adjectives: い adjectives and な adjectives. Something I didn’t know before, is that い adjectives are Japanese, but な adjectives are foreign (mostly from China, but also sometimes from other countries and written in katakana).
The い or な bit refers to the ending of the word, e.g: おおきい （大きい） or しずかな （静かな）. This ending determines how the adjective conjugates for tense, polarity, etc. (just like verbs do).
Let’s start with い adjectives:
Example: おもしろい (面白い) – interesting
Dictionary form: おもしろい (面白い)
Present affirmative: おもしろい (です) (N.B. We can always leave off “です” to be more casual, when speaking with friends etc.)
Present negative: おもしろくないです OR おもしろくありません (“~くありません” is more polite than “~くない”. In my old lessons I learnt “~くない” though so I’m more likely to stick with this!)
Past affirmative: おもしろかったです
Past negative: おもしろくなかったです OR おもしろくありませんでした (Again, I learnt “~くなかったです” before, so will probably stick with this.)
OK, so that’s easy, right? Now let’s look at な adjectives:
Example: げんきな (元気な) – healthy
Dictionary form: げんきな (元気な)
Present affirmative: げんきです
Present negative: げんきではありません OR げんきじゃありません OR げんきじゃないです (I learnt “~ではありません” before.)
Past affirmative: げんきでした
Past negative: げんきじゃありませんでした OR げんきではありませんでした OR げんきじゃなかったです (I learnt “~ではありませんでした” before.)
Got it? Good.
There are, of course, loads of adjectives to learn. I think I know over 50 now. I’m not going to list them all here though – it would take far too long! Ages ago when I was on MySpace I did make an adjective table, but I’ve recently realised that there were some errors in it, so I won’t bother linking to it. If I ever get bored again (which I doubt will happen!) I’ll make a new one! haha! 
So… is that it? No…
There is one exception, naturally.
いい / よい (良い) – good
Dictionary form: いい / よい (良い)
Present affirmative: いいです
Present negative: よくないです
Past affirmative: よかったです
Past negative: よくなかったです
This also affects another word: かっこいい – cool. Because this word comes from “かっこう が いい” originally, it behaves in the same way as “いい” when we conjugate it.
There are also a few ~な adjectives to watch out for, because they might look like ~い adjectives but they’re not!
きれい（な） – beautiful
きらい（な） – dislike
ゆうめい（な） – famous
Well, I think that’s about all for tonight! Happy conjugating!
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
