Lesson 2, Adjectives and Nouns

Adjectives, Nouns, and Adverbs

Japanese forms involved:

te-form, ta-form, nai-form, root-form, verb stem

I will like to explain these in the last post but it seems that they deserve their own article.

Other than verbs, Japanese adjectives can sometimes be complicated, because noun can be used as adjectives, but adjectives can be used as nouns too. They are capable of swapping position in the grammar. Believe it or not, te-form also exist in adjectives.

Okok, here is the point. There are 2 kinds of adjectives, i-adjectives, and na-adjectives.

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い Adjectives

i-adjectives are pure adjectives, such as:

- 美しい beautiful

- 楽しい enjoying

- 赤い red

For example:

赤い車 red car

重い荷物 heavy luggage

i-adjectives can be converted to nouns by changing い to さ, such as:

重さ the heaviness (of....)

速さ the speed (of....)

高さ the height (of....)

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な Adjectives

na-adjectives are technically noun or adverb, but it can be used as adjectives, aka quasi-adjective, such as:

- 綺麗 pretty

- 豪華 gorgeous

For example:

綺麗な写真 beautiful picture

豪華な家 gorgeous/luxurious house

As you can see, 豪華 (gorgeous) is adjective in English but in Japanese its idea is more like a noun, a state of gorgeous, luxury, splendid etc. Strictly speaking is not a pure adjective. Hence by adding な, the nouns will be converted into adjectives. Meanwhile, i-adjectives can be used directly as it is. 

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Nouns as adjective

Speaking of nouns they can be used to describe something too, effectively become adjectives. Just add の between them then it is done! That's why の is the 1st particle to learn as it is a very powerful particle in Japanese. For example:

雨の夜 rainy night

海洋の色 oceanic color 

Sometimes, they just omitted the の and becomes 雨夜 (amayo) or 海洋色.

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Verbs as adjective

Also, the verb's casual format (root-form, nai-form, ta-form and nakatta-form) can be used as adjectives. Root-form is too important to be ignored, it is like the source of life of the Japanese Language, so it is named root-form. You may learn masu-form later but you can't ignore the root-form at the 1st place.

For example:

終わる日 end of day

終わらない日々 endless days (or daily life, depending on context)

食べたケーキ cake (that has been eaten)

食べなかった薬 medicine (that has not been consumed)

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Everything as adverb

In terms of adverbs, に is a very powerful particle too. It can convert almost any adjectives (except i-adjectives), noun or verb stem into adverbs. 

あなたは私の物になる。(Just kidding, don't translate it)

Here is the example of form changes of adjectives and noun.

desu-form is used for ending of formal sentences if they are not ended with verbs.

In case of te-form, you can see that て／で are like brothers. In fact, they function exactly the same but will be explained in details on next post.

You also can see that there is a mixed bag of Japanese form in the example. Especially the nai-form, it is the basis for saying "no" in Japanese, it also serves as an important identity in Japanese. We will see it in the next post.

There is something that adjectives and nouns are similar to verbs, they have tenses too. Actually tenses are included in this example but will explain in detail in next article together with verbs.

Jump to post:

Lesson 1, Japanese Verbs 

Lesson 3, Japanese Tenses

Lesson 4, Japanese Particles

Lesson 5, Verb's form and its grammars