In English, an adjective is something that describes a noun. Adjectives either go directly before the noun (“It’s a hot day”) or they come after the verb “to be” (“The day is hot”). In Japanese, the core idea is similar - but there’s some pretty funky differences - such as the fact that some words can be their own sentences and some words that we might think of as adjectives in English aren’t really adjectives in Japanese. Let’s dig into this below!
I’m still learning - this is just my best guess at how they work ^.^
Adjectives as a full sentence!?
In Japanese, some adjectives can be a complete sentence! Take the word 暑い -
by itself that can be a full sentence which could mean, “It is hot” or
“It will be hot.” This word, effectively, has the verb “to be” built right into it.
In fact, it would probably be best to think of 暑い as is hot rather than hot.
Nonetheless, you can still use it to describe a subject. For instance, 今日は暑い
(today is hot) or 明日は暑い (tomorrow will be hot).
You can even use it with implied subjects (as Japanese so often has). For instance, if
a man is waiting for his partner outside a store and they’re taking a long time, he
might say, 遅い - which would mean “They are slow / late…”
Yet some words that we might think of as adjectives can’t be used like this…
い adjectives vs. な adjectives nouns
In English, any word that modifies or describes a noun is an adjective. So we might
think the word 綺麗 (pretty) would be an adjective in Japanese. Heck it ends in
an い sound (きれい) and you might have even seen the phrase い-adjectives floating
around before. Unfortunately, 綺麗 is not really an adjective in Japanese - nor does
it fall into the い-adjective group.
綺麗 falls into a group that’s often referred to as な-adjectives or
“quasi / pseudo adjectives”. This group of words can not stand by themselves as a
complete sentence. They behave more like a noun - and require a だ or です to make
a complete sentence.
For instance, if I wanted to say, “She’s pretty” - I couldn’t just say 綺麗. I would
need some type of だ or です to make a complete sentence. 綺麗です would work and
could mean “She is pretty.” But wait - you might ask, isn’t 暑いです also a valid
sentence? You’d be right - but the key difference is 暑い does not need です to
become a grammatically correct sentence whereas 綺麗 does.
This idea extends to directly modifying a noun. For instance, if I wanted to say,
“A pretty woman” - I could not say 綺麗女性 - because 綺麗 needs a だ or です
associated with it. In this case, I’d actually use な as な is a form of だ
(wiktionary and cure dolly).
So I would say 綺麗な女性 (a pretty woman).
For い-adjectives - you wouldn’t include the な.
So, for instance, if I wanted to say “A cute woman” - I would say, かわいい女性 and not
かわいいな女性.
I found the book Japanese The Manga Way really helpful at making this click better for me.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s sort of funny that now that I know what an adjective is in English I feel like I still have a lot to learn about adjectives in Japanese. I only vaguely understand how to know if a word is an “い-adjective” or a “な-adjective” and how I’d use them differently in various situations. Nonetheless, I think this whole idea is really nifty and I’m looking forward to learning more!
Do you understand adjectives in Japanese? Did you know about the fact that です is required for
some words to become a complete sentence but not for others? Any resources you particularly liked?
Thanks for reading :)