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| "i" Ending Type and Negative Conjugations |
| Japanese | English | Conjugation | Negative |
| osoi | late | To change these adjectives to a negative form, ...not late or not interesting, remove the final "i" then add kunai | osokunai or (not late) |
| omoshiroi | interesting | omoshirokunai | |
| takai | expensive | takakunai | |
| furui | old | furukunai | |
| warui | bad | warukunai | |
| yasui | cheap | yasukunai | |
| tsumaranai | boring | tsumaranakunai | |
| wakai | young | wakakunai | |
| atsui | hot | atsukunai | |
| muzukashi | difficult | muzukashkunai |
If you've mastered some of the basic nouns and greetings in lesson 2 and 3, it's now time to add some description to your Japanese vocabulary.
(If you've been going through these lessons and really want to turn up the heat on your Japanese and learn more than we can teach you here, check out some highly recommended dictionaries and reference materials to help you with your studies.)
Hang on to your hat because Japanese adjectives conjugate differently than their English counterparts. And to make things tougher there are two different types.
The second type will be looked at in later lessons.
Using Them in a Sentence
By far, proper conjugation and pronunciation is more difficult than learning the sentence order as this is quite straight forward.
Simply start with your subject (if necessary), then follow with the adjective and add "desu" if politeness or indirectness is necessary. Adding "desu" doesn't change the meaning of the sentence.
So it looks like this...
Compare...
| Sore wa yasui desu | It is cheap. |
To...
| Sore wa yasukunai desu | It's not cheap. |
Using Sentence Final Particle "ne" With Japanese Adjectives
"Ne", is probably one of the most useful particles imaginable because of the importance Japanese put on avoiding confrontation. "Ne" occurs at the end of the sentence. It can be used with practically all parts of speech.
"Ne" courts agreement between you and your audience. It also sort of implies that there is shared information or something in common about what you're talking about. Its equivalent in English is "isn't it" or "aren't you."
So it looks like this...
| Omoshiroi ne | It's interesting (isn't it). |
and
| Yasukunai ne | It's not cheap (is it). |
Vocabulary Booster - Other Common "i" Ending Types
| atarashii | new |
| isogashii | busy |
| kawaii | cute |
| wakai | young |
| sugoi | great or terrible |
| mezurashii | rare or uncommon |
| hayai | fast or early |
| karui | light (in weight) |
| omoi | heavy (in weight) |
| kashikoi | clever |
| amai | sweet |
| suppai | sour |
| karai | spicy |