Describing Things With Japanese Adjectives

Welcome to lesson 4 - adjectives. 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 .

Hang on to your hat because they conjugate differently than their English counterparts.

The second type will be looked at in lesson 9. There is a test at the end of the page. Try it out! Here's the first type ending in a "i" and their negative conjugations.

"i" Ending Type and Their Negative Conjugations

Japanese	English	Conjugation	Negative
osoi	late	To change these adjectives to a negative form, ...not late or not interesting, remove thefinal "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

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 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 equivelent 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

If you're finished studying these,

1. It’s cheap.
2. It’s rare
3. It’s not boring
4. She’s clever.
5. It’s not bad.
6. He’s not interesting.
7. It’s late.
8. It’s not expensive.
9. It’s terrible.
10. What is the purpose of the particle "ne" and where in the sentence do you use it?

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