Changing Japanese Adjectives to the Negative nai form

 

Let’s learn some adjectives today. There are 2 kinds of adjectives. The な adjectives and the い adjectives.

For い adjectives

あつい、熱い warm, hot

さむい、寒い cold (use to describe weather only)

As you can see that for the い adjectives, there is an い sound at the end. That is why its call the い adjective. So let’s make a negative adjective.

あつい becomes あつくない(not warm or not hot)

さむい becomes さむくない (not cold)

What can you tell? The い becomes くない. Difficult? Not really. This is the rule. So remember it well. 

For な adjectives

きれい、綺麗（な） (pretty)

かんたん、簡単（な） (simple, easy)

What about the な adjectives? As you can see that I’ve made brackets on the な adjective. If you want to describe something pretty. Just add な after it. Here are two examples.

きれいな ふく　です　(A pretty dress.)

きれいな おんな　の　こ　です　(A pretty girl)

Just in case you didn’t know. おんな　の　こ means girl. But let me break up this for you. This is not exactly a word. おんな、女 means female and こ、子 means child. And the の is to show ownership. So you can see from here it literally means “female child” which also means “a girl”. As for boy, おとこ　の　こ、男の子.

So how do we make it into a negative form? Just simply add a じゃない after it.

Like this->きれいじゃない(not pretty) And for かんたん, it becomes かんたんじゃない(not simple)

Or you can add a -dewanaiではない too. So, きれいではない and かんたんではない has the same meaning as the above.

That’s all for today’s post. In the next post, I will teach on how to change the adjectives to become past tense, and negative past tense.

Till then, have fun learning Japanese

がんばって！