Learn how to Connect and Identify the two types of Japanese Adjectives

 

Describing an object using an adjective is useful but what if a certain object contains more than one property? That’s where you have to learn how to connect adjectives together. Remember there are two types of adjectives in the Japanese language. The -naな and the -iい adjective are being use daily in the Japanese language. A lot of new Japanese learners gets confuse or use wrongly with these two type of adjectives. Today’s post will teach you how to connect and identify the two types of adjective.

Sometime ago, we there was a post on changing adjectives to negative form. That post contain some common adjectives, but today we will learn more adjectives.

-i い adjectives

ookii おおきい、大きい - “big”

chiisai ちいさい、小さい - “small”

yasui やすい、安い - “cheap”

takai たかい、高い - “expensive”

karui かるい、軽い - “light”

omoi おもい、重い - “heavy”

ooishi　おいしい、美味しい - “tasty”

-na な adjectives

hen へん、変 - “strange”

tokubetsu とくべつ、特別 - “special”

shinsen しんせん、新鮮 - “fresh”

benri　べんり、便利 - “convenient”

Firstly, we have to learn how to identify the i い and the na な adjectives. The -i adjectives are very easily identified because of the i い sound at the end of the word. While for the naな adjectives, you can’t see or even hear the naな sound unless it is used together with a noun for description. For example, きれい(な)　おんな　の　こ, meaning a pretty girl. As you can see, the naな was being bracketed to show that it is a na adjective. But wait, the word きれい has an i い at the end of it, isn’t that an i adjective? Ah, yes of course, I agree that there is an i at the end of the きれい word. But trust me, this adjective is special.

Change your keyboard function to Japanese input, and type きれい and hit the space bar button, making it change to a kanji. What came out? This complicated looking kanji, kirei綺麗, came out right? And what else do you notice? There is no i い attached to it. So the conclusion? The Japanese word kireiきれい is a na adjective. 

Now let’s learn how to connect two or more Japanese adjectives together. Before you connect to another Japanese adjective, you need to change it to the -teて or -deで form. The rule is, all i い adjective must be change to the -kuteくて form and all -naな adjective must be change to the -deで form.

For i い adjectives

おいしい becomes おいしくて (oishikute)

おもい becomes おもくて (omokute)

For naな adjectives

きれい becomes きれいで (kireide)

とくべつ becomes とくべつで (tokubetsude)

Notice that the i い adjective is drop and replace with -kute くて. So now you have learn how to change it to the -teて and -deで form, we shall learn how to connect two or more adjectives together. Look at the example below.

この　さかな　は　おいしくて やすい　です

この　魚　は　美味しくて 安い　です

This fish is tasty and cheap.

sakanaさかな、魚 - fish

From the example above, oishii おいしい and yasui やすい were being used, and you notice that only oishiiおいしい was changed to the -teて form while yasuiやすい was not changed. Not changing the last adjective to the -kuteくて form will end the sentence. If you want to continue to add another adjective to describe the fish, you will have to change the yasuiやすい to yasukuteやすくて, a -te form as well.

In this case, この　さかな　は　おいしくて、やすくて、しんせん　です. Meaning “This fish is tasty, cheap and fresh” The word しんせん is a naな adjective and was used at the end of the sentence for ending, therefore it is not required to change to the -deで form. But what if you want to place しんせん first? The sentence will look like this:

この　さかな　は　しんせんで、おいしい　です

The -deで form will be required. Simply add the deで after any naな adjectives will allow you to create an adjective connection. Here are two exercise for you.

keitaidenwa　けいたいでんわ、携帯電話 - cell phone

この　けいたいでんわ　は　たかい です

この　けいたいでんわ　は　おおきい です

So how are you going to connect the two adjectives together?

One more example here

dennshijisyo　でんしじしょ、電子辞書 - electronic dictionary

この　でんしじしょ　は　べんり　です

この　でんしじしょ　は　かるい　です

Enjoy learning how to connect Japanese adjectives. You will need it!