Commonly Used Japanese Adjectives
by DavidM on June 18, 2007
in Adjectives
You’ve found the Japanese adjectives lesson!
In this lesson we are going to concentrate on learning adjectives. We are not going to worry about whether they are i adjectives or na adjectives (we can worry about that later).
For now, all we are going to do is concentrate on learning a whole swag of adjectives so you can describe things simply.
How will you be able to describe things?
Well, once you have learned some Japanese adjectives, you will be able to use the following sentence structure:
thing wa adjective desu
Simple as that!
So, we can say:
heya wa hiroi desu
The room is big/spacious
Or
jitensha wa chiisai desu
The bicycle is small
Okay let’s get started…
Commonly Used Japanese Adjectives Lesson
Here they are:
itai painful
Association: itai/painful: Imagine someone eats your eye (eat-eye). That would be very painful.
ookii big
chiisai small
hiroi spacious
semai cramped/narrow
samui cold
atsui hot
takai tall/expensive
hikui short/low
yasui cheap/inexpensive
hiroi spacious
warui bad
ii/yoi good
akarui bright/cheerful
oishii tasty/delicious
mazui bad tasting/not delicious
kawaii cute
omoi heavy
ooi many
hayai quick/fast
tanoshii enjoyable/fun
isogashi busy
kitanai dirty
muzukashii difficult
tooi far
kantan easy
chikai near
osoislow/late
Guess what?
That’s it for today.
Remember to make up a mnemonic/association for each of these words and concentrate on it for a minimum of ten seconds. This will help you to remember the words. I have done the first one for you.
Also, practice with the sentence structure I gave you above.
Okay, it’s good-bye from me for today.
Cheers,
David
Learn Japanese Adjectives Free
by DavidM on June 15, 2007
in Adjectives
In today’s free Japanese language learn lesson we will learn about using multiple Japanese adjectives.
Now, you probably already know some adjectives, such as benri (convenient) and chiisai (small).
So, we can say:
kei tai wa benri desu
That mobile phone is convenient
kei tai wa chiisai desu
That mobile phone is small
But, what if we want to say: “That mobile phone is small and convenient”?
That’s where our trusty free Japanese language learn lesson comes in! I will take you through all the ifs, buts and ands of this topic.
Let’s start now…
Free Japanese Language Learn Lesson 2: adjectives
As you are probably aware, there are two types of Japanese adjectives. These are the i adjective and the na adjective.
What is different about each adjective? Well, let’s look at an example.
heya wa chiisai desu
The room is small
heya wa kirei desu
The room is clean
One of these is a na adjective and the other is an i adjective. But they both look the same, don’t they? They both look like i adjectives because they both end with i.
But, the only time you need to worry about na adjectives is when they precede a noun.
So, one of the following examples are grammatically wrong:
chiisai heya desu
It’s a small room
kirei heya desu
It’s a clean room
Do you know?
Example 2 is wrong.
It should be: kirei na heya desu because kirei is a na adjective. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any rules around which adjectives are i and which are na, it’s just one of those things you need to remember.
Anyway, today’s topic is: how to add them together.
Imagine we want to say, “the mobile is small and convenient”.
Well, once you can differentiate between i and na adjectives it’s easy.
When we say something is A and B, these are the rules:
Rule 1
If an adjective in the list of adjectives is an i adjective we drop the i and add ku te.
Rule 2
If an adjective in the list of adjectives is a na adjective we add de.
Rule 3
The last adjective in the list is always normal (ie. don’t remove anything or add any ku te’s or de’s).
So let’s take our first example.
Rather than splitting our sentences into two, we do this:
kei tai wa chiisa ku te benri desu
Just drop the i in chiisai and add ku te
If we say it the other way around:
kei tai wa benri de chiisai desu
Our list of adjectives can be as long as you like, however, more than three sounds weird (as it would in English, eg. “The teddy bear was warm and cute and cuddly and sweet and nice” sounds like we need conversation practice!)
Okay, let’s say “The room is clean and small and narrow.” I know it sounds a bit weird, but it’s just for example purposes 
You would say, heya wa kirei de chiisa ku te semai desu
How’s that? Got it?
Print out this lesson and practice making sentences like this with the adjectives that you have learned so far.
Use the contact form if you have any queries about this stuff and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Okay, I’m off to buy canned coffee :p
See you in the next lesson.
Cheers,
David
