Quote:
Originally Posted by robhol
Well, that's good to know. As for the true/false thing, I'm only repeating what I've heard/read elsewhere, (damn knows I'm no linguist  ) but I see your point. I suppose "-i and na adjectives" describes them just as well. |
Another thing, it is not really correct to say that i-adjectives finish in i since there are many na adjective that finish in i as well. Unfortunately the OP hasn't tackled yet the kana and still writes with western characters. This will make for him much harder to recognize what adjective is what.
Anyway so that the OP can understand a little bit better here a very short description.
i-adjectives: are a kind of adjective that behave just like a verb. They do not require the verb "to be" to have a proper grammar use, but they can end the phrase as stand-alone. They get conjugated like verbs to obtain past, negative, conditional etc. They terminate with a i-kana character and they can be put directly before a noun in order to work as atttribute of the noun itself. This adjective can be conjugated also in its attributive form.
Examples:
kuruma ha shiroi (the car is white)
kuruma ha shirokatta (the car was white)
kuruma ha shirokunai (the car was white)
shiroi kuruma (the white car)
shirokatta kuruma (the car that was white)
shirokunai kuruma (the car that is not white)
na-adjectives: all the ones that are not i-adejctives (there are some that have the same ending of an i-adejective, for which a dictionary will help). These adjectives do require the verb "to be" to have a proper grammar use. When they are used before a noun in their attributive form you have to add a na-kana syllable to link it to the name. I am not sure if it is correctly explaining it like this, but I see that "na" a modification of the verb to be "da". So to conjugate the attributive form, just conjugate the verb "to be".
Examples:
heya ha kirei da (the room is clean)
heya ha kirei datta (the room was clean)
heya ha kirei dehanai (the room is not clean)
kirei na heya (the clean room)
kirei datta heya (the room that was clean)
kirei dehanai heya (the room that is not clean)
P.S. I need to add that once you learn these adjective well in their attributive form, you will have a very easy job in the future. You can see the attributive use of adjective as forms of "relative clause" in Japanese. When you will find a phrase like "the man who drank the wine" you will treat the "who drank the wine" just like an attributive adjective.