Questions tagged [i-adjectives]
形容詞. A class of words that behaves mostly like verbs (but uses different grammatical endings) and is used to describe properties of nouns.
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～く form of i-adjectives
I thought I've mastered this but I'm getting confused again.
I thought the ~く form of i-adjectives was used when the adjective modifies the noun, e.g.
新しく家を買う
難しく試験した
I think it's named "...
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Is there an order of adjectives in Japanese?
In English, if we have multiple adjectives modifying a noun, there is a preferred order for those adjectives, for example:
nice long red car
*nice red long car
*long red nice car
I was wondering if ...
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A different way to join i-adjectives
I originally learned that i-adjectives are joined with くて e.g.
長くて、赤い魚が欲しい。
I want a long, red fish.
Recently I've come across a couple of examples where the two adjectives are joined together with ...
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みぜんけい or れんようけい form for ない conjugation of i-adjectives
It appears that nai conjugates onto the renyoukei (.ku) form of i-adjectives instead of the mizenkei (.karo) form, as it does with verbs. Is this correct? Every source I've found shows the .kunai ...
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Connecting adjectives in a sentence
If I were to say "Mr. Li is cheerful, healthy, and interesting." It would be リさんはあかるくて、げんきで、おもしろいです。
What I don't understand is how to connect negative adjectives, like if I want to say "Mr. Li is ...
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Adjective negation: difference between 〜くない and 〜くありません
What's the difference between 〜くない and 〜くありません? Both are added to an i-adjective (イ形容詞, verb type adjective) to make it negative. For example:
寒くない
寒くありません
But what's the difference? Is one more ...
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Adjective conjugation of 小さい and 少ない in these sentences
I’ve come across some adjective conjugation that I don’t fully understand in two separate but related example sentences, and so my translations are definitely wonky.
飲んでいるでしょう。その証拠に、...
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〜くはない vs 〜くない in adjective negations
As I spend more time in Japan, I pick up habits that I'm not sure are good or bad. My question here is about nuance / occasion of usage.
In formal contexts, how does the impression differ between ...
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What is the difference between 危ない and 危うい?
I came across this question, and found the same meaning in the dictionary for both options
(a-危ない) or (b-危うい) ですから 下がってください
however the answer booklet says it is (a-危ない), what is the difference?
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Alternate spelling for ありがたい, or typo?
I looked up ありがたい in my dictionaries within OSX (looking at this question), and one of the 国語 dictionaries (can't tell which) has the entry listed like this:
ありがた・い 【有り難い・難有い】
You'll notice that ...
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Do 形容詞 have a 未然形 in Classical Japanese?
I was reading Eiríkr Útlendi's answer about -い vs. -き in 形容詞 and noticed that he identified -く as the 未然形 of 形容詞. When I studied classical Japanese, though, I was taught that 形容詞 lack a 未然形 (and also ...
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how does いと + 形容詞 work as a pattern?
The phrase "いと高き" occurs pretty frequently in the Japanese 新改訳 bible in the book of Daniel.
Doing a little sleuthing I'm also seeing いと低き and 素晴らしき as somewhat similar constructions. I get ...
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無い and 無く difference
What would be the differences if I were to say 間違いない and 間違いなく? I ask that because the 無い suffix is usually explained as equivalent to the English "there is no" or "does not exist".
I've seen ...
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Why do things which attach to the 連用形 of 動詞 attach to the stem of 形容詞?
When you want to connect a 活用語 (inflectable word) to something else, generally you inflect it to the 連用形 (continuative form). However, with 形容詞 (i-adjectives), there are certain times where you affix ...
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Would 私は怖い mean "I'm scared" or "I'm scary"?
Or does it mean both? If so, is there any way to explicitly distinguish between "I'm scared" and "I'm scary"?
If it only means one and not the other, how would you say the other?
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Difference between progressive verb forms and i-adjectives
I'm wondering, for adjectives such as 太い and 悲しい that also have a progressive "to be" verb counterpart (i.e., 太っている and 悲しんでいる), what is the difference between using the i-adjective form and the verb ...
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Combining two い-adjectives without using て
In the JLU chat, Flaw recently typed up some instructions printed on a Japanese product. Here's what they said:
直射日光の当たらない涼しい所に保管してください
It appears that 所 is modified by two phrases:
直射日光の当たらない "...
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Why are い-adjectives often used as nouns?
I can't really understand why sometimes い adjectives are transformed to nouns instead of just being used themselves.
I.E.
白い鳥 has 300,000 google hits while 白の鳥 has 4 million.
近い家 has 113,000 ...
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expressing casual potential for adjectives
This is a follow up to How to construct potential form for adjectives
I'd like to know how to say "can be x" where x is an adjective, in a casual way. For example with a friend, this seems a little ...
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What function did あり perform in classical Japanese 形容詞?
In classical Japanese, many uses of 形容詞{けいようし} had あり "embedded" in them, e.g.:
熱からず = 「熱し」の連用形＋「あり」の未然形{みぜんけい}＋「ず」
熱かりたり = 「熱し」の連用形＋「あり」の連用形{れんようけい}＋「たり」
熱かれ = 「熱し」の連用形＋「あり」の命令形{めいれいけい}
熱かる人 = 「熱し」...
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i-adjectives that end in a 〜ない which doesn't seem to be 〜無{な}い
I noticed there are many 形容詞{けいようし} (i-adjectives) that end in 〜ない, where the な is not part of the kanji, and doesn't seem to have the meaning 無い.
Examples:
危{あぶ}ない means "dangerous", while 危 means "...
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What is the origin of the word 無{な}し?
The word なし, of course, means ない, and it is defined as such in dictionaries. But why does this word exist? Are there even any situations where you can say なし but you can't say ない? Is it a remnant of ...
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言わない vs 言わなくない - A negative verb conjugated as an adjective?
While reading a text in Japanese, I came across the phrase "何も言わなくなったから".
I don't understand what the ～くない stands for. As far as I know it is used as the negative of an adjective... but 言う is a ...
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Is accent position predictable for -i verbs in Osaka/Kansai?
Background
While I'm not especially confident about the reliability of my sources (Wikipedia (0) (1) (2) and some guys' personal websites), and it's possible that I transcribed some of these wrong, ...
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Why is it なさそう and not なそう
"It seems there is none" is なさそう, which escapes the usual rule for 形容詞 (イ-adjectives), which says "drop the い and add そう".
Is there a historical explanation for this exception? And does it have ...
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Indicative form of an i-adjective used adverbially
As expected, the adverbial form (aka 連用形) of an i-adjective ...く can be used as an intensifying adverb to an adjectival predicate:
すごく速い
But there are cases where the indicative non-past ...
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Using な after い-adjectives
What does it mean to put a な after an い-adjective? For example, many Youtube videos are called begin "いいなCM", and a Japanese text book I have uses this sentence as an example:
この通りを行くと 大きな 交差点がある。
...
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What is って doing in this sentence?
From Noir, Episode 2 (anime).
I don't get what the って is doing in this sentence. For context, the father came home early from work. He quickly answers his wife in the first sentence then in the ...
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When would you use 新{あら}たな and 新{あたら}しい
To say new, the first way that I learned is to use the i-adjective 新しい. But I noticed that the na-adjective 新たな is used a lot in written texts. Is there any difference in when either is used?
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In what way is the negative form of a verb an adjective?
I was reading the wikipedia page on "predicate," where it mentioned that in Japanese, the negative form of a verb is an adjective. I thought that this was too expansive a statement to be true, but ...
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Apparent inconsistency in turning い-adjectives into nouns: 赤い→赤 vs 近い→近く
Consider these adjectives:
赤い
近い
The い-declension works for sentence ending as well as directly modifying a noun:
Now if I want to express the adjective as a noun, for example I'm talking about "...
Flaw♦
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[潔]{いさぎよ}い meaning
Can anyone tell me more about 潔い? I've looked in Goo, Alc, Kenkyusha, and Edict, and the definitions refer to "sportsmanlike", "gracious", or "take it like a man". However, I'm doubtful if these are ...
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い-Adjective Conjugation: かったです vs でした
When we first studied adjective conjugation in my Japanese class, I kept making the same mistake habitually; I would conjugate the past tense of い-adjectives with でした at the end instead of dropping ...
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An i-adjective immediately before 「ください」?
Does it make sense to have an i-adjective (in て-form) immediately before 「ください」?
For example, when asked to choose between hot and cold coffee, can I use 「温かくてください」, or must I turn it into nominal ...
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Does the だ get dropped after an い-adjective
I was told how an older non-native lady would say "it's okay!" and that it was perceived to be just like that person and cute many because it was grammatically incorrect. She would say, いいだよ
Now I ...
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How does -ki form of i-adjectives work? (e.g. 愛しき)
In one of the Bleach anime ending songs, "Hanabi" has the following line:
繋ぎゆく この想い 愛しき 君
"itoshiki" seems to come from "itoshii", but how does this -ki form of i-adjective work? I found a few ...
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Honorific form of i-adjectives (e.g. はやい → おはよう) [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
～うございます - keigo い-adjectives
I still remember the introductory lecture of the first Japanese course I took in college, my sensei told the class that おはようございます does not mean "...
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When to use 欲しがる instead of 欲しい
When does one use 欲しがる instead of 欲しい? For example, in phrases like:
先生は野菜を食べて欲し｛いです・がっています｝。
My incomplete understanding is that the がる form is more formal/polite, but it can only be used when ...
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i-adjective specific intensifiers/qualifiers? e.g. 物凄い {ものすごい}
I noticed that some i-adjectives have specific prefixes that can be used to intensify the quality of the states that are described by the adjectives, similar to "flaming hot", "freezing cold" etc in ...
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Contrasting っぽい、らしい、みたい
For example, the following 3:
女っぽい (おんなっぽい)
女らしい (おんならしい)
女みたい (おんなみたい)
In what situations would you use っぽい over らしい？ Does っぽい have negative connotations? Are 女らしい and 女みたい interchangeable as in ...
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correctness of い adjective + です
Generally, in all Japanese language classes, the rule you're taught is that です does not follow い adjectives. Instead, い adjectives can act like stative verbs, and as such terminate a sentence by ...
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Are there inflections/endings that can be applied to verbs but not i-adjectives? (or vice versa)
After reading in an answer to another question that Japanese adjectives are less inflected than Japanese verbs I'm wondering if there are inflections that can be applied to verbs but not i-adjectives? ...
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Why does Japanese have two kinds of adjectives? (-i adjectives and -na adjectives)
Japanese has two kinds of adjectives known by several terms but the ones I know are i-adjectives and na-adjectives - why?
I recall that Japanese adjectives are much more like verbs than in English ...
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～うございます - keigo い-adjectives
I'm not sure if this is actual keigo, or just a polite form of adjectives. Anyway, there are several that we're all familiar with that are still used today.
はやい → おはようございます
ありがたい → ありがとうございます
...
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