Adjectives


There are two types of adjectives in Japanese. There is the NA adjectives and the I adjectives.

I already explained one kind of adjective in the last lesson. You can add the copula after them to describe the subject. Those are called NA adjectives. They are very similar to nouns with one difference I will explain in the lesson Descriptive Modifiers.

In addition to NA adjectives, there are also I adjectives. I adjectives, like their name suggests, always end in a vowel other than "e" + "i." In contrast to NA adjectives which are similar to nouns, I adjectives are more like verbs. They come at the end of a sentence by themselves, without a copula. You can think of them as already meaning "to be" and then their translation.

Now here's some I adjective vocab.
ookii = big             chiisai = small        kuruma = car
ureshii = happy         kanashii = sad         jitensha = bicycle
hayai = fast, early     osoi = slow, late      densha = train
oishii = delicious                             kore = this (one)
Watashi wa ureshii.
"Watashi" is our subject. We translate it to "I." "Ureshii" means "to be happy." We don't need to add "da" to it because it already includes "to be" as part of its meaning. So it translates to
I am happy.

Sushi wa oishii.
The subject this time is "sushi." "Oishii" translates to "to be tastey" or "to be good" describing something's taste. Again, we do not add "da" after it because I adjectives are never followed by the copula.
Sushi is good.
Sushi is tastey.

Densha wa hayai.
The subject is "densha" which is translated to "train." "Hayai" can mean "fast" or "early" depending on context. So this sentence translates to either of these.
The train is early.
Trains are fast.

This is small.
"This" is our subject. It translates to "kore" and we add "wa" after it since it's the subject. I say "kore" means "this (one) in the vocab because you cannot say "kore densha" to mean "this train." There is another word for "this" for when it comes before a noun. "Is small" is translated as "chiisai" in Japanese and we don't need a copula for "i" adjectives so we're done.
Kore wa chiisai.

Bicycles are slow.
The subject of this sentence is "bicycles." "Bicycle" is "jitensha" in Japanese. We add "wa" after "kuruma" since it's the subject. Our adjective here is "osoi" which is translated as "osoi." So we get in all
Jitensha wa osoi.

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