Japanese/Lessons/I-adjectives

There are two types of adjectives in modern Japanese: な- and い-adjectives. Both are descriptive and modify nouns. They describe nouns and form predicates differently.

The い-adjectives (形容詞, けいようし) are fairly simple creatures. Any い-adjective will end on an "い" in it's basic form and they behave very regularly. The only problem in differentiating between い- and な-adjectives comes from the fact that some な-adjectives also end on "い" (e.g. きれい and ゆうめい) or a syllable in the い-row (e.g. げんき).

Watch and Listen
Listen to the teacher read the following phrases, or click here (needs soundbite) to listen on your computer.

Vocabulary
Nouns

い-adjectives

Grammar
When they stand alone, い-adjectives don't take the copula, but when modifying nouns, they do. Otherwise they don't change.