Types of Japanese Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe nouns. They add more information to the noun than it would have if it was just by itself. For example, take the noun cat and add the adjective black. Now we have a black cat. Japanese adjectives work the same way as English adjectives. You just add the adjective before the noun to give more information.

黒くろい猫ねこ
black cat

Or, you can have the adjective at the end of the word too. For example, the cat is black:

猫は黒い
the cat is black

So adjectives work the same in both English and Japanese. In Japanese however, there are different types of adjectives. They all work like this but have different endings. Some end in い (i), and other is な(na). Let’s look at some examples

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INDEX

Japanese adjectives can be broken up into two main categories. The first one is い-Adjectives and the other is な-Adjectives.

い-Adjectives

い-Adjectives end in い and function as adjectives all the time. They can also change their い ending to different sounds to represent ideas such as adverbs or the past tense. Take a look at how the adjective 黒い meaning black changes in the following sentences:

猫が黒い
the cat is black

猫が黒かった
the cat was black

猫が黒くて小ちいさい
the cat is black and small

な-Adjectives

Next, な-Adjectives are adjectives that end in な when they come before nouns.

静しずかな猫
a quiet cat

However, when they are used at the end of a sentence, as the predicate of a sentence they behave like nouns. Meaning, they lose the な like the following sentence:

猫は静かだ
the cat is quiet

猫は静かだった
the cat was quiet

猫は静かでかわいかった
the cat was quiet and cute

If you look at the three previous sentences you will see だ、だった、and で. For simplicity だ means is, だった means was, and で can translate to is and. When な-Adjectives are at the end of a sentence like the examples above, they work just like nouns.

猫だ
it is a cat

猫だった
it was a cat

So, the word cat is not an adjective but a noun, and just like the word 静か it is followed by だ.

Comparing Japanese Adjectives

Below is a table where you can reference the different forms of the two types of adjectives.

	黒い black	静かな quiet
Attribute	黒い猫 black cat	静かな猫 quiet cat
Predicate	猫が黒い the cat is black	猫が静かだ the cat is quiet
Past	猫が黒かった the cat was black	猫が静かだった the cat was quiet
Negative	猫が黒くない the cat is not black	猫が静かじゃない the cat is not quiet
Past-Negative	猫が黒くなかった the cat was not black	猫が静かじゃかった the cat was not quiet
Conjunctive	猫が黒くて小さい the cat is black and small	猫が静かで小さい the cat is quiet and small
Adverbial	黒く染そめる to dye black	静かに歩あるく to walk quietly
Noun	猫の黒さ the blackness of the cat	猫の静かさ the quietness of the cat

Types of Japanese Adjectives