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Adjectives

Properties of Adjectives
Now that we can connect two nouns together in various ways using particles, we want to describe our nouns with adjectives. An adjective can directly modify a noun that immediately follows it. It can also be connected in the same way we did with nouns using particles. All adjectives fall under two categories: na-adjectives and i-adjectives. We will see how they are different and how to use them in sentences.

The na-adjective
The na-adjective is very simple to learn because it acts essentially like a noun. In fact, they are so similar; you can assume that they behave the same way unless I specifically point out differences. One main difference is that a na-adjective can directly modify a noun following it by sticking 「な」 between the adjective and noun. (Hence the name, na-adjective.)
（１）　静かな人。- Quiet person.

In addition to this direct noun modification which requires a 「な」, you can also say that a noun is an adjective by using the topic or identifier particle in a [Noun] [Particle] [Adj] sentence structure (for instance 「人は静か」）. This is essentially the same thing as the state-of-being with nouns that we've already covered in the previous two sections. However, since it doesn't make sense for an adjective to be a noun, you cannot have a [Adj] [Particle] [Noun] sentence structure （for instance 「静かが人」）. This is pretty obvious because, for instance, while a person can be quiet, it makes no sense for quiet to be a person.

（１）　友達は親切。- Friend is kind.
（２）　友達は親切な人。- Friend is kind person.

Remember how na-adjectives act almost exactly the same as nouns? Well, you can see this by the following examples.

（１）　ボブは魚が好きだ。- Bob likes fish.

（２）　ボブは魚が好きじゃない。- Bob does not like fish.

（３）　ボブは魚が好きだった。- Bob liked fish.

（４）　ボブは魚が好きじゃなかった。- Bob did not like fish.

Do the conjugations look familiar? They should, if you paid attention to the section about state-of-being conjugations for nouns. If it bothers you that "like" is an adjective and not a verb in Japanese, you can think of 「好き」 as meaning "desirable". Also, you can see a good example of the topic and identifier particle working in harmony. The sentence is about the topic "Bob" and "fish" identifies specifically what Bob likes.

You can also use the last three conjugations to directly modify the noun. (Remember to attach 「な」 for positive non-past tense.)

（１）　魚が好きなタイプ。- Type that likes fish.

（２）　魚が好きじゃないタイプ。- Type that does not like fish.

（３）　魚が好きだったタイプ。- Type that liked fish.

（４）　魚が好きじゃなかったタイプ。- Type that did not like fish.

Here, the entire clause 「魚が好き」、「魚が好きじゃない」、etc. is modifying "type" to talk about types (of people) that like or dislike fish. You can see why this type of sentence is useful because 「タイプは魚が好きだ。」 would mean "The type likes fish", which doesn't make much sense.

We can even treat the whole descriptive noun clause as we would a single noun. For instance, we can make the whole clause a topic like the following example.

（１）　魚が好きじゃないタイプは、肉が好きだ。
- Types (of people) who do not like fish like meat.

The i-adjective
The i-adjective is called that because it always ends in the hiragana character 「い」. This is the okurigana and it is the part that will change as you conjugate the adjective. But you may know some na-adjectives that also end in 「い」 such as 「きれい（な）」. So how can you tell the difference? The bad news is there really is no way to tell for sure. However, the really good news is that I can only think of two examples of na-adjectives that end with 「い」 that is usually written in hiragana: 「きれい」 and 「嫌い」. All other na-adjectives I can think of that end in 「い」 is usually written in kanji and so you can easily tell that it's not an i-adjective. For instance, in the case of 「きれい」, which is 「綺麗」 or 「奇麗」 in kanji, since the 「い」 part of 「麗」 is encased in kanji, you know that it can't be an i-adjective. That's because the whole point of the 「い」 in i-adjectives is to allow conjugation without having it affect the kanji. In fact, 「嫌い」 is the only na-adjective I can think of that ends in hiragana 「い」 without a kanji. This has to do with the fact that 「嫌い」 is actually derived from the verb 「嫌う」

Remember how the negative state-of-being for nouns also ended in 「い」 （じゃない）? Well, you can treat i-adjectives in the same fashion as the negative state-of-being for nouns. And just like the negative state-of-being for nouns, you cannot attach the declarative 「だ」 to i-adjectives like you can with nouns or na-adjectives.

Now that we got that matter cleared up, we can learn the conjugation rules for i-adjectives. There are two new rules for i-adjective conjugations. To negate or set to past tense, we first drop the 「い」, then add 「くない」 for negation or 「かった」 for past tense. Since 「くない」 ends in an 「い」, you can also treat the negative just like another i-adjective. Therefore, the rule for conjugating to negative past tense is the same as the rule for the positive past tense.

Conjugation rules for i-adjectives Negative: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective and then attach 「くない」
例）　高い → 高くない
Past-tense: First remove the trailing 「い」 from the i-adjective or negative i-adjective and then attach 「かった」
例）　高い → 高かった
例）　高くない → 高くなかった

Summary of i-adjectives
  Positive Negative
Non-Past 高い 高くない
Past 高かった 高くなかった