Describing the appearances of people in Japanese
Hello you wonderful Japanese learners, welcome back to another amazing online Japanese lesson from Bondlingo. We hope you are feeling well and are fired up to learn some useful Japanese today. Today is certainly a very exciting lesson, we are going to learn how to describe people’s appearances in Japanese.
Contents
Learn how to describe appearances in Japanese
We are first going to look at all of the vocabulary we need for today’s lesson, there are some really cool adjectives specifically that we are going to look at. We will then look at how to describe people’s appearances, from their faces to their outfits. Lastly, we will put it all together and run over some example sentences to ensure we have understood everything.
Right we will first get started by looking at all the necessary vocabulary for today’s lesson, get your notepads ready guys, this is going to be information overload.
Vocabulary for describing the appearances of people in Japanese
Oh boy, do we have some new juicy vocab words for you today. Take a look at the list below and make note of them in your note book or on some anki cards. Even better, if you have an anki software on your phone, input them into that.
First we are going to look at the vocabulary for describing Gender and race.
| Woman | Onna no hito | おんなのひと | 女の人 |
| Female | jyosei | じょせい | 女性 |
| Man | Otoko to hito | おとこのひと | 男の人 |
| Male | dansei | だんせい | 男性 |
| White | hakujin | はくじん | 白人 |
| Black | kokujin | こくじん | 黒人 |
| Indian | indojin | いんどじん | インド人 |
| Asian | ajiajin | あじあじん | アジア人 |
| American | amerikajin | あめりかじん | アメリカ人 |
Now lets look at how to describe people’s hair in Japanese.
| Long | nagai | ながい | 長い |
| Short | mijikai | みじかい | 短い |
| Thin | Usui | うすい | 薄い |
| Straight | massugu | まっすぐ | 真っ直ぐ |
| Curly | chijirege | ちぢれげ | 縮毛 |
| Black | kuroi | くろい | 黒い |
| Brown | chairo | ちゃいろ | 茶色 |
| Blonde | burondo | ブロンド | ー |
Now let’s look at some words for describing body type.
| Tall | Se ga takai | せが たかい | 背が高い |
| Short | Se ga hikui | せが ひくい | 背が低い |
| Slim | surimu | スリム | ー |
| Fat | Totemo taikaku ga yoi | とても たいかくが よい | とても体格が良い |
| Muscular | kinnikushitsu | きんにくしつ | 筋肉質 |
Finally lets look at the vocabulary for describing peoples personality.
| Good | ii | いい | 良い |
| Funny | omoshiroi | おもしろい | 面白い |
| Kind | shinsetsuna | しんせつな | 親切な |
| Gentle | yasashii | やさしい | 優しい |
| True/Diligent/Hardworking | majimena | まじめな | 真面目な |
| Smart/Intelligent | Suma-to | スマート | ー |
| Mean | ijiwaru | いじわる | 意地悪 |
| Selfish | wagamama | わがまま | ー |
| Stupid | baka | ばか | 馬鹿 |
So guys, that’s all the vocabulary we are going to learn today for describing people. Be sure to really take note of all of these vocabulary words as they are going to be super useful for your ongoing study. Like we said, make sure to get them in an anki system and study them whenever you get the chance. We are now going to look at some example sentences and see how we can start describing people with these words in Japanese.
Vocabulary for describing the appearances of people in Japanese
Lets have a look at some example description sentences now and break down the grammar with these individual sentences.
In this sentence we are describing someone’s height. See how は is used after 彼 to indicate who we are talking about.
彼は背が低いです
Kare wa se ga hikui desu.
He is short.
This next sentence is essentially the opposite way around, here we are using the same grammatical set up but using 高い instead of 低い
彼は背が高いです
Kare wa se ga takai desu.
He is tall.
As we are directly talking about the girl in this sentence you can just use は to indicate we are talking about “her” and then simply add the adjective after. です has been used after the ii adjective to make the sentence more polite.
彼女は細いです
Kanojo wa hosoi desu.
She is skinny.
Same here, take a look at the sentence closely, it’s the same grammatical set up.
妹は強いです
Imouto wa tsuyoi desu.
My little sister is strong.
This last sentence is similar to the first two, because we are talking about a specific feature of the person. We use は to first clarify who we are talking about and then が to mark the specific thing we want to describe.
マイクさんは髪が黒です
Mike san wa kami ga kuro desu.
Mike has black hair.
A great bit of advice is to read all of these sentences aloud a fair few times just to ensure that you understand the patterns.
Well guys, that’s is, we’ve now come to the end of todays online Japanese article from Bondlingo. We really hope that you’ve enjoyed it and got a lot from it. If you have any more questions or ideas for new content you would like us to cover, go ahead and leave a comment as we would love to hear from you.
Learn Japanese verb with BondLingo
Study in Japan?
Recommend
