The Ultimate Guide to Japanese Adjectives

What is an Japanese Adjectives ?

“Japanese Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous, doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven.”

The Ultimate Guide to Japanese Adjectives

Adjectives in Japanese are really useful for describing things and also really easy to use! First we must learn the 2 types of adjectives, “I” adjective and “Na” adjectives.

Examples of some common Japanese adjectives

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
大きい	ookii	big, large
小さい	chiisai	short
高い	takai	expensive
安い	yasui	cheap
良い	yoi	good
悪い	warui	bad
背が高い	se ga takai	tall
背が低い	se ga hikui	short
美しい	utsukushii	beautiful
醜い	minikui	ugly

Japanese NA Adjectives

Now we need to learn the second type of adjective, “Na” adjectives. Here are some examples:

簡単	かんたん	kantan	simple
複雑	ふくざつ	fukuzatsu	complicated
静香	しずか	shizuka	quite
迷惑	めいわく	meiwaku	troublesome

So, why do they call these things “na” adjectives, well basically … they don’t end in “i”

So why do they call them “Na” adjectives? Well, this comes when we start to describe nouns.

Using Japanese adjectives in a sentence

Let’s now start describing some nouns like big dog, small boy and easy question.

With the “I” adjectives it is extremely simple, we just put the adjective in front of the noun.

Ookii hon	Big Book	大きい本	おおきいほん
Chiisai ki	Small Tree	小さい木	ちいさいき
Muzukashii shitsumon	Difficult Question	難しい質問	むずかしいしつもん

As you can see it’s really easy to utilize these adjectives, you simply but them before the noun and don’t change anything.

Now with the Na adjectives this is where the “Na” comes in. All you need to do is use “Na な” to join the adjective to the noun.

Here are some examples.

Kantan na hon	Easy Book	簡単な本	かんたんなほん
Shizuka na heya	Quiet room	しずかなへや	静かな部屋

As you can see all you do is add the “Na” after the adjective and before the thing you are describing.

There are however a few exceptions to the rule such as “Kirei” “きれい” Even though this ends with an I い　it is actually a na adjective. There are a few cases like this but not too many so watch out, you will soon get used to these few exceptions.

Past tense Japanese adjectives

Now we’ve looked at using both na and I adjectives in the present tense, we will now try to conjugate them to the past tense.

Let’s start with I adjectives. All you do here is take off the final い I and かった Katta.

big, large	おおきい	Was big	おおきかった
short	ちいさい	Was short	ちいさかった
expensive	たかい	Was expensive	たかかった
cheap	やすい	Was cheap	やすかった
good	よい	Was good	よかった
bad	わるい	Was  bad	わるかった
tall	せがたかい	Was tall	せがたかかった
short	せがひくい	Was hikui	せがひくかった
beautiful	うつくしい	Was beautiful	うつくしかった
ugly	みにくい	Was ugly	みにくかった

With the Na adjectives all you need to do is add deshita or datta after the noun.

simple	かんたん	Was simple	かんたんでした
complicated	ふくざつ	Was complicated	ふくざつだった
quiet	しずか	Was quiet	しずかでした
troublesome	めいわく	Was troublesome	めいわくでした

Japanese Adjectives : i-keiyoushi

In the previous blog, we discussed how na-keiyoushi have the same conjugations as a noun except how it uses na instead of wa or ga. For i-keiyoushi, or ii adjectives, these are adjectives that always end in the hiragana character “い”. Do not get these confused with a few na-keiyoushi words that end in “i” (ei. Kirei, Yuumei, etc).

English	Romaji	Japanese
Kind	Yasashii	やさしい
Expensive	Takai	たかい
New	Atarashii	あたらしい
Bad	Warui	わるい
Difficult	Muzukashii	むずかしい

Examples of I adjectives

ふるい (old) Furui

Positive

English	Romaji	Japanese
That laptop is old.	Sono pasokon wa furui desu.	そのパソコンは古いです。
That laptop was very old.	Sono pasokon wa totemo furu katta desu.	そのパソコンはとても古かったです
Very old laptop	Meccha furui pasokon desu	めっちゃ古いパソコンです

Negative

English	Romaji	Japanese
That laptop is not old.	Sono pasokon wa furu ku arimasen.	そのパソコンは古くありません。
That laptop was not old.	Sono pasokon wa furu ku arimasen deshita.	そのパソコンは古くありませんでした。

おいしい (tasty/delicious) Oishii

Positive

English	Romaji	Japanese
That pizza is delicious.	Sono piza wa oishii desu.	そのピザは美味しいです。
That pizza was delicious.	Sono piza wa oishi katta desu.	そのピザは美味しかったです。
Very delicious pizza	Meccha oishii piza desu	めっちゃ美味しいピザです。

Negative

English	Romaji	Japanese
That pizza is not delicious.	Sono piza wa oishi ku arimasen.	そのピザは美味しくありません。
That pizza was not delicious.	Sono piza wa oishi ku arimasen deshita.	そのピザは美味しくありませんでした。

臭い(stinky) Kusai

Positive casual

English	Romaji	Japanese
My dog is stinky.	Watashi no inu wa kusai.	私の犬は臭い。
My dog was stinky.	Watashi no inu wa kusa katta.	私の犬は臭かった。
Stinky dog	Kusai inu	臭い犬

Negative casual

English	Romaji	Japanese
My dog is not stinky.	Watashi no inu wa kusa ku nai.	私の犬は臭くない。
My dog was not stinky.	Watashi no inu wa kusa ku na katta.	私の犬は臭くなかった。

The only irregular adjective of Japan

As we have discussed before, there are two main categories of Japanese adjectives. We talked about na-keiyoushi and i-keiyoushi and their different forms and conjugations and although they are the main categories, there is one word in the Japanese language where these rules absolutely DO NOT apply. The word we are talking about is actually quite common and can be considered as quite an “easy” word to learn. The problem with that is how it might confuse beginner students because of how even though it is a commonly used word, normal rules for na and i keiyoushi do not apply to it.

This is word means “good”. It was originally spelled and used as よい(良い）but eventually became いい with time. Technically, it is considered as an i-keiyoushi but confusingly, i-adjective rules do not apply to it. We will discuss it through the table below so be sure to study it!

Positive form

English	Romaji	Japanese
Good	Yoi desu	良いです
Good (casual)	Yoi	良い
Was good	Yokatta desu	良かったです
Was good (casual)	Yokatta	良かった

Negative form

English	Romaji	Japanese
Not good	Yoku arimasen	良くありません
Not good (casual)	Yoku nai	良くない
Was not good	Yoku arimasen deshita	良くありませんでした
Was not  good (casual)	Yoku na katta	良くなかった

There we have it, you can now add adjectives to nouns in Japanese. Well done you!

Learn Japanese Adjectives with BondLingo?

Study in Japan?

Recommend

bondlingo-blog”>

How to use Japanese Adjectives 形容詞 Keiyoushi

bondlingo-blog”>

Describing things in Japanese with adjectives

bondlingo-blog”>

Adjectives: Describing your way to success in Japanese

bondlingo-blog”>

Adjectives: Going deeper into Japanese descriptions

bondlingo-blog”>

Adjectives: Takeaways and things to know