Simple Guide to Japanese Adjectives

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Japanese Adjectives: Types and Differences

A Japanese adjective can be divided into two parts, a stem and a suffix.  All adjectives fall under two categories: i-adjectives and na-adjectives. 

• Adjectives ending with the Hiragana suffix “い(i)” are i-adjectives. They are also categorized as A1.
• The second type is the na-adjective, A2. A2 takes な (na) before the noun that it modifies.

Examples of i-adjectives are “寒い(cold/samui)”, “難しい(harda/mutukasii)”, or “小さい(small/tiisai)”.

暑い夏です。

It’s a hot summer

Examples of na-adjectives are “静か(shizuka/quiet)”, “簡単(kantan/simple,easy)” or “便利(benri/convenient)”.

静かな町です。

It’s a quiet neighborhood

Note that some adjectives look like i-adjectives but are actually not. For instance, “有名(yuumei/famous)” is a na-adjective, because “i” is part of “名(mei)”, hence not to be mistaken as an い-ending. The same goes for “きれい(kirei/pretty, beautiful)”.  

You’ve probably noticed now that na-adjectives don’t end with “な” actually. That’s because a “な” is added only when it’s modifying a noun. We will talk about its usage as a noun modifier in the future. For now, we’ll focus on using な/A2 adjectives in the following statements.

Japanese Adjectives Conjugations

Japanese adjectives conjugate into different forms. In order to get this matter cleared up, below are the rules for Conjugations.