Guide to Japanese Adjectives

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. I-adjectives 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 noun modifiers in the future. For now, we’ll focus on using な/A2 adjectives in the following statements. 

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