IMABI Lesson 10 Review: 形容詞

 29 March 2016 at  06:30 in  japanese

I will start doing this kind of reviews, for (hopefully) most IMABI lessons. I’ll start at lesson 10, because I’ve already read past lessons a lot.

So here we go.

形容詞

Adjectives, as I know them: words that describe things; IMABI says they can be used as predicates. The term for predicative form is しゅうしけい, and it looks like this:

1. その花は美しい。
2. あの学校の建物が新しい。

Now we have the れんたいけい, the attributive form:

1. 古い木。
2. 新しい本。

For the れんようけい this type of adjective have two forms.

	形容詞	れんようけい I	れんようけい II
New	新しい	新しく	新しかり

Polite forms

For the same adjective, we have, in order, plain, polite and more polite.

Non-past

1. 新しい。
2. 新しいです。
3. 新しくあります。*

Past

1. 新しかった。
2. 新しかったです。
3. 新しくありました。

Negative

1. 新しくない。
2. 新しくないです。
3. 新しくありませｎ。

Negative past

1. 新しくなっかた。
2. 新しくなっかたです。
3. 新しくありませんでした。

As a note, avoid all the 2’s in written language, they are only usually used in spoken language. As IMABI says:

The forms in the “polite speech” column are historically incorrect. In the future, we’ll learn why this is, but for now, don’t feel bad or wrong for using them. Although they are completely fine in the spoken language, they are avoided at all costs in the written language in many forms of writing and formal speech. This is why the “more polite” column is even of importance to you.

Also:

*: 新しくあります and its plain form 新しくある are possible. They are essentially never used as is in the spoken language as doing so is rather old-fashioned. This does not apply to the other “more polite” forms. If it is used, the particle は is usually inserted to give 新しくはあります, but a contrasting structure should be used along with it. We have not gotten to this grammar yet, but it is important to keep an eye out.

よい

いい means “good”, however, in the れんようけい, to conjugate, you have to use よい (e.g. よくない).

Slang

Best to cite IMABI in this one:

いい can also become ええ in slang. In fact, ai, oi, and ii at the end of adjectives contract to ē in slang. “Ye” and “we” aren’t possible in Standard Japanese, so in this case y and w are dropped. Although it is rather unorthodox to be learning of this at the beginning, the reality is that these forms are used excessively in the pop culture medias that you are surely exposed to. Don’t be confused when you see these forms. You should understand that using them in a non-casual setting is rude to say the least. So, use with caution.

Adjective	Modified	Adjective	Modified
強い (strong)	つよい　→　つえー	怖い (scary)	こわい　→　こえー
新しい (new)	あたらしい　→　あたらしぇー	赤い (red)	あかい　→　あけー

Other れんたいけい

Some adjectives, appear to have an additional form that can’t be conjugated. They can also have another regular attributive form, the form they are when they’re located before what they modify.

Examples, by IMABI:

1. 小さい・小さな
2. おかしい・おかしな
3. 大きい・大きな

For these three, the special commonality is that the alternative forms below are limited. As far as nuance is concerned, with them being special, they are minutely different from the ‘normal’ forms. These forms tend to be more subjective in nature.

～しの

These are rare instances when a adjective attributive form ends that way. Instead of しい or な, they are しの, for example (keep in mind these are not valid):

• 新しの
• 楽しの

Citing IMABI:

A major example of this is 仲良し. You can actually see 仲良しな and 仲良しの, but both ways are still grammatically weird.

1. 一番仲良しの友人 (Not spoken language): Closest friend

Final

That’s it, keep in mind, I am writing this not to copy IMABI, but to review the lessons and learn more.

Original Lesson