Hello there
I am new in learning japanese and there is something I am having difficulty grasping.
I read that in some cases you can drop the na in -na adjectives, for example pretty きれいな kireinapretty woman きれい女性 kirei joseivspretty flower きれいな花 kireina hanna
But how do you know when? Or is it just if you are being informal vs formal?
I ve tried googling but got more confused in the end
Thank you for your help!
4 comments
If I Google きれい女性 I see it with な, not without.
The first result in my Google search for “japanese na adjectives” has this line:
> “You only use the な na ending when placed before nouns”
I would just use きれいな女性. きれい女性 just sounds off.
You don’t usually stick a な-adjective on directly like that, regardless of surrounding context.
You *can* drop it with independent reactions (you know, the stereotypical ‘きれい～’), though in this circumstance you’re kind of not dropping the な, you’re dropping the だ.
> きれい女性 kirei josei
That’s incorrect.
The only time you’d drop the な that I can think of is when the adjective is at the end of the sentence – e.g. この花は奇麗だ (kono hana wa kirei da)
It seems odd to drop the な when modifying a noun. You might be confusing with いadjectives, like 美しい
Beautiful woman -> 美しい女性 (うつくしい じょせい)