Hi! I want to learn some basic adjectives, I found this list and just finished putting them all in digital flashcards.
I noticed that some already have the な attached to it, I thought that it is probably better to learn them like that so that I’ll also learn if the adjective is な or い at the same time while memorizing them.
But there is something else that I don’t get, some of these words have の and した attached to them. I thought that の was the particle for possessiveness and した meant below/down? I don’t understand what these do in the context of adjectives, why do only some of them have them? Should I just omit everything that comes after the adjective and learn the plain form and attach them when I actually need it in a specific situation?
3 comments
the big problem here is expecting parts of speech to line up between the languages – everyone needs to learn to let go of this, or it will be a constant source of confusion
things that are adjectives in english have no equivalent in japanese sometimes, so other phrases or words of other parts of speech are used instead (or vice versa)
like there’s no adjectives for hungry or thirsty, you have to say おなかがすいている or のどがかわいている or something else equivalent
some nouns act a little like adjectives in that they are mainly there to modify other nouns, but are still nouns and thus use の
some verbs are used in place of adjectives, and often the past tense is what’s used, so した is the past tense of する in a lot of these cases
when you look up words, always look up their usage to see how they appear in sentences, it’s not quite so simple as just writing down “is な adjective or is verb”. for example, with verbs, you need to learn if they’re ichidan or godan, if they’re transitive or intransitive, etc. you don’t have to do this all immediately, but there’s more classifications than just parts of speech, and parts of speech alone are not enough to always describe how a word is supposed to be used
There are a number of adjectival categories here…
* True adjectives. These always end with the い kana (in their dictionary form – the い can be further conjugated).
* Na adjectives. Grammatically these behave like nouns (i.e. they can’t be conjugated) and so need to link to the noun they are describing using a connective form of the copula (だ). The connective form is な – hence the name na adjectives.
* No adjectives. This is a way of describing a noun using another noun – essentially like the possessive function of の.
* Verbs or entire verb phrases can also act in an adjectival manner. Some nouns can behave as verbs when する is added to them (so called suru-verbs). する conjugates to the past form of した which is probably what you are seeing.
Eh there’s a lot of non-adjective words that can be used like adjectives. They can be derived from verbs or nouns, etc. That’s just how it is.
Ones ending in た are derived from the perfect form of verbs.
の isn’t only a “possessive” particle. It expresses other things, like linking nouns for noun modification. You’ll see certain words called “no-adjectives” which function like adjectives but don’t necessarily take な as na-adjectives do.