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The Difference of Nakeyoshi and Ikeyoshi | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5136 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes  Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 1 of 11 20 March 2015 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I made a Facebook status saying "Anata wa yasashii onna", then my friend who is a college student and takes Japanese literature commented that "yasashi" didn't use "na" but it became "yasashii" instead. I argued that in the forum where we first knew each other I ever encountered someone whose ID was "kirei na onna", so I thought that adjective was followed by "na", and she responded saying that the nakeyoshi ones are followed by -na suffix, and the akeyoshi ones aren't. I asked her what was the difference between them but she didn't answer. So, can anyone here tell me what's the difference?
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| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4335 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 11 20 March 2015 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Your friend is right: there are two types of adjectives in japanese, -na and -i adjectives. Their only difference is how you conjugate them. In their plain form, the only difference is "na" adjectives are followed by "na", but "i" adjectives aren't followed by anything.
For example, let's use "yasashii" ("gentle", an -i adjective) and "shinsetsu" ("kind", a -na adjective, in the same context. 1. Anata wa yasashii hito desu. 2. Anata wa shinsetsu na hito desu. Then there's how you conjugate them to turn them into adverbs (roughtly the same as "-ly" words in English). Here, "-i" becomes "-ku" and "-na" becomes "-ni" I'll use the exact same adjectives here too: 1. Inu ni yasashiku shite kudasai. (Please treat dogs gently.) 2. Okaasan wa shinsetsu ni mondai wo kotaemashita. (Mother responded the question kindly.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 3 of 11 20 March 2015 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
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It's not just the adverb form, the whole conjugation paradigm is different. I-adjectives are a bit like verbs in
that they have past tense, negative, conjunctive and other forms made by changing the suffixes, whereas na- adjectives are a bit more like nouns in that they cannot be conjugated like that without the addition of forms of the copulas ("da", "desu" and others). Even though kirei (beautiful, a Chinese loandword) and kirai (hated, a derivative of the verb kirau - to hate) end with -i, they are actually na-adjectives and are conjugated accordingly. The reason is that the i's at the ends of those words aren't derived from the Middle Japanese adjective ending -ki; in "kirei" the i is part of the root, and in "kirai" it's derived from the conjugated ending -fi. Although at least the former does occasionally get treated as an i-adjective colloquially (kirekunai, kirekatta, etc.) this usage is highly non-standard. Edit: BTW it's "na-keiyōshi" and "i-keiyōshi", although those are both unofficial terms. Edited by vonPeterhof on 20 March 2015 at 7:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5136 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 4 of 11 20 March 2015 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Ummm... But how to know whether I should use "na" or "-i" when I want to make a sentence using adjectives?
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 5 of 11 20 March 2015 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Most adjectives with the ending -i are i-adjectives. "Kirei" and "kirai" are just some notable exceptions, which have to be memorized. Most textbooks indicate whether an adjective is of the i- or na-type.
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| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5136 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 6 of 11 20 March 2015 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unfortunately, I have no book available. Thanks for the explanation, though.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 20 March 2015 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Look up the words you are unsure about in an online dictionary, the entries have (adj-na) and (adj-i) or some similar addition to the entry. (Is even searchable using romaji.) Also, most na-adjectives are written in two kanji, while most i-adjectives are written with one kanji and hiragana. (Most, not all, and not all of the time.)
Otherwise, if you learn adjectives from context it becomes automatic really quickly. And I personally think looking up unknown words to use them in a sentence when you don't even understand the grammar covering those words ... should be an exception, rather than the norm. (If you need a free ressource for grammar, Tae Kim's guide is pretty good.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4335 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 11 20 March 2015 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
It's not really up to you, in the sense that it's not not a choice you make. There's not one -na adjective and one -i adjective for each descriptive word. Some just happen to be -na, some happen to be -i. The trick is to learn to recognize them for their endings, which really depends on practice alone... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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