掲示板 Forums - Adjectives

The better part of my morning has been taken up by the subject of adjectives as my random topic of the day. I watched the Renshuu video over it. The lesson seemed straightforward. But, I had a hunch that describing the い-adjectives is way oversimplified, by saying all the words ending in 「い」are such adjectives. Especially knowing that some な-adjectives do end in 「い」.

So to get the deets, I turned to Tae Kim's guide. He mentions that in the cases that a な-adjective ends in 「い」, usually the vowel is either in kanji, or kana paired with kanji. He mentions two other exceptions (I'll get to that later).

This wasn't distinctive enough for me. That was until I encountered Yuko's blog by chance, offering greater depth to help with this process of elimination. But, I still got stuck. The table at the end demystifies the distinctions in place of generalizing it with contradictions, which I loved, so all appears resolved - but not quite!

Going back to Tae Kim's guide, he mentions that the な-adjective, 「きらい」, for example was nominalized from the verb form. Yuko doesn't include this term. Under all consideration so far, in the absence of knowing about verbs and if it's not written in kanji, Yuko's chart would dictate it would appear to qualify as an い-adjective (it ends with an -ai at least). A contradiction, it seems.

Out in the wild, how in the world would I be able to decipher a word being a な-adjective without looking it up in the dictionary? I know words ending in -ei automatically take care of the rest, but what makes these certain exceptions more special, or how does it really work? Do I have to learn the tricks to figure its verb form instead? The materials I have so far aren't telling me much of how to handle it beyond this, and I fear this is the conundrum for a beginner at least, unless I'm missing something.

Rote memorization can only get me so far, and I'm still learning as I go.

Knowing how the words are written with kanji is what gives away whether it is an い or な adjective.

Does it end in anything other than い ? Then it's な e.g. 好き/すき

No kana after the kanji ? Then it's な e.g. 綺麗/きれい

Is the adjective just the stem of a verb ending in う ? Then it's な e.g. 嫌い/きらい (see 嫌う)

Otherwise it's い e.g. 甘い/あまい

Anything using the みたい "seeming" suffix are going to be な (in standard speech)

I wouldn't have known that. Hence I would've had to look it up.

As I said, I wouldn't have known in the first place without looking it up. Rote memorization is one thing, but that doesn't explain the logic, which was what I was asking about.

I think what they were getting at is that there's not going to be a logical method that is going to satisfy what you're looking for, with regards to the adjective types. Just another "language evolved, it didn't ask anyone for permission to do something a certain way" :( If you ever have to teach English to a non-native speaker, English has got about 100x more of these "WHY ENGLISH WHY" where it is simply memorization, and not comprehension.

So if you're seeing a word for the first time, and it ends in い, there is no 100% way to deduce which type it is without looking it up (unless, of course, the word is conjugated in the sentence).

Edit: beaten by two minutes!

Some are made to be logical (like Lojban!) but many conlangs are also made to look natural so they're also full of irregularities, which is fun!

子供達の絵本？

Interestingly, the dictionary I have doesn't say that「嫌い」and 「綺麗」 is sometimes written in kana. It says it's usually in kana. I took that under consideration.

Like I said about appending な, kanji would've also been an easy distinction, but not for beginners who have little kanji knowledge since guidance on the process of elimination isn't as inclusive (or exclusive, depending how you look at it). That leads me to now see that people's guides I've seen so far isn't everything. Basic, but not the arbiter of all rules. Ahí está el detalle.