Teach Us, Teacher

Negative form of adjectives (Lesson 15)

In Lesson 13, we learned that Japanese adjectives have two kinds, I-adjectives and NA-adjectives. I-adjectives end with syllable I, like ATARASHII (new). NA-adjectives take NA before nouns they modify. So, DAIJÔBU (all right), which we've learned in this lesson, becomes DAIJÔBUNA before nouns. To turn I-adjectives into the negative form, you replace I with KUNAI. So, the negative form of ATARASHII (new) is ATARASHIKUNAI (not new).
To make NA-adjectives into their negative form, we add DEWANAI. So, the negative form of DAIJÔBU (all right) is DAIJÔBU DEWANAI (not all right).

You will sound casual, if you replace DEWANAI by JANAI, and say DAIJÔBU JANAI.

Please access "Leaning Tools" page.