Page 87 - Basic Japanese

2.4. Adjectival nouns

The word suki ‘likable’ is a special kind of noun called an

adjectival noun (or copular noun, nominal adjective). It acts

as an adjective describing a noun, but it patterns like a
noun, being placed before some form of the copula da/desu

‘is (equals).’ Here are a few examples:

suki (da) (is) likable, liked

kirai (da) (is) dislikable, disliked

kirei (da) (is) neat, pretty, clean

shikku(da) (is) chic, stylish

hade (da) (is) showy

shizuka (da) (is) quiet

majime (da) (is) serious, studious

kantan (da) (is) easy

dame (da) (is) not good

Notice that the literal translation of suki desu and kirai desu

is ‘(something) is liked’ and ‘(something) is disliked,’ but we
freely translate them ‘(somebody) likes (something)’ and

‘(somebody) dislikes (something).’

2.5. Untranslated English words

In English we seldom say just ‘book.’ We say ‘a book,’ ‘the

book,’ ‘some books,’ or ‘the books.’ In Japanese, the
situation is just the other way around. Since the Japanese

have another way of implying that they’ve been talking
about the noun, by making it the topic with the particle wa,

as in hon wa ‘the book, the books,’ they don’t need a word to