い Adjectives Preceding The Noun
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” - Ken Blanchard
There are some similarities and some differences between how い and な adjectives behave. If you remember from last chapter, there are times when the な is present and when the な isn’t present. With い adjectives, the い is always present unless being conjugated to past tense, negative tense, etc (we’ll learn more about that in the next chapter).
When an い adjective comes before a noun, leave it just how it is. Although this might seem like confusing memorization right now, い adjectives will make more and more sense as you go along, as there are different parts you need to learn before it becomes one nice, happy picture.
For example, with な adjectives you’d do this:
べんりな くるま
Convenient car
すきな ほん
The book (I) like
With い adjectives, it’s basically the same. Just take the い adjective (with the い), and replace the な adjectives in the examples above.
はやい くるま
Fast car
つまらない ほん
Boring book
We’re just taking the い adjective and placing it right before the noun, just as you would in English (funny monkey, cool cat, interesting microphone, etc). As long as you know the two vocab words you need, it’s quite easy. And, of course, you’ll want to add your です’s and such too.
はやい くるま です
It is a fast car
つまらない ほん です
It is a boring book
まずい ラーメン でした
It was bad tasting ramen
Another thing you’ve already learned from the な adjectives chapter is applicable here too. If you think of the [いadj+noun] combination as a set, your life will be made much easier, and you’ll be able to expand on your sentences a lot more. Compare the following to the sentences before:
それ は ひとみさん の [はやい くるま] です
That is Hitomi’s [Fast car]
この [つまらない ほん] を よみました
I read this [boring book]
[まずい ラーメン] を たべました
I ate [bad tasting ramen]
If you look at the [いadj+noun] as a set … as one entity … your life will be a lot easier, especially later one when you start conjugating your い adjectives.
Now, there’s still more to learn before you can start doing this stuff on your own, so let’s move on for now. The most important thing is that you understood what went on up there (should be easy if you understood な adjectives) so that when we put the い adjective pieces together you’ll be able to see the whole picture. Also, make sure you keep studying your words! If you haven’t, go through 5-10 additional い adjective vocab before moving on to the next page, please!