Being Casual With Nouns And Adjectives
“As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language.” - Albert Jack Nock
So now you’ve learned how to use casual Japanese with…
- Nouns
- Na-Adjectives
- I-Adjectives
You’ve probably noticed how similar they are, and how many connections there are between them. Because of this similarity, we’ll be practicing all of these together. What fun!
To do this, I’ve put together some practice sheets… here’s the idea, though: I’ve broken up the worksheets to cover things you’ve studied up until now. That way, you can study each individual thing (and review it) and then apply casual Japanese to it. We’ll be limited to things that don’t contain verbs, so there’s only so much we can cover, but it should be a great review and a great way to practice. Just go through the practice sheets (in order, preferably) and complete the exercises. When you’re done, you should feel pretty good about casual nouns/adjectives AND a little better about everything you’ve reviewed. It’s good to look at older things!
1. Asking Questions + これ, それ, あれ
Casual This, That, That Over There – This was one of the earliest lessons you completed… remember that? Oh the times we had. In this practice sheet, you ask and answer simple questions using casual Japanese.
2. Possessive Japanese の
Casual の – Now we’ll throw in the particle の so we can show who owns what and what belongs to what. Of course, all in casual Japanese.
3. Hate & Love
Casual すき and きらい – Now we’ll take a look at the adjectives きらい and すき. If you remember right, they are な adjectives, so be sure to treat them as such when working with the casual!
4. ほしい & 〜たい
Casual ほしい/たい – ほしい is an i-adjective. 〜たい form is also, technically, an i-adjective (or at least treated like one). We’ll practice expressing what you want using casual Japanese.
5. にくい・やすい
Casual にくい・やすい – A few more i-adjective grammar points to practice. Should be pretty easy… or difficult… or one of those two.
After you’ve finished all the practice sheets there’s only one more page. We have to get back into the kanji (after taking a chapter off). Let’s look at the next ten and get through them.