Other Japanese Suffixes That You Need To know

When we are talking with other people, we often use adjectives to describe and give properties to the object we are referencing to. We also sometimes use the help of adverbs to describe the adjectives and also verbs. The same thing can also be applied in Japanese because both adjectives and adverbs also exist in Japanese. In this post, we will discuss the adjective and adverb suffix and how to use them in a sentence.

Adjective Suffixes

In Japanese there are two kinds of adjectives, the one that is called i-adjective and also the one that is called na-adjective. The i-adjectives are the ones that ended in the vowel "-i", while na-adjectives are the ones that are followed by the particle "na" after the adjective and before the noun. Below we will discuss more about each of the adjectives.

I-adjectives

As mentioned above, this kind of adjective ends with the vowel "i". To use this kind of adjective in a phrase, we can just simply add it before a noun.

Example:

やさしい人

Yasashii hito.

A kind person.

To make it negative, we can just simply change the ending "-i" into "-kunai".

Example:

やさしくない人

Yasashikunai Hito

A person that is not kind.

To make it becoming a past sentence, we can simply change the ending "-i" into "-katta"

Example:

やさしかった人

Yasashikatta hito

A person that was kind.

We can also combine the negative+past adjective by changing the ending "-i" into "-kunakatta"

Example:

やさしくなかった人

Yasashikunakatta hito

A person that was not kind.

Na-adjective

As mentioned above, this kind of adjective is the one that is followed by the "na" sound after the adjective and before the noun.

Example:

きれいな人

kirei na hito

A beautiful person.

To make it negative, we can just simply add janai or dewa arimasen (polite) at the end of the sentence.

Example:

きれいな人じゃない

Kirei na hito janai

Not a beautiful person.

To make it into a past sentence, we can just simply add datta or deshita (polite) at the end of the sentence. 

Example:

きれいな人だった

Kirei na hito datta

Was a beautiful person.

To combine it into negative+past, we can simply add janakatta or dewa arimasen deshita (polite) at the end of the sentence.

Example:

きれいな人ではありませんでした。

Kirei na hito dewa arimasen deshita

Was not a beautiful person.

In an actual sentence, we can use the adjective in the construction subject+wa+adjective which is similar to subject+to be+adjective in English.

Example:

彼女はやさしい人です。

Kanojo wa yasashii hito desu.

She is a kind person

彼女はきれいなひとです。

Kanojo wa kirei na hito desu.

She is a beautiful person.

Adverb Suffix

If an adverb is derived from an adjective, we can just simply change the adjective ending "-i" into "-ku" and change the particle "na" into "ni" for the na-adjective.

Example:

早い 🠆 早く

hayai 🠆 hayaku

早く走る

Hayaku hasiru

Run quickly

That is all for our discussion today. I also made you a short quiz in a youtube video that you can check below or here. To make sure you remember all of those suffixes, you should try it out yourself in your sentences!