Making Sense of Japanese Grammar

8. You cannot always guess the grammatical category of a Japanese form from the grammatical category of its English counterpart

8 You cannot always guess the grammatical category of a Japanese form from the grammatical category of its English counterpart In English, “different” and “same” are adjectives, but their Japanese counterparts chigaimasu and onaji-(desu) are a verb and a noun, respectively. You cannot always tell what part of speech (verb, adjective, noun, etc.) a form belongs to from its translation. The following is a list of some noteworthy forms which are treated differently in English and Japanese: different (adjective) chigaimasu (verb) beautiful (adjective) kirei-(desu) (noun) rude (adjective) shitsurei-(desu) (noun) useless (adjective) dame-(desu) (noun) fine (adjective) daijoobu-(desu) (noun) healthy (adjective) genki-(desu) (noun) regrettable (adjective) zannen-(desu) (noun) same (adjective) onaji-(desu) (noun) ordinary (adjective) futsuu-(desu) (noun) Make sure that you conjugate these forms properly according to their Japanese classification. (Not sure what conjugation is? See Unit 5.) kirei, shitsurei, etc., belong to a category known as na-nouns, na-adjectives, nominal adjectives, or adjectival nouns. This category is a subcategory of the noun in terms of its conjugational pattern and history (briefly discussed in Unit 10). We will call it the na-noun in this book. Checking your comprehension: Can you conjugate chigaimasu and onaji-desu? 15 For related topics, see also Units 5, 9, 10, and 40. ...