Japanese Day 3 – Names and い Adjectives

Today we will have a quick look at how names work in Japanese, as this is something you will quickly notice in your immersion.

Then we will look at are first real piece of grammar, the い-Adjectives.

Names In Japanese

I’ve already touched on how the Japanese like to use different levels of formality when speaking and one of the ways you can see this is through how they say each other’s names.

In general, if they know your name, they will use. If you just said “come here” rather than “Steve, come here” they would deem this as pretty rude. So make you are addressing people by their name, if you know it.

You will also notice that the names are back to front compared to English. As I mentioned on day zero, when telling you to find your katakana name, the Japanese use kanji for their names and you will find that their surname/family name comes before their first name. Make sure you remember this if someone tells you their full name.

Then to add an extra layer of politeness, they use “honorifics” which are added to the end of the name, which I will go through now.

-San

The most common honorific  you will hear is さん (san) so I would be “Ian-San” ….although you never refer to yourself as this, it’s rude …you just say your own name by itself.

When speaking to or about anyone else, you can add -さん onto the end of their name. This is like saying Mr or Mrs. and it can be used for anyone’s name and is seen as polite and formal, so it is less likely to be seen in close relations, as you can be more informal then.

You can use it with either the first name, or surname and you may even hear people referring to certain jobs with this suffix, or even businesses, as it is a simple mark of respect when referring to someone

It will not take you long to hear this in your immersion.

-Chan

Chan (-ちゃん) another ending added to names, but is usually reserved for children. It’s seen as fairly informal and a kind of cute honorific.

You will see it being used to refer to some celebrities, usually the young female singers that are popular in Japan.

This would never be used in a more formal setting, or at a work place. Really I wouldn’t use this unless you are talking to, or about an actual child.

-Kun

Kun is like the half way house. It is not as formal as –San, but also not as childish as –Chan. It can be seen either hiragana and kanji – くん or 君

Kun is fairly informal and commonly used to refer to young boys and even young men. Basically it can be used with anyone of the same age, or younger than you, or of equal to lower status (in a work environment or school). So a senior manager may call his younger colleagues –くん. It’s still respectful, but also kind of formal enough.

In this situation the younger-Kuns would call their manager –San, as he is higher up and has more authority, but all the junior guys would refer to each other as –Kun, as they are equal. It can seem a little confusing at the start, but you will start to notice the hierarchy in Japanese society from this.    

While this -Kun ending is mostly used for young men/boys, you will still hear it being used towards young woman.

Just keep listening and you will start picking up on it and you will notice the different honorific’s being used, along with the different levels of formality with the language.

い Adjectives In Japanese

Adjectives are an important part of any language and there are two types in Japanese. They can either be いi-adjectives, which I will go over here or なna-adjectives, but that’s a different lesson.

Either way, both types of Japanese adjectives function the same way as in English. They basically give more detail to nouns or verbs.

Just think of a ball…that’s a noun …and how do we describe the ball …we use adjectives.

It’s big, heavy and red! These are all adjectives. You will often see them in English with verbs, such as slowly, quickly, and really anything else ending in “ly” is going to be an adjective.

You will notice a lot of Japanese adjectives end in い, such as:

Happy – 嬉しい、

Delicious – おいしい

Cute – かわいい

Fun – 楽しい

These are the type of adjectives we are talking about here today.

Using い Adjectives By Themselves

These adjectives are normally added into sentences to give more detail to whatever is being talked about; however, they can actually be used on their own.

The い part of the word is basically a built in “is”.  This means you can just say:  おいしい(oishii) …and while this can simply mean “delicious” it also means “is delicious” thanks to the い.

We are going to get slightly ahead of ourselves here, and mention the da/desu endings, which I will cover in a few days. For now you just need to understand that adding da or desu to the end of statement is a “declarative” meaning it is like saying “it is”.

What we need to know today is that the い part of the adjective does the same function as da/desu. The い acts like “it is” and so this means you can’t add Da  to the end of an い adjective, as you already have this built in, so you would be saying “it is” twice and that would be strange.

Although …you can add Desu to make the statement sound more polite. While Desu is also a declarative for “it is” …it is also just a formal marker, so you can get away with it. It’s a little strange, but just accept it. This will make sense in a few days. A lot of stuff is interconnected so it can be hard to explain one thing if you don’t know the other yet, but in a few days you will have enough information for everything to fall into place.

You can also alter adjectives in other ways, which is very  similar to how verbs work, but again that’s for a different lesson, but for now just understand you might see some slightly different endings and alterations to adjectives, but we will go through them all later.

(list of adjectives – https://youtu.be/esI6rYSqlKo?si=6a_cQuPnk64kRDDg)

Creating Negative い Adjectives

We will look at one way to alter  い adjectives, and that is turning them into negatives and luckily its very easy  

You simply have to drop the last い and then add くない (ku-nai)

 …you can then still add desu if you want to make things polite, so you could くないです (ku-nai-desu).

For example:

かわいい – cute

かわいくない – not cute

かわいくないです– not cute (but more polite)

This “nai” ending is the informal/causal version of the negative, which is why a simple “desu” at the end can make it more polite.

However, you may occasionally see a very polite negation of the Nai ending …which is くありません(ku-arimasen).

かわいくありません – not cute (but very formal)

It means the exact same thing and the rule is the same, just remove the final い and add the “ku-arimasen. It is just the very polite version of the negative, so look out for that.

The Exception For い Adjectives

Japanese is fairly consistent, but there are a few exceptions here and there, but compared to other languages, it’s not a lot.

One of these exceptions is the adjective for – Good – いい

When you want to put this adjective into the negative, the rule is slightly different. If you try to follow the normal steps from above, you end up with just い …and adding くない to this just doesn’t work.

So what do we do? Well, it probably helps to know that the adjective for “Good” has changed over time and the word we see now – いい has come from the old fashion word for Good, which was 良い (yoi). This old word is rarely used now in spoken Japanese, but you may occasionally hear it.

However, we don’t really need to know how or why this change happened over time; we just need to know that if you want to make the word いい into a negative, we have to use the “original rules” that would be used for the 良い (yoi) version of the word.

Luckily this良い (yoi) version does follow the normal rules I mentioned above, so you just need to remove the final いand add theくない (kunai), くないです(kunai desu) or くありません(ku-arimasen). Just remember that for “good” you need to use the old version of the word before you chnage anything.

 いい – Good (modern version)

良い (よい) – Good (olden times language)

よくない – Not good

よくないです – Not good (polite)

よくありません – Not good (very formal)

It an annoying little exception, but it’s simple enough. Just remember to use the old fashion word when you want to make it negative and you can’t go wrong.  

(Return To: The Full List of All The Japanese Lessons)

Today’s Vocabulary

1.すごい – Awesome

2.  はい – Yes

3.  可愛い (かわいい) – Cute

4. ~さん – Mr/Mrs

5. もしもし – Hello (on the phone)

6. そう/そうです – That’s right

7. 明日 (あした)  – Tomorrow

8. 歩く (あるく) – To Walk

Today’s Immersion Videos

It is taking me time to find/add more immersion videos. This section will be updated shortly!

(Go To The Next Lesson: Day 4 – Saying “This and That”)