い Adjectives - Grammar Discussion

adjectives

Structure

  • おおき
  • おいし
  • はや

:warning: い - Adjectives cannot be used with だ

View on Bunpro

FAQ

Q: Why is the answer provided at the end of the review question?
A: Bunpro is a grammar-learning resource and not vocabulary focused. Therefore, we only expect you to determine whether or not you need a particle or special conjugation when coming up with your answer. We want you to be able to confidently connect い-adjectives with other parts of a sentence rather than just try to recall the correct vocabulary.

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:warning: い-Adjectives cannot be used with だ

I used to make this mistake often until I started to think about why this is wrong. For anyone who is confused why this is the case, have a look at this.

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Good day, I have a small question regarding the usage of color adjective.
In martial art black belt is 黒帯 kuro obi et non kuroi obi( 黒い帯).
Can you help me understand why ?
Thanks a lot in advance
Philippe

@PhilippeA Hey! It looks like you may have gotten some good answers over on the Wanikani Community. To add to what others have said, it is quite common for two words (e.g. an adjective and a noun) to be combined into one. This combination usually involves some sort of transformation that doesn’t necessarily follow any particular grammar pattern, but may have been easier to pronounce when it was first being used in spoken language (e.g. あかワイン and not あかいワイン).

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In the い-Adjectives quizzes we get questioned on how to conjugate the past form but in the structure section there’s no hint regarding past\negative\negative past conjugations.

I think it should be expanded.

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Agreed, it’s pretty barebones on Bunpro regarding the structure and conjugation. Literally the only thing mentioned is to not use it with だ.

Makes me wonder what else I might be missing out on during my lessons (yes I know there are links to additional external resources).

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What else would you need?
This point is quite literally just “this is what a class of adjectives looks like in Japanese” and that’s it. There are other things you can do with i adjectives but they’re explored later. You’re not missing out on anything at this point

Okay thanks…maybe I’m spending too much time trying to “master” each item in its own before moving along, when as mentioned previously by others, I should just keep moving along and organically pick up the small bits as they are introduced along the way.

I guess I was worried when it didn’t explain い-adjective conjugation and made me concerned things like this are omitted in other topics/lessons. Especially when it shows up in the examples/quizzes.

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Still being quizzed asking for a past form before reaching any lesson related to any past forms is not great. I have no idea how to answer the question and there is no information given at the point I’m currently at.

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Are you currently using any of the pre-made paths or are you going in the default order bunpro gives you?

Default order. Actually an explanation can be found in い-Adjectives “Readings” tab, but if you try to go there from the quiz screen after getting the answer wrong, the “Readings” section is empty. I guess it’s a bug and it’s what threw me off.

yeah the empty readings tab is a really, really, really annoying bug that i’m glad someone (sorry!) was able to reproduce, hopefully it gets fixed asap. are you saying though that the い-adjective grammar point is testing you on past-tense? i don’t see any examples where that would be the case but i’m probably misreading somewhere.

nonetheless, for conjugations i would just spend some time drilling all of it in either tae kim, kanji link, youtube, etc. just to get the point home. i can’t remember if BP covers every single aspect in N5 but it’s something that you’ll just have to brute-force your way through repetition, sucks but eventually it’ll all click. then as you’re doing reviews when you make a mistake you can just consult the previously mentioned websites and get a quick refresher.

Yeah it’s testing the past tense (like @Iraito also mentioned above), even while there are no examples or on-site info given about that.

Very surprised that there are no grammar points on site that explain い-adjectives forms such as past, negative and past-negative, I did a search on all grammar and there is nothing. Bunpro has such grammar points for verbs, so it can’t be explained that you just need to learn it yourself by following Reading links. Makes me wonder what other grammar points are missing.

Welcome to the site @olegb94, I do agree with you that the conjugation of adjectives probably should be included (I thought it was) I’m not sure if the admins have plans for this @Jake ?

Thank you, I’m enjoying the site so far, just wish it would have an exhaustive list of grammar points. Also can’t find grammar for adverbs here, which is another important topic to cover.

Agreed that it’s strange to get quizzed on past-tense of い-adjectives without having learned it in the grammar point! This happened on SRS level 9 of this grammar point. Past tense (and presumably negative) should be listed under Structure. @Jake heelp.

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@tobek
We have prepared new grammar point for negative form of いadjectives and past form of いadjectives. We will try to push it with next N1 update if possible. I have removed the past sentences from the grammar point. Cheers!

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Do you have a rough timeline on when these will be added back in?

I’m confused about the reviews for this grammar point. So far they’ve all just involved typing in the vocabulary denoted by the [square brackets]. What exactly am I being quizzed on here?

edit: I think there was one instance where I had to add an extra い to [かわい] but I honestly don’t know why that review was different from the others, and the only reason I knew to do that was because it’s a common vocab term that I was already familiar with.

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