Newbie: Flatly confused about な adjectives

[Diomedes]

Dear fellow learners,
I am flatly confused about な adjectives and I make constant mistakes, here’s my latest one

綺麗なタオルはトイレにある。

綺麗 - きれい ; pretty (or clean)

I missed adding the な ; I thought this was an い adjective although I guess the kanji makes that pretty clear since there’s no hiragana glued to the end? I had been thinking of “な” as something I added to nouns per the bunpro description “In Japanese, almost any type of word can be attached to the beginning of a noun to modify the meaning, or describe the qualities of that noun.”

EDIT: re-reading this, I see I don’t add な to a noun… I misread the description here, I thought this was like y or ly in english that can change nouns into adjectives…

Pretty or clean is an adjective, not a noun (right?), and this ended with い so I thought I was set. I guess… without seeing the kanji written (or memorizing the dictionary) is there a way to know if an adjective “needs” another な to be extra adjective-y? I guess I can accept if this is yet another thing to memorize… just hoping for some help here, thanks.

Sorry to be slightly frustrated (/dons ghost-buster garb)

[Slysoft]

な adjectives are adjectival nouns, which means they are both standalone nouns or adjectives with な

regular nouns have a similar ability with の so you will sometimes see something described as a の adjective

[oiyum]

any word that can function as an adjective and isn’t an -い adjective will be a -な adjective. even though 綺麗 ends with an -i sound, it doesn’t belong with -い adjectives because the sound is ‘located’ inside the kanji, rather than outside. [for example, if the word looked like 綺麗い, then it would fall under -い adjectives].
you are right in a way, it is a way to modify ‘nouns’ into ‘adjectives’, but the reason they are distinct from ‘typical’ -い adjectives is because they were usually borrowed from other languages, which don’t have a rule that an adjective must end with -い.

if it still hasn’t clicked for you, i would recommend you read the chapter on it in the tae-kim grammar guide or watch this cure dolly video which i think explains it quite well.

[AlexR]

To answer the part about knowing if it needs a な, I think if you try saying “very ___” where ___ is the adjective, if it sounds natural, then it’s usually a な adjective I think. So it would need a な if describing a following word. If its not natural then its probably not. And い adjectives would not need a な. Like you say, I think if the word contains the い inside of the kanji, then it’s not necessarily an い adjective. But there are some exceptions I believe.

[davebp]

Hmm. In your dialect of English, do “very beautiful”, “very tall”, and “very short”, sound unnatural to you?

[davebp]

The suffix “ly” in English creates adverbs, not adjectives.

[Slysoft]

Every so-called い-adjective or 形容詞 ends with an い, but there are some 形容動詞 or な-adjectives which end with い such as 嫌い and 幸い

[AlexR]

No, they do not. But they’re い adjectives, so you wouldn’t use the “very” rule with them anyway.

[davebp]

Oh. I see. I misunderstood. You are using this rule to distinguish whether the な stem is being used as a noun or an adjective.

[AlexR]

I think it may be more to do with comparing な adjectives with other nouns. There is a little textbox on the な adjective page that might explain it better than I am. I think that’s where I learned it from.

[wct]

I have found that for unravelling these confusions at the core of Japanese, one of the best resources is Cure Dolly. So, I often check back in to her YouTube channel and re-watch some of her videos – or in the case of replying to someone, I’ll then post the video in the reply. Which is what I’m going to do here.

She really does explain this na-adjective confusion – as she does on so many other topics – in a very logical way. Here’s one video that answers almost all of your questions/issues:

[Some people find her voice/accent either hard to hear clearly or just a bit annoying. In any case, I recommend turning on the subtitles, as she always includes full subtitles in her videos.]

Japanese Adjectives i and na - secrets they never tell you! Four facts that make adjectives easy

[Noxsora]

Gonna repost this:

@Noxsora

I don’t remember if I saw this in Bunpro, I read it on Kanshudo I think.
So in English, we like to take the plural version with the loan word. That’s why I like comics (with s) but I like manga (no s).

In Japanese Na adjectives are all nouns. That’s why it’s 綺麗じゃない (not pretty) is the same as 日本人じゃない(not Japanese), but different than 冷たくない(not cold). When importing a word, Japanese don’t want to import the verb conjugations- so it’s a noun now.

This is why 熟語/音読み, more Chinese looking words are more likely to be nouns with でした・じゃない than 訓読み/送り仮名 more Japanese looking words

[Noxsora]

And thats why ではありません\じゃない, the では\じゃ is the て form of だ . Thanks