Weird adjectives, conjugated for tense.

There are two classes of adjectives in Japanese. One class, the -na adjective, behaves as we English speakers would expect it to: It describes the word that follows it, and it is used with a linking verb (e.g., "is," "was," etc.)

The other class, however, is just sort of weird. These adjectives end with i, and are distinguished by the fact that they are conjugated for tense.

For example, in Japanese, we don't say, "the flower was red." Instead, we effectively say, "the flower redded." Or, it's not that "the train was fast." Rather, "the train fasted."

A nutty language!

For the native English speaker, Japanese is really strange. Verbs behave like adjectives. Adjectives behave like verbs. Objects masquerade as subjects. And there are whole concepts that are simply expressed differently in Japanese than in English.

This blog is an outlet for me to muse about some of these things, as they occur to me. A reader might enjoy it because it presents ways to think about language that may never have occurred to an English speaker.

My own background, in a few words: I have been a student of the Japanese language for seventeen years. For thirteen of those years, I have been earning my keep based largely on my ability to read and speak that language.