How to Use な-Adjectives in Japanese

Unlike い-adjectives, な-adjectives do not conjugate on their own. Instead, they require the use of the copula です to express tense and negation. This means that instead of changing the adjective itself, you modify the form of です that follows it, just like you would with a regular noun. Present and past, affirmative and negative—all of these changes happen through the conjugation of です, not the adjective.

When a な-adjective is used to directly modify a noun, the な must appear between the adjective and the noun. However, when the adjective appears at the end of a sentence or stands alone as a predicate, the な is dropped, and the adjective is followed directly by the appropriate form of です.

This structure allows な-adjectives to be highly versatile in both formal and casual conversation, as long as you remember the basic rule: use な when modifying a noun, and use です to express polite sentences. Understanding this will help you speak and write more naturally as you describe people, places, things, and emotions in Japanese.