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I noticed that い adjectives can be conjugated when preceding a noun. ie…
犬はあぶなかったです – The dog was dangerous.
…can become…
あぶなかった犬です – The dog that was dangerous.
Is there any kind of mechanic to do this with な adjectives? ie…
犬はきけんでした – The dog was dangerous.
The closest approximation I could come up with is this:
きけんな犬でした
Incidentally, from writing this post I’ve just discovered that there are the same translations for both な and い adjectives. Like, above, both きけん and あぶない mean “dangerous”. How confusing is that?! Adjectives are going to definitely take some getting used to. Which to use it each situation and the different conjugation methods and whatnot.
きけん な いぬ a dangerous dog
きけん ではない/じゃない いぬ a dog that’s not dangerous
きけん だった いぬ a dog that was dangerous
きけん ではなかった/じゃなかった いぬ a dag that wasn’t dangerousJapanese, like all languages, has synonyms (think “danger” and “peril” in English). Sometimes they are “near synonyms” (words with the same basic meaning but differ in nuance) and sometimes they are perfect synonyms (usage is based on preference and style alone). As a rule of thumb, in Japanese, words composed completely of kanji tend to have a more abstract, refined, or literary nuance to them.
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