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Like I said, it doesn’t often get used. It’s kinda too formal for casual uses, and too casual for formal uses. You might use it if you were adding an extra sentence-ending particle, though. For example 大きいだよ or だよね. I’d need to grab the grammar dictionary to be more specific, though.
The な-adjective versions of 大きい and 小さい are 大きな and 小さな, and they’re only ever used pre-nominally.
Why wouldn’t there be two casual forms? =P
“The な-adjective versions of 大きい and 小さい are 大きな and 小さな, and they’re only ever used pre-nominally.
Ah, OK, I didn’t realize that. But if that’s true then だ at the end of この電車は大きい would not be grammatically correct then, would it?
It’s not wrong wrong, I don’t think. It’s just weird.
OK.
On a side note, who decided anyways to make 大きい and 小さい as exceptions by making them both as i-adjectives and pre-nominal na-adjectives? Who is responsible for driving us gaijin crazy?I’m sure there’s someone whose job it is to think up all those crazy exceptions. =P
@trout: 大きい and 小さい are not the only i-adjectives that can take a pre-nominal na form; in fact, many can. However, I think it’s reasonable to say that 大きい, 小さい, and 可笑しい will make up the vast majority of your encounters with this phenomenon. Note though, that when in the pre-nominal position, these words can still only conjugate as i-adjectives. That is, you would never say “大きだった家”, but instead “大きかった家”.
Also, this is not the only odd behavior you see with adjectives. Don’t forget about the adjective/noun mess with colors, especially black and white.
The good news is, as it is so often, that you don’t really need to worry about it. You’ll eventually pick up usage patterns almost automatically, and until then, it’s not an issue that hinders comprehension.
“Note though, that when in the pre-nominal position, these words can still only conjugate as i-adjectives. That is, you would never say “大きだった家”, but instead “大きかった家”.”
Ah, good point. I didn’t think about that. I’ll keep that in mind as an added bonus to my personal maze of confusion:)
Hello,
So I was on Lang-8 and I got a correction for one of my Lang-8 posts.at the momentは、「昨今（さっこん）」も使うけど、自分に起きたことは「最近」や「この頃」「近頃（ちかごろ）」が自然。
Could someone please explain this to me in English? With the help of a dictionary, I’ve figured that she’s suggesting some more natural sounding words to fit in my sentence (or am I wrong?), but I can’t for the life of me piece the sentence together.
Also what is the difference between 昨今, 最近, この頃, 近頃, 今現在は? I have a bunch of suggestions(from commenters that I totally don’t understand by the way) for words that would fit better than 即今 (what I had put). In my beginner-weakly-pieced-together sentence, it was supposed to be in the context of “At the moment, [sentence listing things I like] が好きです。
For “at the moment”, 昨今 is also used, but personally, things like 最近 and この頃 and 近頃 are more natural.
昨今 is something like “nowadays”
最近 is “most recently”, “these days”
この頃 is “recently”
近頃 is “lately”, “recently”Actually, “nowadays” seems to come up as a possible translation for all of them. =P
Thank a bunch! There are so many things that vary with context that it does my head in. Wah. They’re all synonyms that have no difference in my head. :(
Yeah, that’s an issue I had when learning as well, and still have on occasion. A lot of words have a handful of synonyms, but only one of them is typically used in day-to-day conversation, and this is rarely noted in dictionaries or textbooks…
That’s such a pain… I guess the easiest way to learn it is to participate in more conversation until it becomes natural. That’s not easy either.
Hi,
I’m currently going through one of the practice sheets on TextFugu, the one devoted to でした sentences and could someone explain to me please why in one of them 七人 we pronounce as “しちにん” and not “ななにん”. Thank you! :)Because other than 一人 and 二人, all uses of the 人 counter follow the same pattern of on’yomi+にん. With some minor exceptions (i.e. 四人 is よにん, because しにん sounds like 死人 which is “corpse”). It’s 一人 and 二人 that are the freaky exceptions, but Kouichi never seems to mention that.
ななにん is not completely unheard of, though (for example, the title of the manga 山田くんと七人の魔女 = “Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches” uses ななにん), but I think しちにん is somewhat more common. 七 is kind of odd in that its readings tend to be fairly interchangeable.
Hi!
So I’m going through season three lesson 8 and it gives examples of negative verbs. One of the examples is:
それ は しりません
Which is translated to “I don’t know that.” Isn’t それ the direct object? If it is, why doesn’t it take the particle を instead of は? I get that you’re supposed to infer that it’s not the thing that’s doing the knowing, but I just thought it seemed like a strange way to write it. Thanks for the help!
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