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Na
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Na is used as an adjective marker, right? |
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Re: Na
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on 2006-03-15 16:48:08 |
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'ã®' is mainly used as a noun modifier. 'ãª' is an adjective marker. Used for adjectival nouns (or 'ãª' adjectives).    |
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Re: Na
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yup, its 㪠you can look this grammer stuff up on wikipedia to make sure though  |
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Re: Na
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The use of 㪠can get confusing, because it's used with a part of speech that doesn't exist in English grammer. If a word belongs to "keiyou-doushi," you can use 㪠with the word to describe a noun. "Keiyou-doushi" is similar to adjective in its usage. ex: 綺麗(ãã‚Œã„)ãªäºº In this case, 綺麗 is the "keiyou-doushi." ã® translates to "of." It is also used when you want to describe possession (my, mine, yours, John's, etc). ex: my car -- ç§ã®è»Š John's car -- ジョンã®è»Š speed of light -- å…‰ã®é€Ÿã• |
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Re: Na
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Na is not really used the same way as other particles that are "markers." NO and NA are linking words that describe things by linking to nouns. It's also a bad idea to think of NO as meaning "of" because it only means this sometimes, but rather you should think of it as a function rather than as an English word. Anyway, I'll describe the use of "no" in this way first. You use "no" in this format: ~ X no Y ~ ; and that describes noun Y in terms of noun X. So Y is what is being modified and X is modifying Y. In terms like "watasi no kuruma," kuruma (car) is described in terms of watasi, so it means "my car." But in the example like "nihon no kuruma" in means Japanese car. While you could roughly say this makes sense of "car of me" and "car of Japan," those two English phrases don't exactly mean the same thing. So think of NO as a way to link two nouns together. Now there are some nouns that in English are adjectives. Think of the words "kiree" or "dame." (kiree = pretty, dame = bad/broken/etc). These words alone function as NOUNS, not adjectives. This is a hard part about learning Japanese, because most dictionaries and things list these as adjectives and list them like "kirei (na)" Anyway, when you connect a noun like kiree or dame, which are not physical nouns like watasi and nihon, you use NA. Na is also used in the format ~X na Y~ in which noun Y is described in terms of noun X. You use it when the first noun (X) is a quality noun like kiree or dame. You can recognize quality nouns because in dictionaries and things they're usually listed as adjectives followed by na, and they are also non-physical things. For exmaple, you can not see a pretty or a broken. You can something that IS pretty, but you can't see A pretty. I hope this makes sense! Na is not an adjective marker. Adjectives end in -i or -katta and require no particle to mark them as an adjective. |
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Re: Na
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I never said "na" is a adjective marker. "na" is often used for describing noun with "keiyou-doushi (形容動詞)" word. The fact that combination of "keiyou-doushi" word and "na" describes noun is similar to the usage of "keiyou-shi (形容詞) (adjective) word. But it doesn't make it adjective. "keiyou-doushi" doesn't exist in English. The fact that this part of speech doesn't exist in English make little hard to learn Japanese. This is fairly advanced topic. Exact definitions of these don't come out until junior high in Japan (at least in my years). As for "of" or "no," I simply described a simple way of remembering, since that's how I learned how to use "of" when I was learning English. I suppose I am no expert for learning Japanese as a second language (I did the other way around), so you can choose how you understand it. |