連体詞: What Are They and How Are 大きな and 大きい Different?

Introduction

This lesson is going to be all about making you super confused now so that you can avoid being super confused later. This is important because as my father always told me, it's better to be confused today, than to have been confused about having to be confused yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or at some point thereafter.

Wait, what?

A new type of adjective

Remember way back in beginner when I told you there were only two types of adjectives: い-adjectives and な-adjectives? Well, I lied. Sort of. It's complicated.

Let me explain.

Japanese has a certain type of "semi-adjective" that attaches directly before a noun, and doesn't quite take the shape of either an い or な-adjective. These peculiar fellows are known as 連体詞れんたいし, and although a lot of them are archaic and/or advanced, there are some common ones that you should learn riiiiight about... now.