Lesson 19 · どんな まちですか — the describing chapter
Two families of describing words
Chapters 16 to 18 taught what things do. Today's sheet teaches what things are like: thirty-two describing words in two families — ten wearing a printed ［な］, twenty-two ending in 〜い — plus the two questions they answer, the little words that tune them, and the polite way to end the visit that chapter 18 began.
1.Two families, one bracket
Every describing word on the sheet belongs to one of two families, and the sheet marks the membership itself. Ten rows carry a printed ［な］ after the word; twenty-two end in い with no bracket at all. The bracket is doing the same job the I／II markers did on the verb sheets — naming which family a word conjugates with — and, like those markers, it is a fact to note now and use later.
What the two families share is the sentence they make. Both drop straight into the frame the course has used since its first introduction — 〜は 〜です — and nothing new is needed:
| Family | As a sentence | Before a noun |
|---|---|---|
| ［な］ words | まちは にぎやかです。 | にぎやかな まち |
| 〜い words | まちは おおきいです。 | おおきい まち |
The one visible difference is the third column — and it is what the bracket literally means. Put a ［な］ word in front of a noun and the な comes out of its bracket; a 〜い word connects bare. That is the whole reason the sheet prints the brackets at all.
Trick 1 · The bracket decides, not the ear
Two of the ten ［な］ words end in い: きれい and ゆうめい. Hear them and you would file both with the 〜い family; the sheet's brackets say otherwise, and the brackets are right — the dictionary classes both as な-adjectives. Their い is part of the word, not the working ending. When in doubt, read the bracket: it is printed on the sheet precisely because the ear cannot be trusted here.
The boundary: two classes, no conjugation
What the families are ultimately for is inflection — describing words in Japanese have their own negatives and pasts, and the two families build them differently. None of that is on the sheet: every word is printed bare, and every sentence in this lesson is present-tense 〜です. So the class markers are learned today the way the verb groups were in chapter 14 — as filed facts, waiting — and no form is built from any describing word until the course gets there.
2.Opposites, and one word with two
The sheet lists its 〜い words the way describing words are actually learned — in opposite pairs, consecutively:
| One side | The other |
|---|---|
| おおきい big | ちいさい small |
| あたらしい new | ふるい old — of things, never people |
| いい（よい） good | わるい bad |
| むずかしい difficult | やさしい easy |
| あつい hot | さむい cold in the air · つめたい cold to the touch |
| たかい expensive · tall | やすい cheap · ひくい low |
The last two rows are the interesting ones: they are not pairs but fans. たかい runs along two scales at once — price and height — and each scale brings its own opposite: やすい answers the price, ひくい answers the height. The sheet's triple gloss ("expensive, tall, high") is not generosity; it is a map of that asymmetry. Four more words — おもしろい, おいしい, いそがしい, たのしい — arrive with no partner at all: their opposites belong to later chapters, and the empty column is worth noticing.
The sheet's gap: half of hot is missing
The cold row is complete — さむい (寒い) for weather you stand in, つめたい (冷たい) for things you touch. The hot row is not: the sheet prints 暑い alone, where the textbook prints 暑い、熱い — 熱い, hot to the touch, is the dropped twin. Same sound, different kanji: the weather is 暑い, the tea is 熱い. (A third common あつい exists too — 厚い, thick — waiting further down the road.)
Trick 2 · Each language splits one half of temperature
Japanese splits the cold for free — two whole words, さむい／つめたい, chosen by where you feel it — and writes the hot split only in kanji. Arabic is the mirror image: it splits the hot for free — حَارّ for weather, سَاخِن for what you touch — and has one root, برد, for all of cold, so the touch-cold card here must say بَارِدُ الْمَلْمَسِ, cold of touch, to draw the line Japanese draws with a single word. Each language lexicalises exactly the half the other leaves to context.
3.One sound, two adjectives
The dictionary check has caught short kana strings with multiple owners in every chapter since lesson 4. This sheet is the first where the doubles are describing words — and one of them doubles against the sheet itself:
- やさしい is two common adjectives: 易しい easy — the sheet's word, partner to むずかしい — and 優しい kind, gentle. The sheet already teaches kind as しんせつ, so both halves of the confusion are on one page, and only the kanji separates them. The dictionary lists the kind one first.
- やすい is two as well: 安い cheap — the sheet's word — and 易い easy, spelled with the very 易 the sheet gives やさしい. One character, two easy words; cheap and easy one sound apart.
- あおい (青い) is one word covering two colours: blue and green — Japan's green traffic light is officially あお. The sheet's one-word gloss "blue" is the exam answer, not the whole range.
The four colour adjectives — しろい, くろい, あかい, あおい — are worth a moment of their own: only a handful of colours are true 〜い words, and these four are the core of them. The rest of the palette are nouns, and stay ahead of the course.
4.The little words: asking, tuning, joining
Around the thirty-two describers the sheet packs the small machinery that runs them. Two of its rows are old cards returning for the job they were made for: どんな asks what kind of — and its answer is an adjective standing in front of the noun, な out of its bracket — while 〜は どうですか asks how is it? and takes the adjective as a whole sentence. This chapter is those two questions' answer key. (どれ is also re-listed on the sheet, unchanged from chapter 6 down to its gloss — which one, of three or more — so it stays on its VOCAB6 card.)
Then the volume knobs. とても turns a describer up — とても おいしいです, very tasty. あまり turns one down — but only while leaning on a negative sentence-end, and that negative is exactly the conjugation this lesson has boxed away. So あまり waits as a word, its sentence still ahead — the same waiting もう and まだ have done since chapter 18. The kanji is the best part: 余り is the remainder — the not-very word is literally the excess.
Trick 3 · そして agrees, が turns
Two hinges join sentences on this sheet. そして adds more of the same: まちは しずかです。そして、きれいです。 — quiet, and beautiful. The frame 〜が、〜 turns the corner instead: ふるいですが、おもしろいです。 — old, but interesting. One agrees with what came before, one pushes against it — and everything between them is carried by the comma.
The ninth particle, on a leash
が joins the course's particle set — は・の・と・で・から・を・まで・も and now が — exactly as the sheet prints it: sentence, が, comma, sentence, meaning but. That is its only job here. Japanese has other work for が, none of which is on the sheet and none of which is taught today.
5.The famous five
The sheet closes with five proper nouns, and they are not a trivia list — they are subjects: five famous things for the day's adjectives to describe. Say each sentence aloud; every piece of every one is now yours:
-
1.Mt. Fuji is tall — the mountain wearing 山 as さん, not the honorific
Japaneseふじさんは たかいです。
Fujisan wa takai desu
Arabicجَبَلُ فُوجِي عَالٍ.
jabalu Fūjī ʿālin
-
2.Lake Biwa is big — Japan's biggest, named for a lute
Japaneseびわこは おおきいです。
Biwako wa ōkii desu
Arabicبُحَيْرَةُ بِيوَا كَبِيرَةٌ.
buḥayratu Bīwā kabīra
-
3.Kinkakuji is beautiful — the ［な］ family's word, sentence-final, no な needed
Japaneseきんかくじは きれいです。
Kinkakuji wa kirei desu
Arabicمَعْبَدُ الْجَنَاحِ الذَّهَبِيِّ جَمِيلٌ.
maʿbadu l-janāḥi dh-dhahabiyyi jamīl
-
4.Shanghai is lively — the set's one foreign city, にぎやか at scale
Japaneseシャンハイは にぎやかです。
Shanhai wa nigiyaka desu
Arabicشَنْغَهَاي نَابِضَةٌ بِالْحَيَاةِ.
Shanghāy nābiḍatun bi-l-ḥayāh
-
5.Seven Samurai is old, but very interesting — the が frame at work
Japaneseしちにんのさむらいは ふるいですが、とても おもしろいです。
Shichinin no Samurai wa furui desu ga, totemo omoshiroi desu
Arabicالسَّامُورَاي السَّبْعَة فِيلْمٌ قَدِيمٌ، لٰكِنَّهُ مُثِيرٌ لِلِاهْتِمَامِ جِدًّا.
as-sāmūrāy as-sabʿa fīlmun qadīm, lākinnahu muthīrun li-l-ihtimāmi jiddan
One reading to guard: the さん of ふじさん is 山 — this sheet's own mountain, wearing its compound reading — and not the honorific さん of chapter 11. Japan does not call the mountain Mr Fuji; English guidebooks invented that. And きんかくじ's 金 is an old friend on its third visit: Friday's gold star (chapter 10), the metal money calls itself (chapter 18), and now actual gold leaf.
6.The evening
Five scenes, fifty-two words, each in exactly one of them. The route is the dialogue's own: chapter 18's visit, resumed at the teacup and walked to the doorstep — the question, the town, the table, the album, the goodbye.
The evening needs JavaScript. Every word in it is on the cards below.
7.Fifty-two words
Four of these are deliberate repeats. やま and まち are lesson 4's two-kana cards, here because they gain their kanji for the first time — 山 and 町. どう and どんな are chapter 6's question cards, here because they are the two questions this whole chapter exists to answer. Their English and Arabic are the same as before; a word met twice is not two words.
The word cards need JavaScript. Every word on them appears in the evening above.
Drill them for meaning
The drill needs JavaScript. Every word it asks about is in the list above.
8.The visit ends
Chapter 18's phrases opened a Japanese door; today's eight close it. The sheet lists them in conversation order — read straight down and you hear a whole visit wind down, from the greeting to the last call from the doorstep:
-
1.How are you? — げんき wearing its polite お
Japaneseおげんきですか。
o-genki desu ka
Arabicكَيْفَ حَالُكَ؟
kayfa ḥāluka
-
2.Well, let me see… — the pause that buys a moment to think
Japaneseそうですね。
sō desu ne
Arabicدَعْنِي أَرَى…
daʿnī arā…
-
3.Have you got used to life in Japan? — a frozen past tense inside a fixed phrase
Japaneseにほんの せいかつに なれましたか。
Nihon no seikatsu ni naremashita ka
Arabicهَلْ تَعَوَّدْتَ عَلَى الْمَعِيشَةِ فِي الْيَابَانِ؟
hal taʿawwadta ʿalā l-maʿīshati fī l-Yābān
-
4.Won't you have another cup? — もう before a number means one more
Japanese［〜、］もう いっぱい いかがですか。
mō ippai ikaga desu ka
Arabicمَا رَأْيُكَ فِي فِنْجَانٍ آخَرَ؟
mā raʾyuka fī finjānin ākhar
-
5.No, thank you — I've had plenty
Japaneseいいえ、けっこうです。
iie, kekkō desu
Arabicلَا، شُكْرًا.
lā, shukran
-
6.Goodness, it's already ~ — the guest notices the clock
Japaneseもう〜です［ね］。
mō 〜 desu (ne)
Arabic〜 بِالْفِعْلِ.
〜 bi-l-fiʿl
-
7.It's about time I was going — chapter 18's しつれいします, now with its そろそろ
Japaneseそろそろ しつれいします。
sorosoro shitsurei shimasu
Arabicعَنْ إِذْنِكَ، حَانَ وَقْتُ الذَّهَابِ.
ʿan idhnika, ḥāna waqtu dh-dhahāb
-
8.Please come again — the host's last line, called from the door
Japaneseまた いらっしゃって ください。
mata irasshatte kudasai
Arabicتَفَضَّلْ بِالزِّيَارَةِ مَرَّةً أُخْرَى.
tafaḍḍal bi-z-ziyāra marratan ukhrā
Three phrases carry grammar from ahead of the course
なれましたか is a past tense, いらっしゃって is a て-form, and the もう of phrase 4 means one more where chapter 18's card said already — before a number, もう counts another. All three live inside frozen phrases, learned whole, exactly as みせて ください has been since chapter 13. The grammar inside them stays where it is until the course arrives. Note the Arabic keeps the course's own wording throughout: いかがですか keeps chapter 18's مَا رَأْيُكَ فِي frame, しつれいします keeps عَنْ إِذْنِكَ, and the invitation to return is built on تَفَضَّلْ — the どうぞ pairing the course has used since reading 1.
9.Sources
- Minna no Nihongo I, 3A Corporation — 第8課, which this sheet reproduces in the textbook's own order. Read the book's 会話 for this lesson if you read one thing: it is the leaving scene played out — the very phrases above doing their jobs in sequence, the mirror of chapter 7's arrival.
- Jisho.org, over JMdict/EDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) — every reading, gloss and commonness tag here, checked 2026-08-26. It is what settled that やさしい is two adjectives, that あつい is three, that りょう has three common owners, and that あまり is the remainder before it is not-very.
- Lesson 18 — the arrival half of this visit: the door phrases whose Arabic wording today's leaving phrases deliberately keep.
- Lesson 6 — the original cards for どう, どんな and どれ: the questions this chapter answers.
- Lesson 4 — the original やま and まち, which today put on 山 and 町.