Hi! Trying to figure out the grammar, but I can’t seem to find it in my books (or I’m overlooking it when I do stumble upon it).
“I like cheerful puppies” is 陽気な子犬は好きます
I’d like to (in an excel spreadsheet I’m laying out of sentence structures and conjugation-like elements) nail down the format for “I like un-cheerful puppies”.
I know (I think I know) that the polite form negation of an い-adjective is to smoosh “くな” between the adjective stem and the i. I don’t know what to do with a な-adjective.
Grateful for any help. I know I can say “I don’t like cheerful puppies” which is much the same, but not quite.
The simplest way to negate a な adjective is just to put ではない or じゃない after it and use that as the modifier of the thing you’re modifying. The な wouldn’t be necessary. 陽気じゃない子犬
I don’t know that it would make the sentence you’re trying to make a natural one for a Japanese person to say though.
As a side note, 好き does technically come from a verb originally, but it’s almost always seen in な adjective form these days. so you say ~が好き, not ~好く or ~好きます
OP here, yes, that was my request. I just couldn’t find the rule (and fully appreciate a Japanese person is unlikely to say this.)
If I know an antonym, great, but at this early stage it’s great to be able to convey opposites, like “no, I don’t want the early train, I want the, um, not early train” etc., as I know hayai but not a word for late.