How do you know when to use な after an adjective versus when to just combine them?
Example
東京はきれいな町です
去年の夏はちょっと暑かったです
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Can you explain what you mean by “combine them?” Your second sentence has no na adjective.
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It’s the difference between な-adjectives (almost nouns), and い-adjectives that conjugate themselves. な in this case is basically だ/である.
町が綺麗だ=〉綺麗だ→町=〉綺麗な町
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So the first sentence used na but the second sentence combine the adjective with the noun without na
I’m sorry I don’t understand
What adjective? There was 暑かった, which is the predicate for the subject (夏), but even when na adjectives are the predicate you don’t need な.
As in 町はきれいです
My only other guess is you meant 去年, but that’s just a noun. 去年の夏 is just “the summer of last year” or “last year’s summer.” It’s two nouns with a relationship to each other.
(去年 can also be used adverbially, but it’s not in this case)
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You use な when the な adjective is directly modifying a noun. If it’s not, you don’t.
It’s the difference between:
きれいな花 vs 花がきれい(だ/です)。
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Thanks for all the replies. I think I’m starting to get it.
- Can someone please tell me how to read 己 in this sentence?
「理由はいくつかある。かつて、王が術師を雇うことは当たり前だった。 王の中には国益のためではなく、己のために術師を使う者も多かった。」
- This is how I understand the sentence, please correct me if I’m wrong:
“There are several reasons. First, it was only natural that Kings would employ magic users. Many of them would employ them not for national interest, but for themselves.”
おのれ would be the reading, and the meaning is “oneself”.
I think it’s mostly correct, but I have a few corrections: かつて here means “previously, in the past”, something like that. The nuance of 当たり前 is also a bit different than just “only natural”, it’s more like “it was commonplace” or “it was something that was taken for granted” kind of nuance. But otherwise you got the gist of the sentence, which is that among the kings of the past who employed 術師, there were many who used them for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of the country.
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Aha! That explains why everything was in past tense.
I agree with @jneapan that this should probably be read おのれ, but if you’re interested in a bit of rambling (I feel like I’m actively turning this thread into a “short questions long answers” thread but well)… basically, a good rule of thumb is that for classical pronouns that have both a short and a long form (わ・われ、あ・あれ、な・なれ、おの・おのれ), use the short form before が or in compounds, and the long form otherwise.
Rambling
Well, first, you can find many different readings for 己 in the dictionary but they’re all variants of おの（れ）, which is the original version, the (classical) pronoun “oneself” (modern 自分). So the question boils down to whether it should be read おのれ (long form) or おの (short form).
As a general rule, except in very ancient texts, the short form of pronouns was used only before the genitive and in compounds. However, another thing is that in the old language, personal pronouns, including おの normally marked the genitive with が and not の. However, at some point, the short forms became kind of lexicalised as possessive pronouns by fusing with the が, and the long forms became the main stand-alone words. Therefore I don’t think it’s shocking to find おのれの instead of おのが, especially in modern prose, although the use of おのれ in a modern text feels archaic in itself, maybe おのがため would feel even more archaic.
BTW, it’s related to this answer I wrote in another post about あ（れ） vs わ（れ）, if you want to read more about archaic pronouns…
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These were my choices:
I wanted to know which one it was so I’d know whether it was talking about the speaker himself, or the various Kings. It’s … not the best dictionary, but it’s much better than the Kindle dictionary via OCR while still having access to Kindle on PC.
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I see. Well, おのれ can mean “I”, so just knowing the reading doesn’t totally disambiguate it. However, I think (but I’m not sure—you’re making me doubt) it’s reasonable to assume that its original meaning as “oneself”, which has never been lost, is still the default, and that “I” or “you” are only used as some kind of euphemistic phrases. In that sense, it sounds to me as if it’s like 自分: people use it to mean “I” but only indirectly, and nobody forgets that it means “oneself”. It’s not like, say, 私, which has lost its other meanings, so could only mean “I”. Here, anyway, since it says かつて, it can’t really be for the sake of the speaker, I think, unless he’s some sort of undead immortal. 
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I figured that by asking both for the reading and whether my translation was correct, I’d figure out which one it was pretty quickly 
I was not aware until that sentence that おのれ didn’t only mean a derogatory second person pronoun.
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I never really understood why they use it like that in shounen manga. “You tricked me, I’ll never forgive you, yourself!” sounds weird 
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Can you use more than one が in a sentence?
So the idea was to say:
“When it comes to fruits, I like peaches.”
くだものは、ももが好きだ。
But what if I want to specify it’s fruit I’m going to talk about but it’s also Mr. Tanaka who likes peaches?
Can I just use 2 がs?
くだものは、田中さんがももが好きだ。
Maybe 2 はs?
くだものは、田中さんは、ももが好きだ。
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Yes. And the multiple がs don’t even need to be used as “subject marker” since が can also be used as a conjunction to, for example, express a contradiction.
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I see thank you very much!
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