Grammar Info

N5 Lesson 1: 9/12

良(い)いい-Adjective meaning 'good'

よく can also mean 'frequently/often', and has several different potential kanji

Structure

Non-Past Form: いい
Non-Past Negative Form: よくない
Past Form: よかった
Past Negative Form: よくなかった

Details

  • Part of Speech

    Adjective

  • Word Type

    Independent Word

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    Standard

About いい

いい is an adjective that means 'good' in Japanese. It can be a little bit difficult to use at first, as it conjugates differently to other い-Adjectives.

In these sentences, we can see that the first い in いい changes to よ, depending on the form. This is unique to いい, and does not happen with other adjectives.

いい can sometimes be seen as 良(よ)い, in these cases, the kanji is likely to be read as よい, and not いい. There is technically no difference between these two meanings, but よい does sound more formal/old-fashioned.

Caution

When used as an adverb, よく should not be confused as a conjugation of いい. よく has several possible kanji that it may stem from, and means frequently/often/well.

Examples

--:--

    いいです。

    (It is) good.

    これはいいです。

    This is good.

    これはいい本(ほん)です。

    This is a good book.

    これもいい本(ほん)です。

    This is also a good book.

    これはいい音(おと)だ。

    This is a good sound.

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        • みんなの日本語 I

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        • Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide

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      いい – Grammar Discussion

      Most Recent Replies (15 in total)

      • ggenya

        ggenya

        Thank you for clarifying that! です as a politeness article was throwing off my understanding.

      • whitewolfos111

        whitewolfos111

        Hello! I’m new here, so sorry if responding to this old thread isn’t the right thing to do when I have questions about a particular grammar discussion.

        I’m going through these grammar points for the first time with the default “Bunpro N5 Grammar” deck that it selected for me. I am just wondering about the order of things here? The grammar SRS is asking questions about using the past form of いい here (e.g. "The test was not good / テストはよくなかった ). It feels really weird to have that though, considering that there hasn’t been a grammar point yet for how to conjugate anything in the past tense? So it is hard to follow what exactly is being done to get this into the past test, and if this is “normal” for past test (like where did this な come from? Why wouldn’t it be ない?), or something specific to いい. From the grammar point I thought the corresponding SRS was just going to be “if you are negating いい, then say よくない instead of いいない” and not “…and also ma...

      • freundchen

        freundchen

        Also am very confused … just been shown this, without having been introduced what “い-adjectives” are and that (or how) adjectives are being conjugated.

        did i miss something? Shouldn’t there be something about adjectives, the types, and their conjugation, before this is dropped onto the learner?

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