\part{Keiyoushi, keiyoudoushi, and rentaishi} Meishi are the part of speech that correspond roughly to nouns, The best place to start teaching (most) languages is with how the language treats nouns. Nouns are completely uninflected in Japanese. Even in English, nouns are inflected to make the plural, however in Japanese no such inflection is made, and Japanese often doesn't distinguish the plurality of something when the context is clear. Some nouns intrinsically carry plurality, however they are words in their own right and not inflections. 人->人々 川->河川 Japanese also lacks articles; there is no equivalent to English 'the' and 'a/an' in Japanese. This chapter aims to create basic noun phrases by introducing nouns and various other basic parts of speech that modify them. Plurality Pronouns themselves also constitute as noun phrases, while conjunctions can be used to create detailed noun phrases. \section{Pluralizing suffixes} For animate object (people and animals), there exist a range of suffixes that pluralize a noun or pronoun. This type of function for making plurals doesn't generalize; these are special cases related more to lexicon than grammar. There are some sufficex for animate objects \subsection{〜たち} 〜ども 〜ら 〜方 (for official entitites like teachers, seniors, guests etc.) The na-adjectives 色々　様々 are perhaps the most general approach for pluralizing inanimate objects when it is necessary to avoid confusion. This is good for stressing plurality, however if we need to specify an exact quantity of some noun, Japanese offers a system of counters. ##relative clauses Write the clause right before the noun \chapter{Numerals} 零（ゼロ） 一いち 二に 三さん 四し・よん 五ご 六ろく 七しち・なな 八はち 九く・きゅう 十じゅう 百ひゃく 千せん thousand 万まん ten thousand 億おく hundred million 兆ちょう trillion 京けい ten quadrillion \chapter{Counters} Although many languages allow numerals to modify nouns directly (six people, three phones, etc. although one can have situations like five happinesses, which don't make sense), Japanese requires numerals to be handled by counters before being able to modify a noun. If the counter offers adequate context, one may not even need to specify the noun to begin with. Many languages have a a counting system, and they simply state the number before a noun to denote how many of that noun there is (five cats, one dog, etc.) \section{Using a counter to count} [numeral][counter] \section{Using a counter to count a noun} Japanese instead uses counters; specific ways of counting different types of nouns. This offers more context [numeral][counter]の[noun] [noun][numeral][counter] \section{Interrogative pronouns from counters} 何冊に書いたの？ How many books did you write in? 何秒が残りますか？ How many seconds left? つ 個 杯 枚 人 秒 分 時 日 週 月 年 着 頭 軒 台 匹 本 冊 羽 回 度 時間 ヶ月 階 歳 足 番 ページ - 歩 部屋 問 文字 戦 敗 勝 試合 ヶ国 ヶ所 缶 曲 円 組 件 名 語 箱 対 機 皿 卓 脚 世 便 巻 泊 晩 \chapter{Adjectives} Japanese has multiple class of 'adjective'-like word classes that share different morphological rules but share some similarities in constructiosn. \section{I-adjectives} semantically they are used to express qualitative ideas relating to nouns (like English adjectives), however they can be inflected for items like tense and polarity. THey also have an inflection to make them adverbs (like changing quick to quickly). だ is often translated as 'to be', jowever we never apply だ to i-adjectives since they can inflect on their own. です however can be used purely for the sake honorifics, but desu cannot be inflected; you must inflect the i-adjective itself. negative inflection 〜くない past inflection 〜かった　　 past negative inflection 〜くなかった adverbial inflection 〜く special inflections for いい いい よかった よくなかった よく \section{Na-adjectives} In old Japanese, they used to be paired with the verb なる to form inflections, however in modern Japanese だ/です are used. 綺麗な本 綺麗だ \section{Copula} We introduce a verb that is used with nouns and na-adjectives だ・である です でござる We have seen that だ and です have different rules of usage with respect to i-adjectives, but it is additionally true that desu is only used (with the exception of it being quoted) at the end of a sentence (possibly with sentence ending particles); this goes for all teineigoforms