Watch Anime, Learn Japanese series · Book 3 · by Ashton Jones
Top 200 Japanese Adjectives & Adverbs in Anime
A Reference Guide to 83% of the Adjectives and Adverbs You'll Hear
200 adjectives and adverbs. 83% of the ones you'll hear.
Paperback, 231 pages, 5.5 × 8.5 in. Kindle eBook. Both open on Amazon.
In a big data study of anime, I analyzed 1,432 episodes (over 3.3 million words) from 120 anime. 3,391 different adjectives and adverbs came up nearly 250,000 times. Just 200 of those words do most of the work. From amazing (すごい, sugoi) to no good (ダメ, dame) to okay (大丈夫, daijoubu), these 200 set the tone of every line.
Share of all the adjectives and adverbs spoken across 120 anime: 1,432 episodes, over 3.3 million words.
What's inside
- The word, readable at a glance. Furigana above, romaji under each character, so you don't need kanji to start.
- The forms anime actually uses, with how polite or blunt each one sounds and how often it's heard.
- Phrases heard in at least 10 different shows, on more than a third of the pages.
- One original line to remember it by. "I'll never forgive you… you ate the last pudding!"
- Twelve forms of every adjective that conjugates, from "not" and "was" to "too much" and "looks like".
- Good to Know notes on 70 pages, plus a guide to i and na adjectives, the words that became grammar, Genre Flavors, and an English index.
Look inside
Who it's for
Learners who have the basics and want to catch how characters feel, not just what they do. It's a reference, not a course: read a page between episodes, not cover to cover.
Try it free first
Try the Top 10 Particles in Furoma Reader, the reader that puts kana above and romaji below every word. Or take the two-minute quiz and see how much of anime you already understand.
The series
Start with Watch Anime, Learn Japanese for the 210 words anime says most, add Top 200 Japanese Verbs in Anime for the verbs, then Top 200 Japanese Adjectives & Adverbs in Anime for the words that give every line its color. See all three.
Questions
- What are the most common Japanese adjectives in anime?
- The book ranks all 200. The top 10 alone make up 36% of the adjectives and adverbs you'll hear, and all 200 reach 83%.
- What's the difference between i and na adjectives?
- They conjugate differently. The book has a short side-by-side guide, and every adjective that conjugates gets twelve forms on its page.