I originally learned that i-adjectives are joined with くて e.g.
長くて、赤い魚が欲しい。
I want a long, red fish.
Recently I've come across a couple of examples where the two adjectives are joined together with the omission of the い from the first e.g.
細長い四角
Thin, long rectangle
Is this something I can do with any pair of i-adjectives or just ones of the same type (ones that describe size in this case), or are there only specific pairings that are allowed?
Answer
As a general rule, you cannot freely join two arbitrary adjectives like this. You can't say 長赤い nor 赤長い.
Words like 細長い are sometimes called 複合形容詞 (compound adjective). Here are some examples:
- 青白【あおじろ】い (pale), 青【あお】い + 白【しろ】い
- 赤黒【あかぐろ】い (dark red, bloody), 赤【あか】い + 黒【くろ】い
- ずる賢【がしこ】い (sly), ずるい + 賢【かしこ】い
- 暑苦【あつくる】しい (muggy), 暑【あつ】い + 苦【くる】しい
- 面白【おもしろ】おかしい (funny), 面白【おもしろ】い + おかしい
Basically these words have their own entries in dictionaries.
But once in a while Japanese people coin new words using this rule. For example young people sometimes say キモかわいい (gross but cute), which is a fairly new i-adjective made of キモい and かわいい.
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