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According to Jisho, 病気 is a noun meaning 'illness'. I recently read the sentence Aは病気です, which I took to mean "[Person] A is ill". My confusion lies in whether 病気 is properly an adjective, i.e. "sick/ill", or an abstract noun, i.e. "sickness".

Eddie Kal
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userhello90831
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  • Please take a [tour](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/tour) and check out our [help center](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/help). This is **not a discussion forum**. Questions should only contain information related to what you don't understand. You don't need to include anything from the answers you receive. On the other hand, the answer box should only be used to write answers and nothing speculative or unrelated to the question. In a word, keep it short and sweet. – Eddie Kal Jan 26 '22 at 18:53

2 Answers2

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Let's look at jisho.org's entry carefully. It says:

病気

Noun, Noun which may take the genitive case particle 'no'

In other words, 病気 is a no-adjective as well as a noun; it can work like the English adjective "ill".

So-called の-adjectives - how does の *really* work?

As I understand it, the term “no-adjective” simply means “nouns which are typically translated to adjectives in English and other languages.” If we treat Japanese as a language in its own right, distinguishing them from nouns as different parts-of-speech is completely artificial.

の Adjectives | Japanese with Anime

The term "genitive case" refers to having a noun as modifying another word, usually a noun. That is, having a noun as adjective.

As these articles say, 病気 is still technically a (stative/descriptive) noun. But note that that English has similar noun usages, too, for example "person of credit" (= credible person), "man of courage" (= courageous man). So you may think the normal Japanese way of saying "ill person" happens to be closer to something like "person of illness". Aは病気だ is "A is of illness" rather than "A is illness", just like Aはフランスだ means "A is in France" rather than "A is France".

naruto
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  • Definitely appreciate your statement, _"If we treat Japanese as a language in its own right, distinguishing them from nouns as different parts-of-speech is completely artificial."_ I think many of the questions we field here at JSE are ultimately arising because the English-language textbooks that describe various Japanese-language features don't do a very good job of describing Japanese **as Japanese**, and learners get bogged down in "Japanese as English", which doesn't work very well. – Eiríkr Útlendi Jan 26 '22 at 01:21
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi That's not my own words :) – naruto Jan 26 '22 at 01:26
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    ha! Well, still, good of you to include that portion. I see that the quoted text appears with a yellow background on mobile, making it more immediately obvious that it's a quote -- but on my laptop, there is no background color, making it more visibly ambiguous. I confess I very much dislike the style direction the SE developers have taken... – Eiríkr Útlendi Jan 26 '22 at 09:58
  • It seems to me though the ability to function as a predicative nominal is not restricted to no-adjectives. Can't most, if not all, nouns be used this way? Neither フランス nor 日本 is defined as a no-adjective in WWWJDIC. – Eddie Kal Jan 27 '22 at 07:48
  • @EddieKal, unsure what you mean? Could you give a couple samples of what you're thinking? – Eiríkr Útlendi Jan 27 '22 at 20:23
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi 「日本食以外で皆さんが一番好きな料理は何ですか？私はフランス料理です。」 Standard topic-comment structure, with the subject omitted. フランス料理 is a predicative nominal, but it doesn't seem to have to be a no-adjective. – Eddie Kal Jan 27 '22 at 20:34
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    @EddieKal 私はフランス料理だ is an うなぎ文 that must be said after some context has been set up, but 私は病気だ makes sense on its own. So I think 病気, 永遠, 突然 and so on do have some adjective-like quality ordinary nouns do not have. – naruto Jan 28 '22 at 01:40
  • Don't mean to flog a dead horse, but is 出身 also a の-adjective? 「私は東京出身です。」 seems to work just fine standing alone. – Eddie Kal Feb 06 '22 at 05:06
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病気 is a noun, which describes a state. Because of this, it can be paired with the copula だ to describe the state of something or someone, just like in English.

Aは病気です

A is sick.

です is just the polite form of だ. We could've used either.

Sometimes, it can be used as a "no-adjective", as in the following:

毎日私は病気の友人を訪ねた

I called on my sick friend everyday.

However, what's really happening is that this の is not a particle but one of the alternant forms of だ, being な the other one. 病気の友人 means "a friend who is sick," which becomes "a sick friend." This doesn't translate as "friend of sickness."

Let's look at another example.

薬が彼の病気を治した。

The medicine cured him of his illness.

Now this is the particle の.

Notice the word order: 病気の and の病気

Nameless
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