93141
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".
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-25T19:18:47.217
93140
2022-01-26T18:48:37.843
2022-01-26T18:48:37.843
30454
50205
question
grammar
Aは病気です. Isn't 病気 an abstract noun?
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
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-25T20:19:43.993
93141
2022-01-26T01:38:40.697
2022-01-26T01:38:40.697
45630
45630
93140
answer
Let's look at jisho.org's entry carefully. It says:

> ### [病気](https://jisho.org/word/%E7%97%85%E6%B0%97)
>
> 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?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2770/5010)
>
> 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](https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2018/11/no-adjectives.html)
>
> 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".
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-26T00:45:02.883
93149
2022-01-26T01:23:16.813
2022-01-26T01:23:16.813
5010
5010
93140
answer