Generally, in all Japanese language classes, the rule you're taught is that です does not follow い adjectives. Instead, い adjectives can act like stative verbs, and as such terminate a sentence by themselves. However, I have heard this usage frequently. I don't necessarily have a specific example in mind that I've heard, because it doesn't seem all that rare.
However, recently I got into a discussion with someone who suggested that い adjective + です is dangerous, and has the potential to be offensive and/or rude when used incorrectly so foreigners should avoid it. One specific example given was 美しいです sounding vulgar. They also said that い adjective + だ is flat out ungrammatical in all situations. When I've posed this same question to other Japanese speakers, they take no issue with 美しいです and they say it sounds fine.
My question is, there seems to be some disagreement. Does anyone have a definitive answer about why such a disagreement might exist, and how I should go about knowing whether or not it's safe to use い adjective + です in normal usage? Or maybe people here also have no issue with it, and think that the original person I spoke to was perhaps mistaken.
If it's not safe, then what do I do if I want to end a sentence with an い adjective politely? Follow it with ～のです perhaps?
Answer
Following an い-adjective with です is perfectly acceptable, as in the following examples:
- あの人はひどいです。
- 昨日は楽しかったです。
I don't see any vulgar aspect to 美しいです failing contextual clues that could make nearly any description vulgar.
Something that may be getting confused in all of this is that while the polite form of an い-adjective is followed by です -- e.g. さむいです -- the plain form is not followed by だ. So the plain form of さむい is just さむい. The examples above would be, in plain form, as follow:
- あの人はひどい。
- 昨日は楽しかった。
のです is different again, and while polite, adds an air of explaining something.
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