Guide to Japanese

Actions that are easy or hard to do

This is a short easy lesson on how to transform verbs into adjectives describing whether that action is easy or difficult to do. Basically, it consists of changing the verb into the stem and adding やすい for easy and にくい for hard. The result then becomes a regular i-adjective. Pretty easy, huh?

Describing Difficulty

Vocabulary

食べる(た・べる) ru-verb
to eat
しゃべる u-verb
to talk
この
this (abbr. of これの)
()
character; hand-writing
読む(よ・む) u-verb
to read
カクテル(ka ku te ru)
cocktail
ビール(bi i ru)
beer
飲む(の・む) u-verb
to drink
部屋(へ・や)
room
暗い(くら・い) i-adj
dark
見る(み・る) ru-verb
to see
難しい(むずか・しい) i-adj
difficult
易しい(やさ・しい) i-adj
easy
簡単(かん・たん) na-adj
simple
容易(よう・い) na-adj
simple
その
that (abbr. of それの)
(にく)
meat

Using ~やすい、~にくい to describe easy and difficult actions

To describe an action as being easy, change the verb to the stem and add やすい. To describe an action as being difficult, attach にくい to the stem.

Examples:

  1. 食べ → 食べやすい
  2. しゃべ → しゃべ → しゃべりにくい
PositiveNegative
Non-Past食べにく食べにくくない
Past食べにくかった食べにくくなかった
The result becomes a regular i-adjective.

Examples

  1. この字は読みにくい
    This hand-writing is hard to read.

  2. カクテルはビールより飲みやすい
    Cocktails are easier to drink than beer.

  3. 部屋が暗かったので、見にくかった
    Since the room was dark, it was hard to see.

As an aside: Be careful with 見にくい because 醜い is a rarely used adjective meaning, “ugly”. I wonder if it’s just coincidence that “difficult to see” and “ugly” sound exactly the same?

Of course, you can always use some other grammatical structure that we have already learned to express the same thing using appropriate adjectives such as 難しい易しい簡単容易、etc. The following two sentences are essentially identical in meaning.

  1. その肉は食べにくい
    That meat is hard to eat.

  2. その肉を食べるのは難しい
    The thing of eating that meat is difficult.

Variations of ~にくい with ~がたい and ~づらい

Vocabulary

(かれ)
he; boyfriend
忘れる(わす・れる) ru-verb
to forget
思い出(おも・い・で)
memories
大切(たい・せつ) na-adj
important
する exception
to do
とても
very
信じる(しん・じる) ru-verb
to believe
(はなし)
story
本当(ほん・とう)
real
起こる(おこ・る) u-verb
to happen
辛い(1) から・い; 2) つら・い) i-adj
spicy;
painful
日本語(に・ほん・ご)
Japanese (language)
読む(よ・む) u-verb
to read
待ち合わせ(ま・ち・あわ・せ)
meeting arrangement
分かる(わ・かる) u-verb
to understand
場所(ば・しょ)
location

The kanji for にくい actually comes from 難い which can also be read as かたい. As a result, you can also add a voiced version ~がたい as a verb suffix to express the same thing as にくい. にくい is more common for speaking while がたい is more suited for the written medium. にくい tends to be used for physical actions while がたい is usually reserved for less physical actions that don’t actually require movement. However, there seems to be no hard rule on which is more appropriate for a given verb so I suggest searching for both versions in google to ascertain the popularity of a given combination. You should also always write the suffix in hiragana to prevent ambiguities in the reading.

Examples 1

  1. 彼との忘れがたい思い出を大切にしている。
    I am treating importantly the hard to forget memories of and with him.

  2. とても信じがたい話だが、本当に起こったらしい。
    It’s a very difficult to believe story but it seems (from hearsay) that it really happened.

Yet another, more coarse variation of stem + にくい is to use づらい instead which is a slightly transformed version of 辛い(つらい). This is not to be confused with the same 辛い(からい), which means spicy!

Examples 2

  1. 日本語は読みづらいな。
    Man, Japanese is hard to read.

  2. 待ち合わせは、分かりづらい場所にしないでね。
    Please don’t pick a difficult to understand location for the meeting arrangement.