~にくい Japanese Grammar Lesson
Grammar Type: Auxiliary Adjective
Essential Meaning: Hard to / Difficult to / Not readily
Construction:
- Verb ます-Form + にくい
- E.g. 食べにくい [Difficult to eat]
- E.g. 話しにくい [Difficult to speak]
Notes:
- ~にくい is an auxiliary adjective that means “Difficult to” or “Hard to”. にくい functions grammatically identically to other い-Adjectives.
- The antonym of ~にくい is ~やすい.
- E.g. 寿司は食べやすいです。[Sushi is easy to eat.]
- E.g. 寿司は食べにくいです。[Sushi is difficult to eat.]
- The subject of a ~にくい expression may be:
- (1) The subject of an intransitive verb
- E.g. このドアが開きにくいですね。[This door does not open easily, does it?] ドア is the subject of the intransitive verb 開く [To open].
- (2) The direct object of a transitive verb
- E.g. あの人の名前は覚えにくい。[That person’s name is difficult to remember.] あの人の名前 is the direct object of the transitive verb 覚える [To remember].
- (3) The indirect object of a transitive verb
- E.g. あの先生は話しにくいです。[That teacher is difficult to talk to.] あの先生 is the indirect object of the transitive verb 話す [To speak].
- (4) A Noun + Particle. This corresponds to an English prepositional phrase such as “With X” or “To X“, as in “It is difficult to do Y with X” or “It is difficult to do Y to X.” Note that the particle may be optionally dropped.
- (1) The subject of an intransitive verb
- Because the structure Verb ます-Form + にくい essentially acts as an adjective to modify a noun, it is preceded by topic / subject markers は or が and is not directly preceded by other noun markers such as を, で, に, and と.
Example Sentences:
この本は大変読みにくいです。[This book is very difficult to read.]
このドアが開きにくいですね。[This door does not open easily, does it?]
あの人の名前は覚えにくい。[That person’s name is difficult to remember.]
あの先生は話しにくいです。[That teacher is difficult to talk to.]
この靴では走りにくいです。[It is difficult to walk with these shoes on.]
WILD Examples:
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