Adverbial And Adjectivial Phrase Extenders Nikui,yasui And Tsurai
Posted on January 23, 2008
Filed Under Arts and Entertainment |
In Today’s lesson we will be focusing in on the special uses of a very handy word. This word is the Japanese word for hardships, or difficulty or things assocaiated with trials &tc. Tsurai is an adjective that means trial and it almost sounds like trial. But you will never get a pleasant face from a native speaker when they are using this word. Tsurai is used to describe things which aren’t easily accomplished. There is some aspect of the verb phrase which whether mental, or physical that requires a great deal of patience, suffering, and/or mental fortitude. As in.these are trying times, or I had a tough time. Basically tsurai is some hardship encountered signifying a level of forebearance and endurance of the a trial will be involved.
Tsurai can be added to verbs in baseII to make the act of the verb difficult. Tsurai can be exchanged for nikui In these cases on the whole but there are times when tsurai is the modern way of saying the phrase or expression as in tabenikui. It may be that tsurai is overtaking the older nikui form of verb (baseII) +nikui. However in the case of the verb miru (to see), things don’t work out so well, because meanings seem to have become somewhat mis-matched. Mizurai takes on somewhat of a different meaning than its literal equivalent, minikui. For minikui is the word for ugly as we would use it the word ugly in English. However minikui would mean literally to be something that is hard to look or difficult to look at or see.
The construction for the bunpo showing level of difficulty is:
V(baseII) + nikui - It’s hard to verb.
V(baseII) + yasui – It’s easy to verb
Verb in base II + nikui or yasui
Nikui – makes verbs harder to do, or more difficult to complete the verb
Yasui - makes verbs easier to do or perform.
Tsurai – can be used as a substitute for nikui.
Examples
1.tabeyasui – easy to eat. Or good tasting.
2. tsukaiyasui – easy to use {tsukau (to use)- in base II = tsukai + yasui}
3. suberiyasui – irregular verb form usage although this is a yodan verb it is acting like an ichidan here. Suberu(to slip, or lose footing) in base II = suberi + yasui
4.ochiyasui – ochiiru v. to fall in base II = ochi +yasuieasy to slip and fall
5.shiyasui – Suru v. to do in base II shi +yasui makes this phrase mean something that is easy to do. The amount of verbs that use suru is in the thousands so make this word a part of your vocabulary.
You can replace the yasui in all the examples above adding nikui or tsurai to the base of the verb to form more adjectivial phrases.
More examples –
6. nezurai – hard to get to sleep (neru v. to sleep in base II = ne + tsurai)
An easy way to remember the kanji and by association, this adjectivial is that the kanji for nikui looks like the kanji for the word body, flesh , or meat, niku, but the kanji for nikui looks bent out of shape; therefore, nikui is hard on the body, or (for us ghetto grammar junkies)verbs.
makurasuki Sensei has enjoyed teaching for a majority of his life whether it be music or Japanese. He says He Likes Japanese and Music but not necessarily Japanese music. If you like what he has done in this article please visit his other web pages which are well made for Beginning to advance learners of Japanese at http://squidoo.com/ghettogrammar/
for fantasy music adventures head over to http://tealpiano.com
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