nihongo wo benkyou shitai

I really need to come up with some better subject lines!

On the face of it, this seems to be pretty basic Japanese; something that most of us learn in year 2 (if not year 1, for those clever people among us). But, bear with me...

Now, according my wonderful 元気２ textbook (p163), to make a verb 'easy to do' or 'hard to do', you simply add やすい and にくい to the verb stem. Well, I think this is wrong! I think you add them to base 2 of the verb (base 2 is the い one). Take a look at this:

食べる --> 食べやすい
聞く --> 聞きやすい
愛する --> 愛しやすい

So we now have 'easy to eat', 'easy to hear' and 'easy to love'. To turn these into 'hard/difficult to' verbs, just plug in にくい in the same fashion. Easy-peasy....

If it ended there, it would be pretty easy. But, something can be hard to do for a variety of reasons. It could be something that is (1) unpleasant to do, (2) something that is hard to do because of a lack of the right skills or tools, or (3) it could something which is hard to do due to some psychological reason. Consider:

It is hard to decide which flavour ice-cream I want.
It is hard to translate this email.
It is hard to walk my dog when it is raining.
It is difficult to go to Japan without visiting Tokyo.
It was difficult to eat raw horse meat.
It's going to be difficult to pass the JLPT1 exam in December.

Anyone care to guess which of (1), (2) and (3) the above sentences are examples of?

In Japanese, you can specifiy the meaning of 'hard' that you wish to convey...

If it is unpleasant, use ずらい
If it is due to a lack of skills or tools etc., use にくい
If it is due to some psychological reason, use がたい


English: It is hard to translate this email.
Jenglish: [this email][translate + difficult][is]
日本語： このメールを訳しにくいです

English: It was difficult to eat raw horse meat.
Jenglish: [raw horse meat][eat + difficult][is]
日本語： 　馬刺しを食べずらいです。

（馬刺し　=　ば・さ・し）

English: It is hard to decide which flavour ice-cream I want.
Jenglish: [which flavour ice cream][want][decide + hard][is]
日本語： 　どれ香料のアイスクリームがほしいのは決めがたいですよ。

（香料　=　こう・りょう）
（決める　=　き・める）

Can anyone correct the last translation please? Notice how I stuck よ at the end. Dead proud of that. What a sentence!

またね。