Quick Question

[Joey]

how do you say "difficult to understand" as in "She is difficult to understand"? Thanks in advance!

oh, and if it helps, this is what i have come up with "かのじょの言うことは（to understand)がむずかしいんです。" Please tell me I'm at least on the right track!!!

[Jason]

"Difficult to understand" is わかりにくい. There're a couple of ways you could do this sentence. Using わかりにくい is one of them. The other way is to say that "understanding what she says is difficult."

-彼女の言う事はわかりにくいです。
-彼女の言う事がわかるのは難しいです。

Personally, I think using わかりにくい is more natural.

In general, you can say "difficult to do X" by attaching にくい to the masu-stem of a verb. With にくい it gives the sense of a "normal level" of difficulty. If you attach がたい instead, the sense of difficulty is much higher.

You can also say "easy to do X" by attaching やすい to the masu-stem of verbs.

[Joey]

thanks for the quick reply!

also, would it be better if i added an ん at the end, as in "彼女の言う事はわかりにくいんです。” or is it fine without the ん? (sorry, even though my teacher has explained it the なん ending thing to me several times i still don't understand it very well)

[Jason]

It depends on the situation. If it was just a general statement, I wouldn't add it. If it was a response to someone, maybe. If you were, say for example, explaining why you kept asking her to repeat herself over and over again, definitely.

[Joey]

thanks for the quick reply again! Based on what you said i guess i won't add it (my Japanese teacher asked me to write a speech for an upcoming competition (i'm only lvl 1 though ) and so i'm just talking about an assistant teacher that came to our school from Japan for a few months). anyways, thanks again!

[Joey]

oh, sorry i have one more quick question.
would "彼女の言う事はわかりにくいです。" imply that i couldn't understand her because of her voice (like her accent), or does it imply that i can't understand her because she is talking like a crazy woman or something (like not making sense)? Thanks!

[Jason]

The word itself really doesn't imply one or the other, I don't think. It could possibly be taken either way, so I'd prefix it with an explanation of why she's hard to understand right before it.

[Joey]

so this would work? "こべからから、彼女の言う事はわかりにくいです。" ? "Because (she) is from Kobe, she is difficult to understand." Thanks!

[Jason]

Unless you want to imply that everyone in Kobe is bad at English, no, I wouldn't say it like that. You should be more specific. I'm trying to think of a way to put it other than "her English isn't very good", but nothing's coming to mind right now.

In addition, your sentence has some grammar and spelling problems there.

-Kobe in Japanese is 神戸(こうべ). Note the long vowel there
-when you use the "from" から, it has to be matched with a verb or the copula. Grammatically, I think it would be ok to say something like, 神戸からだから, but I think it would be much better to say something like 神戸から来たから.

[Joey]

sorry for my bad grammar , but thanks for helping me again! So maybe instead of saying 神戸から来たから, I think I'll just say "ぼくは日本語がじょうずじゃないですから” to avoid the " i can't understand anyone from Kobe" thing. Also, I was trying to mean that I couldn't understand her Japanese because of a Kobe accent, so hopefully by saying "ぼくは日本語がじょうずじゃないですから” they will know that we were talking in Japanese. では、ありがとうございました Jasonさん！

[annie]

Just wanted to add that using ~にくい construction is far better than the 難しい one. Someone told me a few months ago, that only advanced speakers of Japanese seem to use it well.

I suppose if you wanted to add in the part about a Kobe accent, you could say something like "Because she speaks with a Kobe accent..." (神戸の発音で話すから）or "Because she speaks Kobe dialect..."　(神戸弁が話すから）

not sure on the particles, maybe someone who's more awake can be helpful there.

[Joey]

thanks, annieさん, but seeing as i am an extreme beginner (こべからから lol) I'll just stick with what I had above and let my teacher decide if its good enough or not because since i am writing a speech for a Japanese speech competition I want to try to make the speech with as little help as possible because that way, whether i win or lose, i know it will be because of me. But thanks for the new grammar and vocab words though!