auxiliary N4 common casualpolitewritten
にくい — hard to ~
にくい
Builds on 連用形（ます形）
Meaning
- hard to ~ / difficult to ~ — the action is awkward, troublesome, or unlikely to go smoothly
Key sentence
この字は読みにくい。
This handwriting is hard to read.
Formation
| Attaches to | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb (masu-stem) | V(stem) + にくい (then conjugates as an i-adjective) | 歩く → 歩きにくい / 歩きにくかった / 歩きにくくない |
Examples
この薬は大きくて飲みにくい。
This pill is big and hard to swallow.
雨の日はこの坂道が歩きにくい。
On rainy days this slope is hard to walk on.
彼には言いにくいことがある。
There's something that's hard for me to tell him.
When you can't use it
- にくい describes an inherent quality of the thing or action, not a one-off mishap. Use この肉は切りにくい ('this meat is hard to cut') for a property of the meat, not for a single time the knife slipped.
Easily confused with
〜やすい やすい is the exact opposite — 'easy to ~' (読みやすい = 'easy to read'). Same attachment (masu-stem + やすい/にくい) and same i-adjective conjugation. 〜難い にくい covers ordinary physical or practical difficulty (飲みにくい = 'hard to swallow'). 難い is literary and used for things one is psychologically unable to do (信じ難い = 'hard to believe'), and pairs with a much smaller set of verbs.
See にくい in real sentences
Jengo shows にくい the way you actually meet it: inside real Japanese sentences, so it sticks instead of staying an abstract rule.
Study it in JengoSources Compiled with reference to A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.