How to tell them apart
がたい sounds formal and implies something is nearly impossible, not just inconvenient. にくい is the everyday word for something being hard to do or hard to handle, like 覚えにくい or 話しにくい. Swapping them—saying 話しがたい for a teacher who is merely hard to talk to—feels stiff and overstates the difficulty.
- がたい Use がたい when the difficulty is so extreme it borders on impossible and the tone is formal.
- 難い・にくい Use にくい for ordinary difficulty doing or handling something in everyday speech.
| Grammar point | Meaning | JLPT level |
|---|---|---|
| がたい gatai | Difficult to (formal usage) | N3 |
| 難い・にくい i nikui | Difficult to do | N4 |
がたい gatai
Difficult to (formal usage)
がたい attaches to the masu-stem of a verb and means the action is very hard to do or accept. It appears in written, formal contexts, as in 得がたい and 理解しがたい.
-
非常にたくさんの人が失業しているので仕事は得がたい。
Jobs are hard to come by with so many people out of work.
-
いまどき良い仕事はなかなか得がたいのを忘れないでね。
Don't forget that good jobs are very hard to come by these days.
難い・にくい i nikui
Difficult to do
難い (にくい) attaches to a verb stem to say that doing that action is difficult or awkward. It is used with verbs like 入る, 言う and 答える, and often describes something that is hard to do in practice rather than physically impossible.
-
このめずらしい切手は手にはいりにくいんだよ。
This rare stamp is hard to come by.
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ちょっと言いにくい話なんだけど。
I wish I didn't have to tell you this.
がたい and 難い・にくい are JLPT N4–N3 grammar points that Japanese learners often mix up. This page compares them side by side on meanings, usage and example sentences, so you can tell them apart.