Practice JLPTHow 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 | Hard to (formal) | N3 |
| 難い・にくい i nikui | Hard to | N4 |
がたい gatai
Hard to (formal)
Cannot; un—able; can hardly; difficult to; impossible | An auxiliary adjective which expresses the idea that for someone to do something is virtually impossible or impossible.
-
あの先生は偉すぎて私には近寄りがたい。
That professor is so respected that I can hardly approach him.
-
このプロジェクトは 成功したとは言いがたい。
It is hard to say that this project was a success.
難い・にくい i nikui
Hard to
Hard to ~; difficult to ~; don’t do something easily; not readily; not prone to ~ | Something or someone is hard to ~.
-
あの人の名前は覚えにくい。
His name is hard to remember.
-
あの先生は話しにくいです。
That teacher is hard to talk to.
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 — meanings, usage and example sentences — so you can tell them apart.