LEARN + JAPANESE / Note 88 JLPT N4
Looks Like They Want It (がる)
がる attaches to a feeling adjective’s stem and turns it into a verb describing someone else’s visible behavior, shivering, complaining, reaching for something. It’s the mechanism behind 欲しがる and たがる, which you’ve already met, now with the full pattern spelled out.
My younger brother always seems to be cold.
My younger brother always wants to play soccer.
In Real Life
寒い (cold) describes your own felt sensation directly. 寒がる describes someone else acting cold, shivering, pulling on a jacket, the visible signs rather than a direct claim about their inner state. This is the same restriction Korean’s 있다/없다 emotion words run into and Japanese solves the same way: you can only state your own feelings plainly, everyone else’s have to be reported from the outside.
My younger brother always seems lonely, so I'm thinking of giving him a cute cat.
In Real Life
がる conjugates like an ordinary verb once attached, not like the adjective it came from: 寒がる, 寒がらない, 寒がった, 寒がらなかった. 面白い (interesting) becomes 面白がる (to act like something’s interesting, to find something amusing), following the exact same shift.
Vocabulary
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| to be lonely | |
| to be painful, to hurt | |
| to be scary, frightening | |
| to be warm | |
| anime | |
| guidebook | |
| shampoo | |
| to show reluctance, act unwilling | |
| to find something amusing | |
| unpleasant, unwilling | |
| attitude | |
| facial expression | |
| appearance, the way someone seems | |
| reaction | |
| emotion | |
| true feelings | |
| to show | |
| to hide | |
| to cry | |
| to laugh, smile |