〜やすい — Easy to do / Prone to
Attached to the masu-stem to express that something is easy to do, or highly prone to happening. The direct opposite of にくい.
Structure
[Verb masu-stem] + やすい
Examples
この本は読みやすいです。
Kono hon wa yomiyasui desu.
This book is easy to read.
読み (read) + やすい (easy)
彼は風邪を引きやすい体質だ。
Kare wa kaze o hikiyasui taishitsu da.
He has a constitution prone to catching colds.
風邪を引き (catch cold) + やすい (prone to)
このガラスは割れやすい。
Kono garasu wa wareyasui.
This glass breaks easily.
割れる (break) → 割れやすい (prone to break)
• Prone to Disaster: やすい isn't just for "ease of use." It heavily translates to "prone to" for negative things (壊れやすい = Prone to breaking / 忘れやすい = Prone to forgetting). • Adjective Conversion: When やすい attaches to a verb, the entire word becomes an い-adjective and conjugates like one (読みやすかった).
Commonly confused with
The JLPT rarely asks whether you recognise a pattern — it asks which of several similar patterns fits. These are the ones 〜やすい is tested against.
vs 〜にくい
にくい is the direct opposite of やすい — hard to do / unlikely to happen (読みにくい = hard to read, 割れにくい = unlikely to break).
vs 〜づらい
づらい also means 'hard to do', but implies subjective difficulty/discomfort for the doer (言いづらい = hard to bring myself to say), while やすい/にくい lean toward objective/structural ease or difficulty.
More expressions
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