Recently I had a discussion about the usage of the kanji 良.
For me the adjective いい can be write 良い for my friend, it is always written いい.
What do you think? Do you have some real exemples?
Thanks!
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There’s really no disputing that it can be written that way. I’m not sure how anyone would come to another conclusion.
I suppose when people make an active decision to avoid 良い, it would be because they want to make sure it’s not read as よい by the reader. If they have some reason for wanting that to be avoided.
いい is also a relatively casual word, and 良い would lend it slightly more formality.
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In a book series I’m reading (本好きの下剋上), I often see よい written like that in kana. So when I see 良い I tend to read it as いい. Furigana was never given to prove that it’s read いい, but it’s generally being used in casual contexts so it makes much more sense to be read as いい than よい.
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Some stats from the edict website’s ngram corpus:
| 良い | 107910497 | 28.4% |
|---|---|---|
| いい | 244889195 | 64.4% |
| よい | 27316649 | 7.2% |
(The corpus stats can’t tell what reading the author intended if they wrote 良い.)
So overall writing いい in kana is most common. If you’re a beginner and you’re writing something, kana is definitely the best choice. But you will definitely see 良い depending on what you’re reading and how enthusiastic the author is about kanji use, the atmosphere they’re going for and so on.
Personally I would default to assuming that an unfuriganaed 良い is よい unless the context strongly points to よい being weirdly out of place there; Bunpro’s page on the adjective agrees:
いい can sometimes be seen as 良い, in these cases, the kanji is likely to be read as よい, and not いい.
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I’m a bit confused by this discussion, in which case would one read 良い (without furigana) as いい instead of よい outside of maybe fixed expressions? I always thought 良い and 善い would always be read よい and you had to use kana to spell いい specifically.
I do see 良い being listed as a spelling for いい on jisho but absent any explicit reading instructions I don’t understand how one would ever read this いい instead of よい.
I guess an other factor is that kanji-heavy spelling are often used in more formal/literary contexts and よい, to my limited understanding, is also sometimes used instead of いい for the same reason.
(Amusingly while browsing through the various いい/よい compounds on jisho I encountered 良い大人 for extra reading ambiguity goodness.)
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I have a hard time believing that the 良い in 「マインだって、良いところはあるさ」 would be read as よい.
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Right but that’s the fixed expression exception I was talking about. There are many of those in Japanese that force more or less exceptional readings for kanji as we know. Even ところ is read どころ in some situations, yet I’m not sure anybody would consider that a valid reading of 所 in a vacuum.
I realize that this is a very fine line to draw though (and a common topic on discussion on these forums when it comes to “kanji reading” versus “vocab reading”).
I guess my general interrogation is whether my current take on this which is “良い is read よい unless proven otherwise” is how a Japanese native would approach this or if they would be a lot more flexible in their interpretation.
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That’s just the example I happened to pick out of thousands from this series. Many are part of compounds/expressions as you said, but many are not as well. Given little to no context I would definitely default to reading 良い as よい, but I was just saying that it can be read いい depending on the context and author’s preference. I would also be curious to know how a native would view this.
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My wife said it would depend on the context, but that it’s perfectly ordinary for her to read a furigana-less 良い as いい in manga or whatever.
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Interesting! I’ll have to pay closer attention to that then.
I’ve heard this as よい, from someone who speaks like they’re old, with じゃろう and stuff.
I see there is no simple answer to this question.
Thank you a lot for your comments.
I’ll ask to my Japanese teacher tomorrow and I’ll tell you!
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Given the historical context of the series, I would probably lean towards reading this as よい, as well.
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So! My Japanese teacher (native japanese - not so young ^-^) told me that is not correct to write いい with the kanji 良. For him, it’s always written with hiragana.
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Interesting because I’ve seen the opposite happen frequently enough from native friends.
Though one of them does throw out the odd 語る.
He has a strange way of using the word “correct”
Did you ask him why it’s in the dictionary?
Teasing aside, I suppose the context matters… surely he is aware that professional writers do this. Does he just hold them to a different standard than what he thinks students should do?
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I do not know if it’s a rule like “You must not do that” or “In correct Japanese you must not do that”.
I think this man (my teacher) is 70 years old, and sometimes he tell me : «Young Japanese do not use this or that correctly».
He didn’t tell me that no one do it … (because I didn’t ask that way).
I asked : Can I use the yo(i) kanji to write ii? And his answer was: No it’s not correct. You have to write it only with hiragana.
I suppose there are people who make outlandish statements about grammar and usage in every language.
While we’re at it, just a reminder that 好い and 善い can also be read as いい.
I’m sure he would disagree, though.
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In the book I’m currently reading, every subchapter of each story is titled はなし, but with different kanji, like:
譚 咄 噺 話
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Not sure if you care (
) but: I listen along to the audio for 本好き and my flashcards also have the audio. Out of 24 sentences I added that contained 良い, the narrator read 7 as よい and the other 17 as いい. Not exactly stellar sample size, but yeah 
Interestingly only 2 of the 7 よい ones are 丁寧語, the rest is informal 
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