2

I was looking into a presumably older song, Gion Kouta, and I noticed that one of the lyrics is 「恋しや」. I'm assuming this comes from the adjective 「恋しい」, but I don't know why 「や」 is used instead of 「い」. Does 「や」 make 「い」 adjectives into nouns? Is it an older adjective ending? I'm confused about this.

Improve this question
1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

恋し　is the classical Japanese form of　恋しい. It is already in its terminal form (終止形) so や is just an exclamation word here.

You can check the conjugation table here.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    No, it is not 終止形 but 語幹. The Classical Japanese has シク活用 adjectives where 語幹 is directly 終止形, but not for example: ありがたし > ありがたや.
    – broccoli forest
    Commented Aug 14, 2023 at 2:26

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .