I see phrases like 200人ぐらい, 半々ぐらい, and 何分くらい, which seem to indicate that くらい and ぐらい are synonymous, if not interchangeable. Is there any kind of rule for deciding which to use, or is it a stylistic preference?
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1+1 good question. I was actually thinking about asking this question too. Especially for question words どれ and どの, they seem to take both forms ...– LukmanCommented Jun 2, 2011 at 14:18
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1@Lukman: どれ and どの are noun and modifier, respectively. For example, どれがいい？ vs. どのケーキがいい？ :)– Derek SchaabCommented Jun 2, 2011 at 15:21
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@Derek What I mean is that both どれ and どの can take both くらい vs ぐらい. どれくらい, どれぐらい, どのくらい, どのぐらい ..– LukmanCommented Jun 2, 2011 at 15:48
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1Does rendaku play any part in this?– hippietrailCommented Jun 9, 2011 at 0:40
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3 Answers
This page at the goo.ne.jp Q&A site quotes the NHKことばのハンドブック, which states that while there were at one time rules for when to use くらい and when to use ぐらい, modern-day Japanese has no such distinction. I agree with Tsuyoshi that ぐらい "feels" colloquial, but more often than not I think it's a matter of which rolls off the tongue with the most ease.
answered Jun 2, 2011 at 14:40
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Incidentally, the rules that at one time existed were as follows: 1. Use ぐらい after 体言 (e.g. nouns) 2. Use くらい after この, その, あの, どの 3. Generally use ぐらい after 用言 (e.g. verbs), but sometimes くらい is used instead– kiniCommented Nov 28, 2021 at 3:43
くらい and ぐらい are synonymous when they mean “approximately.” I find the variation ぐらい colloquial, but quick lookup in online dictionaries does not back up my feeling: Daijirin dictionary, Daijisen dictionary.
answered Jun 2, 2011 at 14:35
I've been told by at least a couple teachers that the word is typically pronounced ぐらい, but is properly written as くらい, similar to じゃありません versus ではありません. So for proper-ish documents, you'd want to use the latter, but informally the former is fine.
