notes

• adjectives ending in 「しい」 on the whole express subjectivities

  helper adjective 「らしい」

• can be attached to a word or logical clause like 「そう」
  • if placed after a word, it describes the subjective representation of the thing represented by that word
  • if placed after a word, it indicates that the statement itself is a subjectivity (“seems to be”)
• does not always mean “this seems to be”, could also mean “this is similar to”

  differences from 「そう」

• 「あの動物はウサギだそうだ。」 means “I heard that that animal is a rabbit.”
• 「あの動物はウサギだらしい。」 means “It seems that that animal is a rabbit.”
• 「そうだ」 cannot be applied to regular nouns (only adjectival nouns)

  「っぽい」

• also a helper adjective that works like 「らしい」(although a bit more casual)
• cannot be used on logical clauses, only words
• 「らしい」 tends to imply a quality that should be there, although 「っぽい」 tends to imply the opposite
  • ex: 「子供らしい」 means “behaving like a child should” while 「子供っぽい」 means “childish”

    resources

• youtube