あまり - Grammar Discussion

English translation:
so much…that

Structure
Verb + あまり
Verb[ ] + あまり
なAdj + な + あまり
Noun・の + あまり
いAdj[ ]・の + あまり

Explanation:
[A あまり B・A surpasses a threshold and causes B・tense is dependent on the main clause・often used with words describing feelings]

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Do people actually speak the way these example sentences are written? I feel like most of them should be using あまりに instead of just あまり...

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Hey :grinning:

Actually, 「あまり」by itself is used more often, especially in speechm, than あまりに. I think it might be because it’s shorter.

Cheers! :bowing_man:

That’s so interesting. I’ll have to look out for it more when reading and watching anime.

Hey, I noticed a mistake on the notes of this grammar point:

The references cite to page 72 of A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and while that page is indeed related to あまり, it’s targeted towards the use of “not much”, as in 「昨日、あまり寝られなかった」

I dug through my books and found out that the actual use seen here is on page 3 of A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar. Could we update that accordingly?

Thanks in advance!

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Fixed! :partying_face:

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you very much! :bowing_man:

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It’s no inconvenience! I work on app development too so I know how these things go, I’m just happy to help!

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In this video they also use the construction:

あまりの(名詞)に

The audio has the 「、」after the ため instead of the 一生懸命

A general question about how the み suffix applies here. I’ve just looked it up, as I’d not come across it before, and wiktionary says that it expresses the quality of an adjective, where さ expresses the degree of said quality. Since the grammar point is specifically about such a degree as to cause a result, when would the み version be used? It doesn’t seem there are any examples of it to try to compare the two, either.

Thanks,
Cris

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Hey @CrisH!

I’d like to first build upon what you’ve already said. Both ~み and ~さ nominalize adjectives. Note the following:

  • Not all adjectives can nominalize into BOTH み and さ.
  • When you’re using ~み (悲しみ・温かみ・厚み)you’re just describing what you see and making it a noun. Which is why you often see it as “-ness”: Sadness, Warmness (literal), Thickness. This doesn’t work with ALL adjectives, for example you can’t stay 大きみ since “bigness” isn’t really a thing, but…
  • You can say how big a big thing is. 大きさ・重さ would be closer to “size” and “weight”, since you can measure it or compare levels of.

You really only would see this it if its an adjective that can only nominalize with み. You can confirm this by searching what would be the さ or み nominalizations and see if they come up in a dictionary. If they don’t, it’s safe to assume they can only be used with the one that did come up.

In the event of an adjective that can turn into both such as 悲しい, the meaning is almost interchangeable (so much of X that…) but, as the basic meaning of these nominalizations imply, み would focus on the quality itself while さ would focus on the amount of said quality, which is why this one is more used.

But at the end of the day I don’t think it’s a big change.

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Hey, I have a question about one of the examples for this grammar point. This isn’t strictly related to the grammar in question but other part of the sentence:

旅行への楽しみさの余り、今日は寝れなさそう

What is the なさ in 寝れなさそう?

It’s how the negative verb pairs with そう

そう grammar discussion

Helpful comment from that discussion

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Still about the example sentence
旅行への楽しみさのあまり、今日は寝れなさそう。

I’m fine with either 楽しみ or 楽しさ and the difference was nicely explained by @Daru above. However, I am seriously confused that we have both み and さ at the same time. Is this really correct? It seems I can find this combination nowhere else and (if that counts for anything) it does not seem to make so much logical sense to nominalize first with み and then nominalize again with さ. It does make sense maybe to say you nominalize 楽しみ as a な-Adjective? Anyway I would just like to confirm that this isn’t a typo.

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