Daily Japanese: April 04, 2011 - "Sugoi!"

I have found that, especially among anime and manga fans, there is a common misconception about the word すごい sugoi. I almost always see places referencing and teaching this word saying it means "cool" with no further description or explanation.

While in translation, there are certainly times in which an appropriate way to relate this word into English may be through the word "cool," the meaning of sugoi is actually much deeper, versatile, and a lot more interesting than that!

The word itself describes things that bring you awe. In a way, you could say it more literally means "awesome." Anything that is amazing or elicits a powerful feeling can be described as sugoi.

Try checking out the first couple minutes of this video on youtube, titled すごい雷雨 & 停電. In the title, and in the video itself, you can hear すごい used naturally many times :)


Using it alone:

Using it alone, you can say sugoi to express some kind of awe or amazement. Let's say you just saw a video of someone break through a stack of bricks with their hand. Amazed at the display of power, you could respond すごい！　sugoi! . In a lot of cases, this could be like saying "Wow!" in English. In fact, in pretty much any case you can say "wow" in English, you can say sugoi in Japanese to express your same feeling.


Modifying nouns: 

For example, a very fierce wind could be described as すごい風 sugoi kaze. Saying that this meant something like "cool wind" would be very inappropriate in most cases. Likewise, an amazing person who does something beyond what you would expect from most people could be a すごい人 sugoi hito.

Using sugoku to modify descriptive words:

Using the ~ku form of the word (すごく sugoku... no, not sudoku), you can use it to modify other modifying words. When you use it this way, it makes the word stronger, a lot like using the word "very" in English.

すごくうれしい sugoku uresii/ureshii -> "very happy"
すごく高い sugoku takai -> "very tall" or "very expensive"
すごく便利 sugoku benri -> "very convenient"

Just put すごく sugoku before these types of words, you can make them stronger. This simple word will make your Japanese more diverse, so try it out!

You can also use ものすごく monosugoku to make it even stronger. ものすごく悲しい monosugoku kanasii/kanashii would describe something that is extremely sad.

Note that you can't use sugoku to modify any word. Use it on other descriptive words. Depending on the text and resources you use, the kind of word you use here will go by different names. But descriptive words that conjugate with 'na' (like 駄目) and that conjugate with i/katta (like 楽しい) work here. (Some texts will call these all "adjectives," others will classify them based on how they are conjugated. If it's descriptive and takes na or katta, it should work).

In conclusion...

So, as you see, there's a lot more to sugoi than "cool," and you can use it in a lot of ways! If you see something so cool that you are amazed, you can say sugoi to express that, but you can use it so many other ways, too. So try it out and try to incorporate it into your Japanese. It's a very common and useful term to know :)