JLPT N4い-adjective · two readingsUpdated 2026-09-25

辛い（つらい・からい） tsurai · karai meaning

辛い (tsurai) means “painful” or “hard to bear”; read karai, it means “spicy,” “salty,” or “strict.” The written form alone does not always reveal the reading, so use the subject and context. Food usually calls for karai, while a painful experience usually calls for tsurai; karai can also describe harsh grading.

also tsurai / karai / tsurakatta / 辛口

painful, hard to bear (tsurai) · spicy, hot (karai) · harsh (karai)

Sentences

6 sentences, word by word

辛い as からい · food

plain

。

Hover, tap, or tab through the words.

この

this

demonstrative · この before a noun, これ standing alone

Ask Rikai

カレー

カレー［0］

curry

noun · loanword, and a Japanese dish in its own right

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は

as for — the topic

particle · written は, read わ

Ask Rikai

本当に

ほんとうに［5］

really; genuinely

adverb · 本当＋に, intensifying what follows

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辛い

からい［2］

spicy; hot

い-adjective · read からい because the subject is food

辛いN4spicy · painful

Ask Rikai

This curry is really spicy.

辛い as つらい · life

plain

。

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How do you tell つらい from からい?

Food ＋は＋辛い（からい）

このカレーは辛い. For a curry's flavour, read からい. Context usually settles the reading; a figurative use can change it.

Experience ＋が＋辛い（つらい）

仕事が辛い. Work, training, a breakup, a memory — anything you endure rather than taste takes つらい.

辛かった＋（です）

辛かった. Both readings inflect identically, so the past form is exactly as ambiguous in writing and exactly as clear in speech.

Marks / judgement ＋が＋辛い（からい）

彼は点数が辛い. Harsh, strict, marks low. This is the one place からい is about a person rather than a flavour — and it is the opposite of 甘い.

Meaning

つらい vs 痛い vs 苦しい — which pain is it?

つらい is pain you have to keep living inside. It is the word for the month after a bereavement, for a job that grinds you down, for training you cannot see the end of. It often carries a sense of duration and of having no easy way out — even a brief experience can be つらい.

痛い often describes physical pain. A tooth, a knee, a burn — something specific hurts, and you can point at it. Emotional uses exist (痛い出費, a painful expense) and the word can also describe mental pain. つらい need not name a body part.

苦しい is pressure, often in the chest. It covers not being able to breathe, financial strain, and the feeling of being cornered — 生活が苦しい, life is tight. Where つらい says this hurts to bear, 苦しい says this is squeezing me.

からい has a distinct modern reading and range of uses. It shares the kanji and nothing else: spicy food, dry sake, a strict marker. The link is old — the character 辛 writes both painful experience and pungent flavour. Context usually tells the reader which word is intended.

Inside the kanji

辛 — the character for hardship

辛 — bitter, harsh, hard

The character writes both hardship and sharp flavour. You meet it in 辛抱 patience, 辛苦 hardship, and 香辛料 spices. The reading つらい sits directly on that sense; からい is the branch that went to the tongue.

Why spicy and painful share a word

Capsaicin is not a taste — it is your mouth reporting damage, which is why spice and pain use one vocabulary in language after language. Japanese made the connection permanent by giving both meanings one character and keeping them apart with two readings.

辛 and 幸 — one stroke apart

幸 happiness differs from 辛 hardship by a single horizontal stroke, which is why Japanese people joke that happiness is bitterness plus one line. Historically they are unrelated characters, but the pair is worth noticing precisely because it is so easy to misread at speed.

Watch out

Where 辛い goes wrong

Reading it aloud the wrong way

In writing the two are identical, so a text-to-speech app or a nervous learner will happily say 仕事がからい. Use the subject as your rule: edible means からい, endurable means つらい. There is no overlap.

Using つらい for a stubbed toe

Sharp physical pain in one spot is 痛い. つらい is for something you are still inside of a week later. Saying 足がつらい after standing all day is fine; saying it about a paper cut is not.

Missing 辛い as “strict”

点数が辛い, 評価が辛い — harsh marking, and read からい. The clue is that its opposite in these phrases is 甘い, which is lenient. Taste vocabulary running the whole scale of judgement.

Also asked

Questions people ask about 辛い

Is 辛い read つらい or からい?

Both, and the meaning changes completely. からい is spicy or harsh and goes with food and judgements; つらい is painful or gruelling and goes with experiences. The written form does not distinguish them; surrounding context usually does.

How do I know which reading to use?

Ask whether the thing can be eaten. Curry, sake, kimchi, sauce: からい. Work, training, a breakup, a memory, a month: つらい. The one exception is a person marking or judging strictly, which is からい.

つらい or 大変 — what's the difference?

大変 is objective: this is a lot of work, this is a serious situation, and you can say it about somebody else's day without presuming. つらい is how it feels from the inside, so it is closer to “I'm struggling” than to “that's tough.”

Do people write 辛い in kanji?

For からい, usually yes. For つらい, plenty of writers use kana precisely to remove the ambiguity — つらい in a message is unmistakable where 辛い makes the reader pause.

What does 辛口 mean?

からくち — dry, if it is sake or wine; hot, if it is curry or a sauce; blunt, if it is a review. 辛口の批評 is criticism that does not soften anything. Its opposite 甘口 runs the same three ways.

What's the difference between つらい and 苦しい?

苦しい is pressure — breathing, money, being cornered. つらい is the weight of having to keep going. They overlap in hard times, and the difference is that 苦しい squeezes while つらい wears you down.

References