がたいhard to (believe, forgive, forget)
"Hard to", because your mind or conscience won't go along: hard to believe, impossible to forgive. It is written and formal, and goes with a small set of verbs, mostly of thinking and feeling.
It is hard to believe that one person made such a precise model.
Exploiting vulnerable people is utterly unforgivable.
How to form it
Verb ます-stem + がたい (a small set of verbs)
信じます → 信じがたい, 理解します → 理解しがたい. It changes like an い-adjective and goes straight before a noun: 忘れがたい一日.
- The common ones
- 信じがたい (hard to believe), 理解しがたい (beyond understanding), 許しがたい (unforgivable), 忘れがたい (unforgettable), 耐えがたい (unbearable), 近寄りがたい (unapproachable). These are words in their own right. On most other verbs がたい isn't said.
- Tone
- A weighty verdict, often indignant or deeply moved.
- Where you'll meet it
- Essays, editorials, reviews, speeches. In conversation people mostly say 信じられない, 許せない, 忘れられない.
In use
These findings are hard to make sense of with the conventional theory alone.
Even now, the words we exchanged that day are hard to forget.
The heat this summer was unbearable.
The department head says little, and there is something unapproachable about him.
Not for physical difficulty
This key is rusty and hard to turn.
The key is the trouble, so it is にくい. Nobody says 回しがたい.
It is hard to believe that everything in this record is true.
Nothing is in the way but your own mind: がたい.
とは言いがたい
とは言いがたい, "can hardly be called", is a measured way to say that something isn't so.
These measures can hardly be called sufficient.
Close neighbours
にくい・づらいN4
The everyday "hard to", on any verb: it takes effort, or it feels awkward.
This question is too broad, so it is difficult to answer.
かねるN2
"Cannot": the polite, formal refusal of service language, or a mind that can't settle on something.
We are unable to accommodate your request.
Check yourself
1Which one fits?
この
Choose an answer to see why.
2What is the writer saying?
この
Choose an answer to see why.
More detail
Two that people do say in conversation, when choosing or judging:
Both designs are too good to give up.
There is nothing to choose between the two performances.
More sentences
At first hearing, it is hard to believe that he completed this project by himself.
Pushing the responsibility onto others without a proper explanation is inexcusable.
The fear people went through at the time is hard for us today to imagine.
Her speech became something the audience would not easily forget.
Remarks blaming the victim are unforgivable.