7/13/2005

Just like I promised, I’m going to go over some actual expressions and some grammar instead of single-word explanations. In this post, I would like to go over how to say whether you’re hungry or full, obviously something that’s going to be useful, especially if you want to ask someone out for a bite to eat. The reason I’m covering this is because just learning the Japanese word for “full” and “hungry” and attaching 「です」 is not going to work. (Well, it works for “full” but not “hungry”.)

How to say you’re full
Saying you’re full is the simple part. The word most commonly used here is the adjective 「いっぱい」, which, as you might expect, means “full” in Japanese. Unless it’s understood from the context, you’ll also need the word for stomach which is most commonly 「お腹」（おなか）. So to simply say you are full, you would most likely say something like the following.

１）お腹がいっぱいです。- Stomach is full. (polite)
２）お腹がいっぱい。- Stomach is full. (casual)

Here’s a sample conversation.

Aさん）お代わりはいらない？- You don’t need another helping?
Bさん） もうお腹がいっぱいだから、大丈夫です。- Stomach is full already so it’s ok.

As an aside, if you want to sound fancy, you can also use 「満腹」（まんぷく） instead of 「いっぱい」. It also has a nuance of being a little fuller than just full as shown by this next example.

１）食った食った！もう満腹。- Ate, ate! Already stuffed.

How to say you’re hungry
Here’s the part where things get interesting. Unlike the Japanese word for “full”, which is an adjective same as English, there is no adjective for the word “hungry”. Well, technically there is the word 「空腹」（くうふく） which means “hungry”, but it is not normally used.

Instead, the verb 「空く」（すく） is normally used to say that your stomach was “emptied”. This means that we must use the past tense of the verb to indicate that the emptying already happened. In this case, it would be either 「空いた」 for casual or 「空きました」 for the polite form. (reference for past-tense, reference for polite past-tense)

１）お腹が空いた。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)
２）お腹が空きました。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)

You can also use the enduring-state form to say that your stomach is in the state of being emptied. The meaning is essentially the same but the nuance is different because the stomach already emptied and has stayed in that state. In other words, the hungriness has continued for a certain period. With the past tense, you get the sense that you just got hungry.

１）朝ご飯を食べなくて、お腹がすごく空いているよ。- I didn’t eat breakfast and I’m really hungry.

Finally, there is a more vulgar expression that is used for being hungry. It’s mostly for the rougher men-folk. Basically, instead of using 「お腹」 for stomach and 「空く」 for emptying, you use 「腹」（はら） and 「減る」（へる）. 「腹」 is simply a 「お腹」 without the honorific 「お」 and 「減る」 is another verb that simply means “to decrease”. The idea is basically the same as before.

１）いつ食べるの？俺、腹が減ったよ。- When eat? I’m hungry.

So let’s go back to what we were originally after, how to ask someone out for a bite to eat!

ボブ）　お腹空いた？どっか食べに行こうよ。
- You hungry? Let’s go somewhere to eat.

みき）　ごめん。もう食べたから、お腹いっぱいだよ。
- Sorry. I already ate so I’m not hungry.

一郎）　俺は腹が減ったんだけど。
- I’m hungry.

ボブ）　お前には聞いてないよ。
- I’m not asking you.

Main Vocabulary Covered
【お腹】（おなか） - (n) stomach
【腹】（はら） - (n) stomach (vulgar)
【いっぱい】 - (adj) full
【満腹】（まんぷく） - (adj) full stomach
【空く】（すく） - (v) to empty
【減る】（へる） - (v) to decrease