For 極めて良い, which of these readings are okay: きわめていい or きわめてよい? Both? - Feed Post by mog86uk
For 極めて良い, which of these readings are okay: きわめていい or きわめてよい? Both?
posted by mog86uk
Comments 8
きわめてよい but i think u can use both of them.
The reason I asked is because it didn't accept きわめていい when I typed it as an answer to a question over on Duolingo. However it did accept as being correct both 極めて良い and きわめてよい on that same question.
This doesn't necessarily mean anything, since they may just not have gotten around to adding きわめていい as an alternative correct answer for that question. That site has done a good job of adding the majority of alternative possible answers, so I thought きわめていい would probably be accepted if it is a proper reading.
There are similar situations on there though. Example: for the English word "we", it accepts 私たち and わたしたち but it doesn't accept わたくしたち.
(I spend way too much time typing alternative words to see if it will accept them, lol. I would make a lot faster progress if I wasn't messing around...) :P- The question I had to answer was to write a translation for the word "Excellent!" into Japanese. 極めて良い (exceedingly good) = excellent.
I can't really see how it could even be possible for きわめていい to not be a normal reading anyway, since 極めて is an adverb "extremely, exceedingly" and then 良い is just an adjective "good" added after it.
So it seems like both readings should be perfectly fine. I was thinking きわめていい would be the more common way of saying it though? I've definitely heard that phrase pronounced somewhere before, and from what I remember I think it even sounded like いい, but I can't really remember for certain. ^^; 
In this case, Duolingo is correct. In the 常用漢字 list, いい is not an appropriate reading for 良い
using Google Translate https://translate.google.com.vn/#ja/en/%E6%A5%B5%E3%82%81%E3%81%A6%E8%89%AF%E3%81%84
The result is Kiwamete yoi きわめてよい- Thanks, but I think I didn't really phrase my question specific enough. I should have phrased it thus:
If 極めて良い and きわめてよい are both accepted as possible answers for the translation of the English word "excellent", shouldn't きわめていい also be accepted? Also: which way is it normally spoken?
I'm know いい isn't a 常用漢字表 reading of 良い, but that in itself doesn't mean writing the answer as きわめていい is wrong. Since いい and よい are the same word just pronounced differently, and きわめてよい isn't a single word nor listed as a set phrase in any dictionaries; therefore, I was wondering if maybe there is a set rule for why it should only be よい in this instance, when in other situations いい is prefered (like いいですか rather than よいですか)?
Also, since the 常用漢字表 is only a guideline set by the Japanese Ministry of Education for what kanji and readings should be taught in schools and for what should be used when writing official government documents, I'm not sure that this means there aren't any additional readings for those kanji outside this list?
Like how 飲 only has one 常用 onyomi イン (which is 漢音). Outside of the list it also has another onyomi オン (which is 呉音). This is probably not the best example, since you'd have to search extremely hard to ever find anything using that reading, but still... ^^;
Maybe a better example is 掌, which is a 常用漢字 used in the lessons here on JCJP. It is in the vocabulary lessons as meaning "palm" and with its reading written as たなごころ. In the 常用漢字表, that kanji doesn't even have any kunyomi listed (not てのひら either), just the single ショウ onyomi.
I think I rambled on and am now forgetting what my question was. Please feel free to ignore the previous four paragraphs... ^^; - Ah! I finally remembered the example I was desperately trying to recall before I gave up and looked for others...
These are probably the "guideline" ways to write these:
格好いい (かっこういい) "cool, stylish, good-looking, attractive"
格好 (かっこう) = "shape, form, posture, pose, appearance, state"
良い (よい) = "good, fine, nice, pleasant, excellent, sufficient, OK"
Other ways you can write 格好いい:
カッコいい
格好良い
格好よい
http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E6%A0%BC%E5%A5%BD%E3%81%84%E3%81%84
...but do you ever hear it spoken like "かっこうよい"? Even if it is spoken like this, I doubt anyone would say this way is the regular way? And in written form I think the ending would virtually always still be written as いい? ^^
