美味しそう！ Should I say Oishii or Oishisou?

Published on June 30, 2020•Keith

image of mouse with oishisou na cheese and burger

In Japanese whenever you see something tasty and you have not eaten it yet instead of saying 美味おいしい you would say 美味おいしそう. This is done not only for the word 美味しい but for any adjective for some sort of subjective experience.

When do you use 美味しそう and other Words in this Form?

When you add ～そう to an adjective in place of the ～い The meaning changes to something seeming that way. So if you say 美味しそう it means, it looks tasty, I think it is tasty, or it seems tasty. After eating the food then you can say 美味しい since you know what it tastes like. This can be done for other words too. If you look at someone that looks tired, you could say 眠ねむそう. When you are the tired one though, you could use 眠い since you already know you are tired.

よい and ない become よさそう and なさそう

There are two exceptions to adding そう to adjectives. Whenever you use the word よい, good or the word to describe a negative or nothing ない, you add a さ before そう. If you think tomorrow’s weather is going to be nice you could say 明日あした天気てんきがよさそう. Anytime you want to say something does not look tasty then say 美味しくなさそう.

～そう can be used on Verbs and some Nouns also

For verbs, そう is used all the time. If you think that it is going to rain you could say 雨あめが降ふりそう. You can also add そう to words ending in ～たいwhich are technically adjectives but are based on verbs. If you see someone eyeing your food you could say 食たべたそう You look like you want to eat. Certain nouns also take this form. If you see someone that looks like they are not doing anything, take the word for free-time 暇ひま and make 暇そう meaning, you look free, or you don’t look busy.

Using ～そう as an Attributive Noun

Now that you know the difference between 美味しい and 美味しそう you can use it a few different ways. Let’s say you want to say The cake looks tasty. Just say ケーキが美味しそうです. If you want to say that looks like a tasty cake. then you would just add な to the end and get それは美味しそうなケーキです. You can use そう like this for any adjective, or verb. If you want to say “it looks like it is going to rain” a different way you could say, 雨が降りそうな天気だ. This means close to the same thing as the sentence above but in Japanese trying to say things differently will help you improve moving forward. Have fun!