～くらい/ぐらい・～ごろ "About/Approximately..."

Introduction

It’s time to cover くらい/ぐらい and ころ/ごろ! These grammatical pairs express approximates or estimations of the things they describe. For example, they can provide an estimate of how much time it takes to do something. For example, “Do you take around 15 minutes to get out of bed every morning after the alarm rings?” Or even, “Around how many dorayaki do you think Doraemon eats in a day?” Useful, right? Let’s get started.

Approximating with くらい/ぐらい

Structure:

• 

  Number-Counterくらい・ぐらい
  Example:
  → 水みずを1いちリットルくらい飲のんだ。
  ”I drank around 1 liter of water.”

Basically, くらい and ぐらい allow you to make an approximation of a quantity. This quantity could include an amount of something (e.g. around 10kg), a duration (e.g. around 10 hours), or an approximate point in time (e.g. around 10 o’clock). “Around” is really just a rough translation, but it could just as easily be “about” or even “approximately”!