I was looking into a presumably older song, Gion Kouta, and I noticed that one of the lyrics is 「恋しや」. I'm assuming this comes from the adjective 「恋しい」, but I don't know why 「や」 is used instead of 「い」. Does 「や」 make 「い」 adjectives into nouns? Is it an older adjective ending? I'm confused about this.
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2Does this answer your question? Translation of うらめしや – naruto Aug 06 '23 at 00:21
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恋し is the classical Japanese form of 恋しい. It is already in its terminal form (終止形) so や is just an exclamation word here.
You can check the conjugation table here.
Eric C
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1No, it is not 終止形 but 語幹. The Classical Japanese has シク活用 adjectives where 語幹 is directly 終止形, but not for example: ありがたし > ありがたや. – broccoli forest Aug 14 '23 at 02:26