0

日曜日ぐらいは家族とともに過ごしたい。

I have looked it up 2 dictionaries and a number of JLPT grammar exercise books but have not figured out what usage of ぐらい this is. Could somebody help and explain please?

Cabbage
  • 902
  • 3
  • 8

1 Answers1

1

Wiktionary says that there exists a meaning of "at least", and their example seems to match yours:

今回{こんかい}くらいは頑張{がんば}ろうかな。- Maybe I should put in the effort at least once (this time).

See @naruto's comment - 日曜日ぐらい here would be "at least on Sundays".

And this is the translations that deepl gives for what it's worth - "I want to spend at least one Sunday with my family." although it's not clear where the "one" comes from.

Disclaimer: I don't suggest using DeepL (google translate even less so for Japanese) as a reference but it can be used to get a general direction.

  • DeepL is good but it often makes mistakes like any other machine translators. This 日曜日ぐらい means "at least Sundays", not one particular Sunday. – naruto Jan 21 '21 at 13:56
  • That's why I added "for what it's worth" - I would never use it as a reference, but it's good to get a general direction. Perhaps it saw too many instances of 今回くらい or similar in the training. – Yaroslav Fyodorov Jan 21 '21 at 14:43
  • And surprisingly for Japanese it is better than google translate as far as I can judge – Yaroslav Fyodorov Jan 21 '21 at 14:48