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What is the difference between 良い and 上手い?

Or in other words, can sentence (1) become sentence (2)? If yes, is there any
meaning change?

(1) 父は車の運転がとても **上手い**

(2) 父は車の運転がとても **良い**
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2022-08-28T05:13:53.367
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2022-08-28T05:43:46.127
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What is the difference between 良い and 上手い?
The difference is that うまい (I'm using Hiragana intentionally here as that is
how it is usually written and you'll only really find the Kanji form in
literature) is used for skill, whereas 良い is usually used for the personal
preference of the subject.

"運転がとても良い" sounds odd as とても is not usually used with 良い in this sense. A
quick search of Google confirms that it is unidiomatic: there are only 2 hits.
If we remove the とても and search for "運転が良い" we get 3,100,000 hits, but
skimming through we can see that the ones about driving a car are about a
preference, for example for one style of driving over another.

  1. 運転が良い，またはゲームとは違う楽しさがあると考えるのは The reason that people prefer driving, or think that they offer a different type of "fun" to games, is...

  2. では、どのような運転が良いのでしょうか。So, how should we drive?

  3. 下手な運転よりは上手な運転が良いに越したことはありません Good (skillful) driving is better than bad driving wherever possible.

On the other hand, the hits for "運転がうまい" are all about driving skill:

  1. 運転がうまい人ほど高く、苦手な人に足りない High in people that are good at driving, lacking in those that aren't

  2. 運転がうまい人と下手な人の見分け方 How to tell the difference between someone who's good at driving and someone who sucks at it.

Sentence (2) is not really idiomatic due to the presence of とても, but if we
remove that the meaning of your two sentences would be:

> 父は車の運転がとても上手い My dad's really good at driving cars

> 父は車の運転が良い My dad prefers driving cars (e.g. to playing games, sports,
> driving tractors, or something else stated in the context)

Another example which may be clearer:

> 彼は日本語がうまい He's good at Japanese.

> 彼は日本語が良い He "prefers" Japanese (might be used e.g. if someone is telling you
> his English is not good so you should speak to him in Japanese)

A synonym for うまい is 上手（じょうず）, which is a na-adjective.

e.g.

> 父は車の運転がとても上手（だ/です）

> 彼は日本語が上手（だ/です）
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2022-08-28T05:43:46.127
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2022-08-28T05:43:46.127
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