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I see phrases like 200人ぐらい, 半々ぐらい, and 何分くらい, which seem to indicate that くらい
and ぐらい are synonymous, if not interchangeable. Is there any kind of rule for
deciding which to use, or is it a stylistic preference?
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word-choice spelling
Is there a rule for when to use くらい vs ぐらい?
くらい and ぐらい are synonymous when they mean “approximately.” I find the
variation ぐらい colloquial, but quick lookup in online dictionaries does not
back up my feeling: [Daijirin
dictionary](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF-8&p=%E3%81%8F%E3%82%89%E3%81%84&dtype=0&dname=0ss&stype=0&index=105551900000&pagenum=1),
[Daijisen
dictionary](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF-8&p=%E3%81%8F%E3%82%89%E3%81%84&dtype=0&dname=0na&stype=0&index=06403905210600&pagenum=1).
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2011-06-02T14:35:08.540
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[This page at the goo.ne.jp Q&A
site](http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/2203450.html) quotes the
[NHKことばのハンドブック](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/4140110635), which
states that while there were at one time rules for when to use くらい and when to
use ぐらい, modern-day Japanese has no such distinction. I agree with Tsuyoshi
that ぐらい "feels" colloquial, but more often than not I think it's a matter of
which rolls off the tongue with the most ease.
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2011-06-02T14:40:50.267
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I've been told by at least a couple teachers that the word is typically
pronounced ぐらい, but is properly written as くらい, similar to じゃありません versus
ではありません. So for proper-ish documents, you'd want to use the latter, but
informally the former is fine.
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