Difference between 大きそう and 大きく見える when saying "how something looks" / "what
something looks like"

When talking about how something looks we can use ~そう. However, I have
realized that the verb 見える can also be used to say how something appears or
what it looks like. What is the difference between them? When can each be used
and not used?

e.g 大きそう and 大きく見える both mean that something looks/appears big. What is the
difference between them?
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2014-05-12T15:15:58.350
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question
grammar
Difference between ～そう and ～見える when saying "how something looks" / "what something looks like"
> "大きそう and 大きい見える both mean that something looks/appears big. What is the
> difference between them?"

For starters, 大きそう is grammatical, while 大き **い** 見える isn't. :) The latter
would have to be 大き **く** 見える to work: since the adjective 大きい is immediately
followed by a verb, the adjective ending in い must change to the adverb ending
in く.

大きそう often doesn't really mean "it _looks_ big" in the literal sense of "look"
as something's visual appearance. If something is just plain old big, folks
will generally just say 大きい. The -そう on an adjective stem without the final い
comes across more as "it _seems_ like ..." So 大きそう comes across more as "X
_seems_ big." This might imply a relative comparison (which is probably the
connotation of the uses that Chocolate mentions).

(Note also that -そう after an adjective that includes the final い indicates
reported speech -- "I've heard that XX is YY; apparently XX is YY". So 大き
**い** そう would be "[someone told me] that XX is big.")

Whether to use -そう or -く見える also depends on the grammatical context: what
comes next in the sentence? If someone is trying to say "X _seems_ big, but it
isn't really", you might run across something like the following:

  * 大きそうに思えるけど、実は些細なことだ。  
_Ōkisō ni omoeru kedo, jitsu wa sasai na koto da._  
It might seem big, but actually it's just a minor thing.

Alternately, you could say:

  * 大きく見えるけど、実は些細なことだ。  
_Ōkiku mieru kedo, jitsu wa sasai na koto da._  
It might look big, but actually it's just a minor thing.

Note also that 見える implies something visible. If you say おいしそう, it might be
that something _looks_ delicious, or _sounds_ delicious, but if you say
おいしく見える, you're saying that something specifically _looks_ delicious.
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answer