少ない

What it means

少ない means not many or a small quantity. It describes a small number of countable items or scarce resources, and it functions as an i-adjective that modifies nouns or appears in predicates to express scarcity relative to expectation or need.

Main meanings

• Small counts of people or items; used for numeric scarcity.
• Scarcity of resources, opportunities, or time.
• Used in comparisons to indicate a quantity is lower than expected or desirable.
• Register ranges from neutral to formal, suitable for both speech and writing.

How to use it

Commonly used to describe quantities in everyday speech and formal prose. Patterns include Xが少ない and Xは少ない to mark the topic or subject; it can modify nouns directly as 少ない資源 or 少ない時間, and it also appears in constructions like あまり〜ない with negative nuance.