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This is a follow up to How to construct potential form for adjectives

I'd like to know how to say "can be x" where x is an adjective, in a casual way. For example with a friend, this seems a little stiff: "敬語凄い長い可能性があるね。” ("Keigo can be really long.") Isn't there a casual term more relevant for this situation? かもしれない doesn't seem relevant as I'm not expressing doubt.

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can you write what you wanted to express in english as well please? –  yadokari Feb 27 '13 at 5:35
Were you trying to say "keigo （敬語） can be really long"? –  snailboat Feb 27 '13 at 12:03
I've never really thought about a "potential form for adjectives" before and this is just my instinct so I'll put it as a comment but... what about something like ～長くなったりするよね or ～ときもあるよね? –  Ash Feb 27 '13 at 15:34
Yes, I just wanted to say that keigo can be really long. I guess "can" has a ton of uses in English and trying to wrap them all up in a "potential form" is not productive. I think ～ときもあるよね is a good way to express what I'm trying to say. I guess this question is resolved then, but I'm not really sure how to mark it as such other than deleting it. –  無色受想行識 Feb 28 '13 at 22:04
You could also use 〜こと(は・が・も)ある. –  istrasci Mar 1 '13 at 15:49

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

Your original sentence sounds better as


I guess that means that in Japanese it sounds more natural to say

Keigo can get very long.

rather than

Keigo can be very long.

To make that less formal, you could try to omit 可能性, i.e.

Keigo gets really long (sometimes).

Other ways of saying the same thing (plagiarised from @istrasci) would include

Sometimes keigo is very long.

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