碎的念

When a long sentence ends with a “That’s because,” it means “That [i.e., what was just said in the previous sentence] is because of everything in this sentence that precedes the kara da.” All of these little explainers at the ends of sentences work this way. They are the main sentence, and everything else modifies them.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

“Passive and potential forms are sometimes used in a way which might strike the English speaker as strange,” says Anthony Alfonso. “When something is left, or thought, or even done involuntarily or naturally by a person, the action is described in an OBJECTIVE manner and by means of either the potential form or the passive form with a potential meaning.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Kaita.I wrote it

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

A few more examples: When a sad occasion brings forth an involuntary gush of tears, the verb naku, “to cry,” is routinely inflected as a potential, nakeru, as in Nakete kichatta / “I just couldn’t help crying.” When a Japanese fisherman pulls a fish out of the water he doesn’t take the credit for it as English speakers do. Instead of shouting “I’v

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Kaite yatta/ageta.I wrote it for him.Kaite kureta/kudasatta.He wrote it for me.Kaite moratta/itadaita.I got him to write it for me.Kakaseta.I made/let him write it.Kakasete kureta/kudasatta.He did me the favor of making/letting her/me write it.Kakasete moratta/itadaita.I got him to let me write it, or I got him to make/let her write it.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Kakasete ageta/yatta.I let/made him write it.Kakareta.It was written, or I was adversely affected by his having written it.Tegami ga kakareta.The letter was written.Tegami o kakareta.I suffered the consequences of his writing the letter.Kakaserareta.I was forced by him to write it.Kaite atta.It had been written. (false passive)Kaketa.It successfully wrote itself.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Coming at the ends of sentences, both wake da and no da mean “the reason for that is” or, more simply, “it means” or “that means,” or “it’s that” or “it’s not that” (in the sense of “It’s not that I’m a big fan of Van Damme or anything; it’s just that I like the music in his films”) with the “it” or “that” being a zero pronoun pointing to what has been said in the sentence before or something in the objective situation observable by both speaker and listener. Kenkyusha gives us some good examples of the negative usage: Warui imi de itta no de wa nai / “It’s not that I said it with a bad meaning” = “I meant no ill will.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

中国佛经汉译的音译、意译过程中，有时把意译叫作“训”，如晋代孙绰的《喻道论》云：“佛者梵语，晋训觉也。”（《弘明集》卷三）就是说，梵文的“佛”(Buddha)翻成晋（中国）文就是“觉”。“训”本来是“训诂”的“训”，也就是汉代以后对儒家经典的主要注解方式。

《汉文与东亚世界》 — 金文京

越南语的动词在宾语前面，跟中文一样；可是形容词、状语却在名词后面，跟中文相反。“越南”翻成中文是“南越”之义。越南语的“博物馆”叫viện bảo tàng，用汉字写是“院宝藏”，用的是越南语的语序，如直译成中文应是“宝藏院”。可是，越南语的“图书馆”叫thư viện（图2），汉字是“书院”，用的是中文的语序，如用越南语的语序应该叫“院书”。由此可见，越南语也和日语一样，有两种语法，一种是本国语法，一种是汉语语法

《汉文与东亚世界》 — 金文京

n translating a sentence like Kaban o nusumareta, don’t resort to something like “The suitcase was stolen and I was distressed.” The suitcase was not passively stolen: the unmentioned “I” was the one passively affected. Much closer to the original would be a “literal” equivalent such as, “I was unfavorably affected by someone’s having stolen the suitcase,” or “I suffered someone’s stealing my suitcase.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Kaban o nusunda. / “X stole the suitcase.” Kaban ga nusumareta. / “The suitcase was stolen.” Kaban o nusumareta. / “X suffered the Y-stole-the suitcase.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Number 3 is an example of the Japanese “suffering passive,” a form that can be used with both transitive and intransitive verbs, and thus one that is very different from the English passive. The subject is the one who gets rareru’ed whether the passive Japanese verb is transitive or intransitive. For example: Ame ni furarete komatta / “Being fallen on by rain, I was distressed” = “Damn, I got rained on.” The passive is working the same way in sentence number 3. Marked by o, however, the suitcase is labeled as an object, and this means it cannot be rareru’ed (or, here, for phonetic reasons, mareru’ed): only a subject can be rareru’ed, and kaban cannot be a subject when followed by o. For this reason, the sentence cannot mean “The suitcase was stolen.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Now, give this one a try. It comes from a story by the writer Hoshi Shin’ichi. A door-to-door salesman has just been told by the lady of the house that, since her husband isn’t home, she can’t buy the automatic backscratcher he has been trying to sell her today. He gives up and says, De wa, chikai uchi ni, mata o-ukagai sasete itadaku koto ni itashimashō.4 In the o-ukagai sasete itadaku, who does the ukagai part, the sasete part, the itadaku part? Start from the itadaku, the final verb of the clause modifying koto. The speaker is the only one of the two present who could do itadaku, which the other person never does. Thus, he wants to get her to cause him to do whatever comes before the causative. Ukagai comes from ukagau, to humbly visit—again, a humble verb that only the speaker would do. A painfully literal translation of the phrase might be: “I shall humbly receive from you your allowing me to humbly visit you.” A less painful version might be, “I will call upon you again if I may,” which retains some of the force of the speaker’s initiative implied by the itadaku.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

This is all phrased in tremendously polite language, but the fact remains that the shop owner is telling the customer that, whatever the customer may think of the matter, the owner is closing the shop for the day. Itadaku is performed by the subject, at his own discretion, and it carries the message “I take it upon myself in all humility to get from you…” It’s like those signs “Thank you for not smoking,” which always impress me as having an underlying growl that makes them even more intimidating than a plain “No Smoking.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Honjitsu wa yasumasete itadakimasu.

This is all phrased in tremendously polite language, but the fact remains that the shop owner is telling the customer that, whatever the customer may think of the matter, the owner is closing the shop for the day. Itadaku is performed by the subject, at his own discretion, and it carries the message “I take it upon myself in all humility to get from you…” It’s like those signs “Thank you for not smoking,” which always impress me as having an underlying growl that makes them even more intimidating than a plain “No Smoking.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Honjitsu wa yasumasete itadakimasu.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Now here’s a very short text with a causative in the -te form followed by itadaku, which differs from morau only in being more polite.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

up with a painful experience.” = “I put him through a tough time.” = “I kicked his butt.” Kakasete yatta. / “I (showed him who’s boss and) made him write it.” Tomodachi ga komatte ita no de, watashi no jisho o tsukawasete ageta. / “My friend was in a pinch, so I let her use my dictionary.” Kakasete ageta. / “I let her write it.” Tarō-chan ni chotto yarasete agete kudasai. / “Please let little Taro do it (try it, play baseball, etc.).”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Here are a few examples of causatives with auxiliaries of giving from the speaker rather than to the speaker. Notice that they suggest situations of dominance or familiarity: Itai me ni awasete yatta. / “I gave him the causing of him to mee

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Besides -te itadaku and -te morau, another way one person can get another to do something is with the causative. Usually, this is not a very polite way to go about getting people to do things because if you talk about causing people to perform actions, as if they are entirely subject to your will, there can be a good bit of arrogance implied. A -te morau construction at least implies that, although you initiated the receiving of the action, the other person did it of his own free will for your benefit.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin