碎的念

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

In Kaite kureta, the subject initiating the action is the other person: “He wrote it for me.” In Kaite moratta, “I got him to write it for me,” or “I had him write it for me.” While Inu o aratte kureta is “He washed the dog for me,” Inu o aratte moratta is “I got him to wash the dog for me.

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

In one sense, verbs of receiving are simpler than verbs of giving since receiving happens in only one direction. Whereas one set of verbs of giving means “I give to him” and the other set means “He gives to me,” morau means only “I get from him” (as is true, of course, for its humbler equivalent, itadaku, to which all comments on morau apply). There is no form for “He gets from me.” Third-person descriptions of receiving will always mean “He gets from him/her/them,” never “He gets from me.”

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

When verbs of giving—in either direction—are used as auxiliaries after a -te form, the same person does both the -te verb and the auxiliary, whether I ageru to him or he kureru’s to me: Tegami o kaite kureta. / “He wrote a letter for me (or to me).” Tegami o kaite ageta. / “I wrote a letter for him (or to him).”

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

The “I” is in brackets here because it is present in the Japanese sentence only as an unspoken subject. Watashi is not the subject of ikimashita and is not the subject of the sentence. It is simply the topic of the upcoming discussion. The wa tells us only that the following discussion is going to be about watashi as opposed to other possible people. The subject of the verb ikimashita is not watashi but the silent pronoun that follows it.

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

Ga marks something that is going to have a piece of grammar—a verb or adjective—connected to it, but wa is far less restrictive: it marks something that is going to have a remark made about it, but it gives absolutely no clue as to what kind of remark it’s going to be. Wa merely says, “Hey, I’m going to tell you about this now, so listen.” Ga says “Watch out for the next verb that comes by: I’m most likely the one that will be doing or being that verb.” Ga always marks the subject of a verb or adjective,6 and if that verb is the main verb, that means ga is marking the subject of the sentence. Wa never does this.

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

It is for this reason that there are often correspondences between wa and ga in Japanese and “the” and “a” in English. “The man” (Otoko wa…) is someone we know about and are now going to get new information on, whereas “a man” is someone new who has just entered the scene (…otoko ga haitte kita). (That is why “the” is called the “definite article”: we know just what we are referring to, while we use “a,” the “indefinite article,” when we’re not so sure.)

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

In his encyclopedic Japanese Language Patterns, Alfonso has noted these correspondences and wisely chosen not to dwell on them. The fact remains, however, that there is a good deal of overlap in linguistic function between Japanese wa and ga and English “the” and “a.”

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

On the matter of unexpressed subjects, Eleanor Jorden’s excellent Japanese: The Spoken Language notes that “A verbal can occur as a complete sentence by itself: there is no grammatical requirement to express a subject.” Lesson 2 contains a strongly worded warning to avoid the overuse of words of personal reference, noting how often Japanese exchanges avoid “overt designation of ‘you’ or ‘I.’

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

harangued

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

the speaker were to pause at the wa, the listener’s brain would whisper subliminally, “Yes, yes, and then what?” After having differentiated the named topic from implied other potential topics, wa dumps its emphatic load on what comes after it. This makes it very different from ga, which emphasizes what comes before it. Have you ever stopped to think about why you were taught never to use wa after interrogative words such as dare, nani, and dore? Because ga puts the emphasis on what immediately precedes it, and when you use those interrogative (question-asking) words, they are precisely what you want to know: “Who went?” “What came out of the cave?” “Which one will kill it most effectively?

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