彼は会長に推薦されたよ。

Okay, is it just me, or could this sentence mean "He was recommended to the chairman," "He was recommended by the chairman," and "He was recommended to take the position of chairman" simultaneously? I am utterly confused by this.

IceCream Wrote:hmm, not really in this case. Someone would almost definitely say "for the position of chairman" if that's what they meant. So, the first reading is the right one. However, there are cases where this type of ambiguity does arise, if you're interested, you can read this thread: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4652 which covers it

Actually, the sentence does mean the third option, so there's definitely ambiguity.

Google throws up "He was put up for president. 彼は会長に推薦された." (no よ!) as an example in the 研究社 新英和中辞典 entry for "put up". I presume the author was more interested in conveying the meaning of the English to the Japanese reader than in natural unambiguous Japanese phrasing. (I'm always a little suspicious of example sentences that start 彼は... :-))

It's actually one of the example sentences from Core 6000. The English translation is "He was recommended to the chairman," but I've seen ｘに推薦する used in the form of recommending someone to a position, so I was confused.

Apparently for the second sentence to work, it would need によって rather than simply に, so at least it's a little less ambiguous than I first thought.

IceCream Wrote:oh really? guess im still confused after all then. i will get this point!!! where did you get the bit where the 2nd sentence should have によって?

and i still think the よ on the end, if it's the 1st sentence, is weird, since it should be a formal kind of sentence.

I looked it up in Google, since I was curious, and saw sentences like these: "それは医者によって私に推薦された" (That was recommended to me by my doctor) and "あなたのホテルは友人によって私に推薦され" (Your hotel was recommended to me by a friend). Why it's によって, I don't know.

As for よ, knowing when to use appropriate sentence endings is probably in my top 5 weaknesses in Japanese, so I can't comment on that.

IceCream Wrote:these sentences are different.
In the passive construction, what is marked by the は clause is important. In the original sentence, it's 彼. That means he "got" the action.
These other sentences you quoted are of the same passive form as 彼は部長に推薦された, where に means "to". If you were to add who he was recommended by, you'd use によって.

In a normal passive, (sorry, haven't got all the terminology down yet) に means "by". So, this is "he was recommended by the chairman".

So, those sentences you found are actually just the first type of passive sentence, and not the second...

I'm not sure I really understand 100% what you're saying. I don't know what kind of passive sentence you are describing that is different from the one in the example. As far as I know, the passive of 推薦する is always 推薦される.

All the examples I've seen use によって or から when indicating that someone was recommended by another person. I have yet to see any use に.

IceCream Wrote:there are tons that use に, it's actually the more traditional form of the passive. If you're interested, you should definitely read the thread i quoted above, because we had a long discussion about this exact subject in there, and it's pretty interesting, i think...

Okay, maybe I'm just being dense here, but I don't see anything in that thread in terms of grammar use that I didn't already know.

I didn't know the exact names for them until now, but if we use Thora's example of simple passive and affective passive, the latter has no impact on the sentence at hand.

彼は会長に推薦されたよ。
In this sentence, に can apparently change the sentence meaning to "He was referred to that position" or "He was referred to that person."

に may have a multitude of functions, but from the examples I have read, に is not used as "by" in this sentence. によって (or から) seems to be used instead. Why, I do not know; a native speaker would need to clarify whether or not the use of に, in this case, would actually be grammatical. To me, it seems like "by" would be an acceptable use of に, but it doesn't really seem to be used in this sentence.

彼は会長に推薦された means either "He was put up for president" or "He was recommended by the president." But there are more idiomatic ways to say the same thing as the latter sense, i.e., 彼は会長の推薦を受けた/彼は会長から推薦を受けた. Since the Japanese language doesn't use passive voice unless it's definitely necessary, the majority of the native speakers would take it as the former sense if presented out of context. It's silly to try to understand a sentence without context though. It's impossible.

One of the reasons the former doesn't sound unnatural is that it's not unusual that the speaker doesn't want to disclose who recommended him (Also, this is traditional direct passive so it's not strange to use passive voice when the speaker wants in the first place.). If you say it in non-passive, you should explicitly say the subject unless it's obvious from context because otherwise it would sound like the speaker was the one who recommended him: 彼を会長に推薦した. Of course you say it this way if that's the case. 彼は私によって会長に推薦された is best when you mean "I recommended him. Muahaha!"

I don't know who created Core 6000, but it seems the translation in question is simply "engrish" or the Japanese sentence is a mistranslation. It's not rare that a so-called "advanced" English speaker in Japan doesn't know how to use the English verb "recommend."

As for それは医者によって私に推薦された and あなたのホテルは友人によって私に推薦され, I'm 100% positive they were written by a non-native speaker who learned Japanese from textbooks or translated by a machine translator. You wouldn't say it that way if you learned Japanese from native material because you wouldn't have come across sentences like them. That's one of the reasons why I said "direct passive = English passive" is totally wrong in the other thread.

magamo Wrote:彼は会長に推薦された means either "He was put up for president" or "He was recommended by the president." But there is a more idiomatic way to say the same thing as the latter sense, i.e., 彼は会長の推薦を受けた. Since the Japanese language doesn't use passive voice unless it's definitely necessary, the majority of the native speakers would take it as the former sense if presented out of context. It's silly to try to understand a sentence without context though. It's impossible.

The reason why the former doesn't sound unnatural is that the speaker doesn't want to disclose who recommended him. If you say it in non-passive, you should explicitly say the subject unless it's obvious from context because otherwise it would sound like the speaker was the one who recommended him: 彼を会長に推薦した. Of course you say it this way if that's the case. 彼は私によって会長に推薦された is best when you mean "I recommended him. Muahaha!"

I don't know who created Core 6000, but it seems the translation in question is simply "engrish" or the Japanese sentence is a mistranslation. It's not rare that a so-called "advanced" English speaker in Japan doesn't know how to use the English verb "recommend."

As for それは医者によって私に推薦された and あなたのホテルは友人によって私に推薦され, I'm 100% positive they were written by a non-native speaker who learned Japanese from textbooks or translated by a machine translator. You wouldn't say it that way if you learned Japanese from native material because you wouldn't have come across sentences like them. That's one of the reasons why I said "direct passive = English passive" is totally wrong in the other thread.

Thanks so much for the input, Magamo. That definitely clears things up. I looked up phrase in Google in hopes that that would bring more clarity and I saw a few results return によって, so I assumed it was correct. It never even occurred to me it was written by a non-native--and unfortunately my Japanese is not good enough to distinguish between "natural" Japanese and "non-native" Japanese (if it were, this discussion wouldn't be taking place.) All of the other sentences I saw used に to refer to someone being recommended for a position. Since no other examples I saw used に for "by", I made the inaccurate assumption of thinking that it, for some reason completely inexplicable to me, 推薦される just couldn't use に for "by".

I wish I had a little pocket sized native Japanese speaker I could refer to when these situations come up.

I saw a few sentences in Google using から to express receiving a recommendation by someone, such as in the form of xから推薦されました, with "x" being the person or thing making the recommendation. Is this a natural usage, or is this also inaccurate?

mirina Wrote:I saw a few sentences in Google using から to express receiving a recommendation by someone, such as in the form of xから推薦されました, with "x" being the person or thing making the recommendation. Is this a natural usage, or is this also inaccurate?

会長から推薦されました is ok. 会長から推薦を受けました is also good. The difference is that the passive version usually carries the emotional sense similar to "先生に褒められました/怒られました" because it's the traditional direct passive voice.

Technically 会長に推薦されました can be "recommended by the president," but it requires a stronger contextual clue. If you want to read grammatical explanations why から is better, read the 受身 section in niwasaburoo's e-book (especially the ＡがＢにＣをＶする→ＣがＡからＢにＶ−される part):

http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/25boisu.html#25.2

Here is an example of Xに推薦される = "by" sentences: 俺あいつのこと嫌いなのに、なんか知らないけどあいつに推薦された。Native speakers would take the Xに推薦された as "recommended by the guy (whom you don't like)" because the context clearly says so. Another example is "あんな奴に推薦されたって意味ねー。" The context is that "the guy like him" has no power or is known as a compulsive liar etc. so the fact that "recommended by him" is meaningless. I recommend you always use から in these cases because it causes certain ambiguity explained in niwasaburoo's e-book.

I guess it's too pedantic and simplistic to say "から = by" and "に = for" in the Xに/Xから推薦された structure, but personally I think から is much better if you mean "by the president." If you want to learn a more subtle difference, Xから推薦される tends to be used when it's a good thing while Xに推薦される as "recommended by X" tends to appear in an informal sentence with a negative connotation like the examples I just gave.

Come to think of it, JLPT and such might consider this "Xに推薦される = by X" use to be wrong unless it's clearly the "suffering" kind of passive like "やばい！彼女はないだろって思ってたら、あいつに推薦されちゃった！このままじゃ彼女が会長になってしまう。ど、どうしよう…" (Shit! He recommended her! Noooooo! She's going to be the next president! W-What do I do?!) I'd say, "あいつ彼女を推薦しやがった" in this case though.

mirina Wrote:I wish I had a little pocket sized native Japanese speaker I could refer to when these situations come up.

Yeah, I wish I had a pocket sized native English speaker too. A bilingual native dwarf would be even better.

While we're in on passive sentences again, I was wondering if you could clarify something for me magamo. Basically, I found a topic on some japanese learners forum which discussed passives (direct and indirect). A guy there who seemed quite well educated stated that some passives can't be suffering passives carrying a negative nuance, such as 褒められる. This is something along the lines of what you said in the previous discussion which makes a lot of sense to me. However, his next example of such a sentence was:

生徒が先生に名前を呼ばれる。 (or something like that, I don't remember the exact sentence)

Is it true that this construct can't carry this negative nuance which is so common in Japanese passives? I mean, just from the context, it's easy to think of how it COULD be considered negative. Something like "James though, please don't pick me, please don't pick me, but his name was called by the teacher.".

Tobberoth Wrote:While we're in on passive sentences again, I was wondering if you could clarify something for me magamo. Basically, I found a topic on some japanese learners forum which discussed passives (direct and indirect). A guy there who seemed quite well educated stated that some passives can't be suffering passives carrying a negative nuance, such as 褒められる. This is something along the lines of what you said in the previous discussion which makes a lot of sense to me. However, his next example of such a sentence was:

生徒が先生に名前を呼ばれる。 (or something like that, I don't remember the exact sentence)

Is it true that this construct can't carry this negative nuance which is so common in Japanese passives? I mean, just from the context, it's easy to think of how it COULD be considered negative. Something like "James though, please don't pick me, please don't pick me, but his name was called by the teacher.".

Japanese people's engrish often makes sense to your average Japanese guy, but native speakers don't understand what they're trying to say. The same goes for the Japanese language spoken by non-native speakers. You can always say 呼ばれてしまう, 呼びやがった, 呼ばれちゃった, etc to make it negative and sound more colorful. If a word is almost always used in a certain way because of cultural reasons, collocations, grammar or other strange reasons, you should follow it and change your wording even when it doesn't make sense to you.

I think it's kind of like conveying the literal meaning of a fixed phrase/idiom is almost impossible unless you say "literally" or something because no one uses the phrase that way. Now if you try to apply a certain grammar rule in a sentence where native speakers wouldn't, it's not surprising you make no sense to the listener. At least you should explain to him the rule and its supposed meaning, especially when he's a native speaker. I guess non-native speakers who used the same textbook to learn the language would understand what you mean, but that's because you and the listener speak the same dialect in a sense.

Well, this 擬態語 is driving me crazy. What's 「くりんくりん」 as in:
（猫は）くりんくりんと手も動かしている。

It's not in any of the dictionaries I have searched but it's a recurring expression in a series of books I'm reading. It generates a lot of google hits but I still can't figure out the exact meaning.

I've found a cute cat video but I'm not sure which part of the cat actions is くりんくりん...

くりんくりん, just from a Google images search, seems to be about wavy or curly hair.

sethg Wrote:くりんくりん, just from a Google images search, seems to be about wavy or curly hair.

It seems that one possible meaning is to describe curly perms. But there is more to it (that's why those 擬態語 are so difficult they have lots of meanings depending on the context).

In my sentence, it describes the movement the cat does with his paw. So it could be something like some kind of circular move ("round and round" or something like that), or maybe the cat is touching his face or he could be doing the 招き猫 gesture (the cat is a kind of magical 招き猫 in the book)...

Frisky.

I don't know whether or not this is accurate, but looking at the video, and the cute cat pictures I've just looked at (thank you for this opportunity)--such as this--I'm going out on a limb and assuming it means "frisky."

That's just my best guess.

Yeah, it's hard to find a concrete definition anywhere, but I think it has something to do with curling. For the cat, perhaps it was the curling in of its paws. Almost every visual example I've been able to find had something to do with curling/waviness. Here are some examples:

http://www.milligramme.cc/weblog/decaywave.png
http://steve.blog.ocn.ne.jp/photos/uncategorized/yu.jpg
http://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/200811/08/40/...856132.jpg
http://blog-imgs-10.fc2.com/k/i/t/kitagu...CF2446.jpg

What this has to do with the cat... maybe how he's twisting and turning and curling his body around to wash himself?

sethg Wrote:Yeah, it's hard to find a concrete definition anywhere, but I think it has something to do with curling. For the cat, perhaps it was the curling in of its paws. Almost every visual example I've been able to find had something to do with curling/waviness. Here are some examples:

http://www.milligramme.cc/weblog/decaywave.png
http://steve.blog.ocn.ne.jp/photos/uncategorized/yu.jpg
http://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/200811/08/40/...856132.jpg
http://blog-imgs-10.fc2.com/k/i/t/kitagu...CF2446.jpg

What this has to do with the cat... maybe how he's twisting and turning and curling his body around to wash himself?

I saw a picture of a cat curled up, asleep, with the description of くりんくりんな猫, so that's definitely a possibility.

What's odd, though, is that a some of the pictures described as くりんくりん had a cat just sitting there staring wide-eyed at/close to the camera, like this, this and this. ????? the mystery deepens.

magamo Wrote:

mirina Wrote:I saw a few sentences in Google using から to express receiving a recommendation by someone, such as in the form of xから推薦されました, with "x" being the person or thing making the recommendation. Is this a natural usage, or is this also inaccurate?

会長から推薦されました is ok. 会長から推薦を受けました is also good. The difference is that the passive version usually carries the emotional sense similar to "先生に褒められました/怒られました" because it's the traditional direct passive voice.

Technically 会長に推薦されました can be "recommended by the president," but it requires a stronger contextual clue. If you want to read grammatical explanations why から is better, read the 受身 section in niwasaburoo's e-book (especially the ＡがＢにＣをＶする→ＣがＡからＢにＶ−される part):

http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/25boisu.html#25.2

Here is an example of Xに推薦される = "by" sentences: 俺あいつのこと嫌いなのに、なんか知らないけどあいつに推薦された。Native speakers would take the Xに推薦された as "recommended by the guy (whom you don't like)" because the context clearly says so. Another example is "あんな奴に推薦されたって意味ねー。" The context is that "the guy like him" has no power or is known as a compulsive liar etc. so the fact that "recommended by him" is meaningless. I recommend you always use から in these cases because it causes certain ambiguity explained in niwasaburoo's e-book.

I guess it's too pedantic and simplistic to say "から = by" and "に = for" in the Xに/Xから推薦された structure, but personally I think から is much better if you mean "by the president." If you want to learn a more subtle difference, Xから推薦される tends to be used when it's a good thing while Xに推薦される as "recommended by X" tends to appear in an informal sentence with a negative connotation like the examples I just gave.

Come to think of it, JLPT and such might consider this "Xに推薦される = by X" use to be wrong unless it's clearly the "suffering" kind of passive like "やばい！彼女はないだろって思ってたら、あいつに推薦されちゃった！このままじゃ彼女が会長になってしまう。ど、どうしよう…" (Shit! He recommended her! Noooooo! She's going to be the next president! W-What do I do?!) I'd say, "あいつ彼女を推薦しやがった" in this case though.

The more I think I understand this language, the less I find I actually do.

Thank you for the indepth explanation, Magamo; I'm pretty much going to include your entire comment in my grammar notes.

mirina Wrote:What's odd, though, is that a some of the pictures described as くりんくりん had a cat just sitting there staring wide-eyed at/close to the camera, like this, this and this. ????? the mystery deepens.

くりくりした目 (note no んs!) is "big round (cute) eyes"; I suspect くりくり and くりんくりん are pretty close in meaning, or at least share this submeaning. (Dictionary entries for くりくり don't say anything about being curly, but OTOH check google images for "くりくりパーマ"...)

pm215 Wrote:

mirina Wrote:What's odd, though, is that a some of the pictures described as くりんくりん had a cat just sitting there staring wide-eyed at/close to the camera, like this, this and this. ????? the mystery deepens.

くりくりした目 (note no んs!) is "big round (cute) eyes"; I suspect くりくり and くりんくりん are pretty close in meaning, or at least share this submeaning. (Dictionary entries for くりくり don't say anything about being curly, but OTOH check google images for "くりくりパーマ"...)

Ah, yes, then that makes sense. I kept wondering why things titled くりんくりんポーズ had cats just going O_____O at the camera.

How does やって来る differ from 来る?

What does ぼやかして mean?

I saw it in a television show where the celebs were having a little joke in a shop, then one said 'ハハハ... ぼやかして... そんな、ね'.

Can't find it in a dictionary, and google gives up example sentences (which are headlines so are more likely to stand on their own without context) like:

素敵なツリー 故意にぼやかして？

「目がきれいなところが好き」ぼやかして伝える方法。

なぜか写真をぼやかしている理由

服をぼやかしているのはなぜ？

Any help is much appreciated!

Quote:ぼやかす
〈濃淡の境をぼかす〉 shade off; 〈輪郭をぼかす〉 blur; 〈曖昧にする〉 make sth ambiguous.
⇒ぼかす.

Deconjugate verbs before looking them up...

Thanks very much- I did de-conjugate the verb before looking it up, but the dictionary that RikaiChan uses doesn't have it (and even when you use ぼかす it doesn't have the 'make something ambiguous' meaning that was used in the show.)

Guess I should start using a better dictionary! Thanks again.

It got added to EDICT in May this year. The rikaichan dictionary is lagging a little behind, I guess.