Howdy,

So Ive come to the section in Tae Kims guide in which he talks about the passive form of verb conjugation in which he says,

"Passive verbs are verbs that are done to the (passive) subject. Unlike English style of writing which discourages the use of the passive form, passive verbs in Japanese are often used in essays and articles."

Now the last thing I want to do at this point is memorize another verb conjugation pattern which Ill hardly use. Im wondering how many of you speakers out there use the passive form? He indicates its use in written Japanese but Im wondering how often it gets used in spoken Japanese. This also goes for the "causative-passive" conjugation.

Thx

dusmar84 Wrote:Im wondering how often it gets used in spoken Japanese.

Constantly. If you've ever been exposed to any kind of Japanese, you've probably seen/heard it many times already. Although it's used comparatively less, it's still important in English as well.

Javizy Wrote:

dusmar84 Wrote:Im wondering how often it gets used in spoken Japanese.

Constantly. If you've ever been exposed to any kind of Japanese, you've probably seen/heard it many times already. Although it's used comparatively less, it's still important in English as well.

Second

Passive form is used constantly, and if one is learning Japanese then knowing and being able to use passive form is a necessity. It's a simple conjugation, so you shouldn't worry about it, you'll learn it quickly, and encounter it consistently in the language to reinforce that knowledge.

It's as essential as は and が. Used all the time.

I'm getting always confused: there is the passive forma and another form, the causative - correct me if i'm wrong, I'm not sure, i'm mixing them up always - who look really identical/similar/alike in their endings..

F.e. "to make somebody do" = Causative (?)
犬が食べさせた。 I made the dog eat.
犬が死にさせた。 I made the dog die. (= I killed the dog. But somehow this sounds more sadist, anyway)

And the passive voice would be.. 窓が閉まった。 The window was closed (by somebody.. can this "by somebody" part be omitted or is it really necessary? Then the person closing the window would be perceeded by a は, right? AはBが-Construction )

閉まる doesn't have a normally occuring passive form; it's pretty much just transitive verbs that have passives. However, there are additional uses of the passive that can occur with intransitives (like the honorific passive).

Passives aren't used as often in Japanese as they are in English, though, and there are a number of uses that don't match English (the adversative for instance), so it does merit some reading. But it's an important form.

(In particular, passives aren't used with inanimate things very often in speech -- although in English we often say something like "This book was written by our teacher", in Japanese to use 書かれた there sounds a little formal or written style. I think the reason for that is that in English you have to use the passive to focus the sentence on the book by putting it first, whereas in Japanese you have は and a freer sentence order to do that for you.)

Tori-kun Wrote:And the passive voice would be.. 窓が閉まった。 The window was closed (by somebody.. can this "by somebody" part be omitted or is it really necessary? Then the person closing the window would be perceeded by a は, right? AはBが-Construction )

It's not passive, it's an intransitive verb. It's only the (often poor) English translations that are passive, e.g. 見つかる > was found.

A passive construction requires a transitive verb. All you do is make the direct object into the subject. I like you > you are liked. Intransitive verbs, on the other hand, have no direct object.

Javizy Wrote:A passive construction requires a transitive verb.

In English they do, but not in Japanese, e.g.

雨に降られて困った。
去年お父さんに死なれました。

One of the best explanations of this stuff is in Jay Rubin's book "Making Sense of Japanese" where he discusses passive, causative, passive-causative and other related forms like -te morau etc.

Well, I always associated the expression "passive" with transitivity: The door was opened. (by somebody, the "by agent") Transitive verbs require a subject, otherwise it's rather senseless (the question "what was opened actually?" has to be answered, the unnecessary and additional information by whom or why can be omitted). And I suppose that's in Japanese also the case (isn't it? It makes no sense otherwise). *more confusion*

In the core deck for anki the verbs like 閉まる [difference to 閉じる??] are translated as "to be opened" (in English: passive voice). Any advice? Guess Genki 2 has something alike in the grammar section explained...

Tori-kun Wrote:Well, I always associated the expression "passive" with transitivity: The door was opened. (by somebody, the "by agent") Transitive verbs require a subject, otherwise it's rather senseless (the question "what was opened actually?" has to be answered, the unnecessary and additional information by whom or why can be omitted). And I suppose that's in Japanese also the case (isn't it? It makes no sense otherwise). *more confusion*

That is true of some cases where the Japanese usage parallels the English usage, but the problem is it doesn't cover all uses of the passive in Japanese.

I would think about "passive" as being the *form* of the verb (i.e. what ending it has: i.e. add (-r)areru. Then look at how those passive verbs are actually *used* in Japanese. Some uses overlap with English, but some are actually quite different from English, namely the adversative/suffering use, and the honorific use. But the verb form is still passive in Japanese (because of its (-r)areru ending).

雨に降られた = passive form of intransitive verb; adversative meaning (I suffered because it rained; I got rained on etc.)
お客さんが出られました= passive form of intransitive verb; honorific meaning (the guest left)

You also need to be careful about particle usage with the passive. Rubin contrasts these 2 sentences which differ only with が vs. を
鞄が盗まれた(the suitcase was stolen; basic passive)
鞄を盗まれた (X suffered; Y stole the suitcase; adversative passive).

Does that help, or confuse matters even more?

I actually got used to passive thanks to doramas, the (first) sentence in the passive that led me to understanding it. From "Mother", episode 8, when Hitomi answers to Nao.

「好きじゃないって言われたの。」

@fugu68 - I think adding on the rarer uses of it at this point would be confusing.

@Tori -- Intransitive =/= Passive.
There transitive and intransitive verbs. All this differentiates is whether or not there is an agent acting upon the object.
Passive is a form of the verb -- often times of a transitive verb.

When you translate intransitive verbs into english, they often come out in a passive voice ie. 見つかる→to be found
Others, like 閉まる can be translated regularly "to close" except there's -no- agent implied. You can't say 私はドアが閉まった.

Passively, it would be the transitive verb, which -does- imply an agent. ドアは◯◯に閉められた。→ "The door was closed (by the ◯◯ agent)"

But regardless of translation, see how it's being used in Japanese.
Transitivity is the -type- of verb: implied agent or not?
Passivity is the -form- of the verb: the noun with が is being acted -upon- an agent (explicitly defined or not)

Im not doubting that the passive form gets used a lot I guess what Im trying to get at is how its being used. If I understand correctly there are two ways in which it is used.

1) Like its English equivalent.
虫は鳥に食べられる。
Bugs are eaten by birds.

2) A politeness thing.

Now do Japanese people go around speaking like the example in 1? Or is it predominately a politeness thing? Im strictly referring to spoken Japanese here.

thx

@fugu -- I suppose I got completely messed up by now >.< Just don't get the hang of it :S

@Asriel -- Thank you for the explanation, I will refer to it, when I understood what this whole thing is actually about. I did not get this point f.e. 私はドアが閉まった. Why can't I say "The door was closed by me."? Naturally the sense and content is the same like in the sentence "I closed the door."
ドアは◯◯に閉められた。 Yeah, I know the agent has to be marked by 'ni'. But why is it しめれた　and nor しまれた?

I just started learning vocabulary straight forwardly with Anki's core deck and well, the transitive and intransitive forms just appear. I suppose I am also confused what "transitivity" and "intransitivity" means in this context, as it's completely different in English, German and also Latin. Thanks for helping, though!

Tori-kun Wrote:I did not get this point f.e. 私はドアが閉まった. Why can't I say "The door was closed by me."? Naturally the sense and content is the same like in the sentence "I closed the door."
ドアは◯◯に閉められた。 Yeah, I know the agent has to be marked by 'ni'. But why is it しめれた　and nor しまれた?

It's because in this type of sentence which has (or implies) an agent, you need to use a transitive verb. 閉める is transitive and 閉まる is its intransitive counterpart. So you can use 閉まる(i.e. intransitive) in sentences like "the door closes automatically".

But you need 閉める (transitive) in sentences like "I closed the door", and that's the one you need if you want make it passive, if you turn it round to say "the door was closed (by someone)".

Wow, thank you.. I suppose I got pretty mixed up with causative/passive. Am I right if i say causative is used to express what you made sb/sth do? Like in English, for instance

I made the dog eat. 私は犬を(?particle? I suppose it's rather に than を or am I wrong?)食べさせた。 That'd would be the causative form of the verb 食べる - 食べさせた

Tori-kun Wrote:Wow, thank you.. I suppose I got pretty mixed up with causative/passive. Am I right if i say causative is used to express what you made sb/sth do? Like in English, for instance

I made the dog eat. 私は犬を(?particle? I suppose it's rather に than を or am I wrong?)食べさせた。 That'd would be the causative form of the verb 食べる - 食べさせた

Yes, that's right. I think you can use either particle in that sentence (maybe に is better though.)

If the causative verb has a direct object, then use を after the direct object, and にafter the person/thing that has been made to do whatever it is.

犬に魚を食べさせた (I/you/he made the dog eat the fish)

Just another example to make sure I at least got the causative forms of the verb

犬が死にさせた。 I made the dog die. (how sadist that sounds, well i did not feed it for instance )

Tori-kun Wrote:Just another example to make sure I at least got the causative forms of the verb

犬が死にさせた。 I made the dog die. (how sadist that sounds, well i did not feed it for instance )

No, that's not correct...

You can see the conjugation rules here:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/causepass.html#part2

死ぬ -> 死なせる

Also, why が? が would mark the subject of your causative verb, meaning that the dog was causing something else to die.

I thought the object has to be marked by が when using the causative..

Edit: 私が犬に死なさせた。 would be the correct form I guess.

Tori-kun Wrote:I thought the object has to be marked by が when using the causative..

Edit: 私が犬に死なさせた。 would be the correct form I guess.

You have an extra syllable in there. 死なせた is the correct form.

Yes, you definitely need to learn the passive. No way around it. In any case, you need to learn the identical form to express a potential form of many verbs (like 食べられる).

To throw in my 2 cents (and I hope that yudantaiteki or others will correct me if I'm wrong): The passive in Japanese used to be slightly different from the passive in western languages. I.e. it represented something like "suffering."

E.g. 母が子供に死なれる makes no sense to me in English: "The mother is died upon by her children."

By way of translation from western sources (just like 彼 and 彼女 appeared), the passive came to represent something similar to what we know from English, but in many situations, it still seems to imply something different to Japanese ears.

tokyostyle Wrote:

dusmar84 Wrote:Now do Japanese people go around speaking like the example in 1? Or is it predominately a politeness thing? Im strictly referring to spoken Japanese here.

The main usage, at least in my experiences, has been #1. If people are using it in the keigo sense I probably wouldn't notice because you don't need the latter half of the sentence to understand and respond to the request.

Is there any nuance to speaking in the passive? For example what would be the difference between

虫は鳥に食べられる
and
鳥は虫を食べる

Personally, I think I rarely speak in the passive voice in English (unless Im doing it subconsciously) so it would seem to be a difficult/unnatural transition to start speaking in it in Japanese.

The reason it can be a little awkward for English speakers at first is because Japanese has two forms of passive, whereas English only has one. That is, Japanese uses direct as well as indirect passive, and English only uses direct passive.

With indirect passive the verb can be intransitive (such as the examples of 死ぬ）and the direct object can stay as the direct object. Indirect passive describes someone or something doing something which affects someone else, and the subject has no control over the action being described.

An active sentence simply describes an event as X does Y, whereas the indirect passive expresses that someone else is affected (usually negatively) by that action.

Compare:
Active sentence: ボブはジョンのワインを飲んだ - Bob drank John's wine
Indirect passive:ジョンはボブにワインを飲まれた - Bob drank the wine (and as a result John was negatively affected)
Notice that the direct object (wine) stays as the direct object for the indirect passive.

The agent is always marked with に in indirect passive sentences. In sentences where there's other people that are being marked by に as well, the agent must precede them.
Thus: 私はボブにジョンに電話された - Bob called John (and I was displeased)
Bob, as the agent, goes before John, whom the phonecall is being made to.

The indirect passive just takes practice and experience with for most people to get used to since it doesn't exist in English. It is a necessary part of Japanese, and many sentences will simply sound very odd if you say them using a direct sentence rather than a passive one (for example, saying that your dog woke you up (direct) rather than saying you were woken up by your dog (passive) is awkward, because as human beings we see the world from our point of view, and express things as such. The passive form takes our point of view by marking our displeasure and expressing that we are victims of the event, whereas the direct form (just saying the dog woke you up) takes a neutral point of view. It's unnatural to take a neutral point of view for events when they can be described from YOUR point of view, and that's one of the major uses of the passive form. If your friend reads your diary behind your back it's unnatural to say "She read my diary" in the direct form, when the passive form expresses that the action negatively affected you and takes your point of view)

Keep in mind that passive form does not always express victimization, however. That has to be interpreted through context. Passive forms, indeed, can be used to describe positive events as well!