Delina, thanks for the link and for clearing up that みたいです is more colloquial than そうです. But I'm still kind of confused, because both Genki II and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar list the exact same example sentence:

雨が降りそうです。
It looks like it will rain.

The explanation in Genki isn't very helpful, only saying that a verb + そうです "describes an imminent event." So I looked it up in DBJG:

DBJG wrote:

[そうだ] indicates that what is expressed by the preceding sentence is the speaker's conjecture [...] based on what the speaker sees or feels. [...] そうだ expresses the speaker's conjecture based on visual information. Thus, this expression can be used only when the speaker directly observes something.

This seems really self-contradictory and is what's confusing me. It seems like it had said that そうだ could be used for predictions based on what the speaker feels, but then it goes on to say that the predictions have to be based on what the speaker sees.

Then, when I looked up みたいです, it says it's just the colloquial form of ようです. But, according to DBJG, "When the speaker uses ようだ, his statement is based on firsthand, reliable information (usually visual information)." OK, now I'm completely lost. So みたいだ is usually used for predictions based on what the speaker has seen, but it doesn't have to be? Then how is it any different from そうだ? Except for the mention of "reliability" in the entry for ようだ/みたいだ, these explanations make them seem completely interchangeable.

Even after reading Tae Kim's explanation, I'm still puzzled because he doesn't really go into depth about そうだ, just writing that it is used to "indicate a likely outcome given the situation." And his explanations of ようだ and みたいだ appear to mean that they have to be based on what the speaker has seen, but that would seem to contradict DBJG. :S

そうだ in 雨が降りそうだ and 雨が降るそうだ are different. The former is similar to ようだ, but the latter is different in that usually it has something to do with what you have heard. The latter use of そうだ is similar to らしい, and you can read about らしい vs. ようだ/みたいだ here, and らしい vs. hearsay そうだ here (IceCream gave the link to this in the らしい vs. ようだ/みたいだ thread.).

The other kind of そうだ can be divided into three types: one is "I think X (because of its appearance)." Another type refers to your guess/judgment/inference from the current situation and/or experience, and the third meaning is this-is-about-to-happen. ようだ has too many meanings to list here, and some of them are quite similar to そうだ.

But I don't think this kind of explanation would help understand the difference between そうだ and ようだ. So I'll post a wacky explanation from the view point of what's going on in native speakers' minds.

Your textbooks may explain the difference by showing the difference in reasoning etc., but that can never be accurate. The actual difference between non-hearsay そうだ and そうだ-like ようだ lies in the psychological distance between you and the event, appearance, or other kinds of thing you're mentioning. When you use そうだ, you're psychologically/emotionally tied to the thing/event/situation/whatever and often you're picturing an imaginary world where X in Xそうだ is true and you're standing there in your mind. You might be in an on-going/about-to-happen event, and in that case, the imaginary world can be the very close future world you're picturing in your mind.

In other words, you use そうだ when you're both an observer and a person who is currently involved in some way while ようだ is used when you feel you're an observer and kind of an outsider. When you use そうだ, the situation you're taking about is psychologically in front of you.

For this reason, it's impossible to use そうだ when you're talking about an event that already happened or finished; the current yourself living in the "now" time-frame is always an outsider to the world in the past, and you always feel a certain distance between you and a past event. Of course you can say 雨が降りそうだった when you mean you felt that the "about-to-rain" was psychologically related to you and that it was an on-going event you were experiencing in the past. But it just means "雨が降りそうだ" happened in the past, i.e., you were observing the situation in the past and felt it was related to you.

If you say 雨が降ったそうだ, it only means you heard it had rained, i.e., the other kind of そうだ I mentioned earlier in this post. If you want to say "It seems that it rained," you say 雨が降ったみたいだ/ようだ.

雨が降るみたいだった (it seemed that it was going to rain) is used when you were just an observer and psychologically distant from the rain.

It doesn't matter if it's visual information or your conjecture when it comes to the difference in usage. It's just in certain situations you often feel that things are in front of you in an emotional sense, and some types of reasoning appears more often when you observe a situation as an outsider. For example, when you talk to a cheerful girl, you say:

元気そうだね (more likely used when her cheerful appearance cheers you up)
元気みたいだね (you could sound like you're indifferent)

Another example is:

死にそうだ ("I'm dead tired")
死ぬようだ (You sound like a spiritually enlightened monk who is observing his own death without any worldly emotion)

A real girl would say イキそう when she's coming, but a creepy guy who's fingering a female android would be depressed when he hears her say イクみたい because it clearly shows that the robot has no emotion and is just observing the programmed behavior during sexual intercourse.

I guess it's quite difficult to grasp this psychological thing because it doesn't seem English distinguishes "seem" "appear" "think" etc. this way. Sometimes そうだ and ようだ are pretty much interchangeable too. But I think the general rule is that you use そうだ when you feel it's very "close" to you and in front of you in an emotional sense.

Note that ようだ/みたいだ has a lot more meanings such as "like" as in "I hate a guy like him," and you can't always use そうだ just because it's psychologically in front of you.

Last edited by magamo (2009 November 19, 4:53 am)

magamo wrote:

A real girl would say イキそう when she's coming, but a creepy guy who's fingering a female android would be depressed when he hears her say イクみたい because it clearly shows that the robot has no emotion and is just observing the programmed behavior during sexual intercourse.

My stomach hurts

This is pretty much the greatest illustrative example of all time.