Hi, I’ve been studying Japanese for a while but gotten stuck in a slump as I’ve now discovered a new ‘‘term’’ called the ‘‘condition marker’’ that I still have not understood or grasped half a year after discovering it.
‘’ this で is a case particle to mark a condition/scope.
1:
Similar examples of noun + で include 合計で (“in total”), 割引で (“at a discount price”), 確認で (“for conformation”), 一人で (“alone”), 土足で (“with one’s shoes on”), 本気で (“seriously”), 笑顔で (“with a smile”), etc. All of these work adverbially.‘’
2:
‘‘This で is a particle that is functioning as a condition/situation/scope marker (e.g., 全部で = in total, 出来心で = out of a whim, 癖で = by habit, 割引で = at a discount price)’’
I have never learned or heard about this usage in any grammar book and it’s still confusing me. How is ‘‘for confirmation’’ or ‘‘by habit’’ conditions? I would’ve thought they were purpose or reason/cause markers. It feels like this term is really random in the way it works.
If someone could explain to me what it means and works that would be grateful. I still don’t know what he means even 6 months after reading it.
I personally think of it almost always as ‘under the condition of X’
癖で = by habit = under the condition of [a habit]
全部で = in total, in its entirety = under the condition of [completeness]
割引で = at a discount = under the condition of [a discount]
一人で = by oneself = under the condition of [being by oneself]
追加で = in addition = under the condition of [adding something]
‘‘Under the condtion of confirmation’’ —> ‘‘for confirmation’’
My brain is slowly starting to make sense of it even if it is novel. Thanks for the reply! I think this could be very useful info to make the grammar point more crystalized
Do bear in mind that as the grammar point notes under 1) it can also mean “in the context of X”, though to me personally you can sort of conflate that meaning with “under the condition of X” often. Language isn’t a one to one art and this is one of those particles that makes that really abundantly clear.
Yeah I think my main worry was not knowing the fundamental grammar structure for me to be able to continue doing input. I felt kinda like I was stuck in a standstill not knowing how the grammar term ‘‘condition’’ worked with so many various examples differing in translation considering it felt so fundamental.
I think it’s a poor word choice for the situation. If you have a specific Japanese sentence you don’t understand I’d be happy to help. But the English explanation isn’t something worth spending time trying to understand if it doesn’t quickly make sense imo
Was thinking the same for a long time. I don’t have any sentences at the moment but considering you yourself was kind of confused by the title how would you personally classify the examples I brought up from the links and post and the grammar behind it? I always tried to see if the で was showing a cause/means/method etc while reading. Like how do you personally think I should go about these examples and in what kind of mind-frame I should be when I encounter them? I kinda feel not knowing what it does here grammatically would break input immersion as it seems very important
You don’t need to know the underlying grammar explicitly. You can just remember what 一人で means and when it’s used, 本気で and when it’s used, etc.
The thing is I don’t think about how to classify anything I read. I would just remember them on a case by case basis if I were you. If you held a gun to my head and asked to classify this specific usage I would say “as”
I went to the movies as one 一人で行った
We went as a group of three ３人で行った
300 yen as the total 合計で300円
To me though like most de uses just feel like one big blob. Like 笑顔で is really just the normal use specifying how something is done. Which really isn’t that much different from just using で as the te form for だ。Like they’re all clearly very similar, yet I wouldn’t even say all the examples in your post follow the same usage pattern. Just familiarize yourself with the different ways で can be used and apply the relevant one during immersion and you’ll be fine.
It’s so versatile even in Japanese so trying to think about it in English will never work. Take it one sentence at a time and focus on understanding what the sentence means. Don’t worry so much about why it means what it means because the answer is always just “because that’s what Japanese decided on”. A Japanese person can sit there thinking really hard about why people inside a bus are “on” a bus unlike when they’re “in” a car, but can you as a native speaker articulate why? No, and it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you know when you’re talking about a plane or bus or somethung you also use “on” and understand that someone whos on a plane is inside it and not on top of it (probably).
I do largely agree with Vanilla here – the ‘translation’ I’m doing is just an extra step I use if I don’t understand something at a glance, and the で particle is so ubiquitous you’ll probably internalise it quickly enough given wide enough reading.
Everyone else has answered your question, but as a side note, the condition/situation/scope explanation is another example of the Japanese language’s love of boundary markers which always seem to translate badly into English. 一人で〈用言〉→〈用言〉within the bounds set by 一人.
I’ve reached a point where I stopped taking those threads too seriously. While some like ‘‘in total’’ and ‘‘in addition’’ I fully agree on, for confirmation and by habit is NOT a condition but instead cause/reason/purpose. I think this is a huge misunderstanding on the stack exchange user’s part as to how the particles are seen and translated. 癖で 確認で are just cause/purpose/reason markers and thats it.
一人で 皆で おにぎり一個だけで 追加で 合計で
確認で 癖で
Unless these are markers that are trying to provide a context for under what condition something is referred to like ‘‘as a confirmation’’ I do not believe any of these would make sense to be conditions. They provide a reason based on context. It does not help that the user in question has a lot of points making it easy to be trapped by misunderstandings and bias.
