After a lot of googling, my best guess is that this uses the “non-exhaustive list” ～たり～たりする as described in Tae Kim and bunpro. But both of those sources state that ending in ～する is part of the structure, and this second verb doesn’t. Of course it’s not a する verb, but then neither are some of the examples in the sources, and they still add する. Am I completely confused and this is just something else entirely?
Page 151
It’s interesting how it changes from ください to 下さい between the first and second panels on the page. I think it’s just for emphasis(?). Has anyone seen this done in other writing?
Yes, I also read this as a non-exhaustive list. I’m not sure why it’s not 妹さんを脅したり責めたりするのはやめてあげてください but I assumed this was an alternative way that was grammatically correct but less of a mouthful.
I understand that ください is used when you are asking someone to do something (i.e. following the て-form of a verb), and that 下さい is used when you are asking someone to give you something (i.e. following a noun). I also heard that it’s a grammar rule not well known by native Japanese, and therefore frequently broken. (Found a reference below)
I know that this is a combination of 来る and なる, and I think that くなる is there because the negative form of the verb is being treated as an adjective (as in たい form). However, my problem is when trying to translate this kind of structure, because I don´t know how to give the nuance. Could it be something like the following?
連絡 => Contact (as in “getting in touch”)
連絡が来ない => No contact comes
連絡が来なくなる => It becomes such that no contact comes. (where “it” is the general situation)
連絡が来なくなった => it became such that no contact comes.
連絡が来なくなったから => because it became such that no contact comes.
Certainly this is too literal for English. My best try for a more natural translation would be something like
“Because you stopped contacting me” or “Because I stopped receiving messages from you”
Many thanks for the breakdown!! It´s perfectly clear now. I feel that sometimes I´m overthinking the が particle. From now on I´ll bear in mind that 99.9% of times it´s simply the noun, adj, noun phrase, etc. that is doing the action of the verb. 99,9% because precisely in the following page there is the construction:
-が心配する,
where it seems that が (I´ve also read in some cases を, I don´t know if they are interchangeable) is the object someone is worried about.
I was wondering why this week was so quiet only to find I forgot to put this thread on notification… Good to see there’s been some discussion going on after all =D
Would you believe me if I told you this が is marking the subject? And that there is no object in the sentence?
The dialogue spans pages 151 and 152, but because it’s two sentences joined together by から, we can look at the sentence on page 152 in isolation:
「叶実が心配だったんだ」
Let’s remove the explanatory のだ and see what sentence is underneath:
「叶実が心配だった」
In English, if you say “I was worried about you,” the word “worry” is a verb. What about 心配? Is 心配 a verb?
The best way to determine if a word is a verb is to ask, does the verb (without any modifications or helpers attached) end in an う-row okurigana character? (Okurigana is the hiragana characters that come after the kanji.)
The kanji 心配 does not have any okurigana, so we know it cannot be a verb. (Note that 心配 does have a verb “form”: 心配する. However, that’s not what’s used here. In the panel, 心配だ is used.)
We also know it cannot be an adjective. Adjectives end with the okurigana い, so we know it’s not an adjective either. (Notice: しんぱい does end in い, but in its kanji form, 心配, there is no okurigana い.)
When it comes to Japanese words, if it’s not a verb, and it’s not an adjective, expect it to be a noun.
Disclaimer: It’s debatable on whether 心配 should be called a “noun” or a “na-adjective” or another term. Because it takes the coupler (coupula) だ, I will refer to it here as a noun.
Since this sentence (the portion we’re looking at) ends in だ (well, the past tense version, だった), we know this is a “noun[1] is noun[2]” sentence.
Rental Big Brother is saying “Kanami was 心配.”
What does 心配 mean? Checking a Japanese dictionary, it means 「思いわずらうこと。」 “A worried about thing.”
Filling in the meaning above, we get:
Rental Big Brother is saying “Kanami was a worried about thing.”
Because there had been no contact, Kanami was a worried about thing. In this sentence, Kanami in the subject being described as a thing that was worried about.
When you see が following a noun (as opposed to at the end of a sentence), you can feel safe in knowing that it is indeed marking the subject!
Omg, I hadn´t read the dialogue properly and didn´t notice until now that 心配 wasn´t in its する form but in its noun form (even though I saw the coupler ) Many many thanks for your detailed breakdown!!
That´s going to be gold for me from now on. Forget the English grammar and translate directly from the Japanese grammar. Many thanks again!!
Wow, that conversation between Oniichan and Kazutaka had me on the edge of my seat!! I wasn´t expecting it at all. Just a couple more questions from this week´s pages:
Page 148
怒られないか心配かな?
Is the negative form being used as to sound more polite?
What´s the grammar beneath that か? I assumed it´s there to mark an implicit question but I don´t know if certain conditions within the sentence are required in order to use it. I thought at first か was only used as an end-of-sentence question marker or doubt-admiration-explanation particle, but it seems it can also be in the middle.
Page 153
お兄ちゃんがレンタルなんて利用されてるだけだって怒って
I just wanted to check my translation with you guys, because I want to grasp the exact nuance of this part. I don´t know if I understood it correctly.
I read: “My brother (Kazutaka) said I was just using something like a Rental, and scolded me”
General grammar question
This last line, alongside with the last bubble in this page, where Oniichan says: お兄さんに会わせてほしい, made me think about the usage of passive and causative in Japanese. Why would we use these structures instead of the plain active form, for example in this last request? Is there a sense of politeness or some other deeper nuance when using it? Or is it just another common way of saying things as we would do in the active form, used at a person´s own discretion?
Page 157
俺に関わるな
I learned this な as a harsh prohibitive particle, as in "don´t do…! However, at first I understood it here as a negation:
“This doesn´t concern me!!”
Then in later readings I came up with the possibility of this more or less free translation to respect the な grammar:
“Don´t blame it on me!!”
What do you guys think? Am I going in a wrong direction here?
Many thanks in advance for all your help, as always!!
Disclaimer: I didn’t mark anything in spoilers as 1) I go into depth breaking things down, and 2) we’re near the end of week 12. If you haven’t read through week 12 yet, and don’t want spoilers, please feel free to skip over my wall of text for now.
Page 148
「怒られないか心配かな?」
Let’s look specifically at the embedded question:
「怒られないか」
First, let’s look at 怒る (おこる). This is a verb, for the action of getting angry.
The final る has been replaced by れる. Some people will tell you this is the passive form. It’s not. Passive is English grammar for an English translation. But we’re looking at the Japanese grammar for the Japanese original. This is the 受身 (うけみ) form.
What is うけみ? According the dictionary Goo, 「文法で、主語が他からの動作・作用を受ける意を表す言い方。」 “In grammar, a way of saying that the subject means to receive an action or effect from another.”
Cure Dolly calls うけみ the “receptive form”, because the subject is receiving an action. The action being received here is “getting angry”.
怒れる = receive the action or effect of getting angry from another
In English, we don’t use the active voice and say, “I received my parents getting angry.” Instead, we use the passive voice and say, “My parents were angry with me.” You can see why people call うけみ the passive form, because English rewrites this sentence to use a completely different type of grammar, and it’s convenient to use this unrelated grammar as a label for the Japanese grammar.
Please give me a moment to climb down off of my うけみ soapbox. It’s gotten pretty tall these days.
Why did I go so deep into うけみ form? Because it helps to understand the use of the negative here.
「怒られないか」
怒れる = I will receive the action or effect of getting angry from another.
怒れないか = Won’t I receive the action or effect of getting angry from another?
English: “Won’t (my parents) get angry with me?” (passive voice)
Consider that the base of this sentence is:
「心配」
The subject (が-marked) and coupler (だ) are unspoken, but because 心配 is a noun, we know a “complete” version of the core of this sentence would look like:
「∅が心配だ」 (Note: I’m using ∅ to fill in an unspoken subject.)
As we reviewed on a separate page earlier, 心配 is “a worried about thing”. What kind of worry is it? If you ask 10 people to name something they are worried about, you’ll likely hear 10 different kinds of worries. And people may even list off multiple things they’re worried about. Even in English, the “worries” can refer to so many things. There exist so many kind of worries!
How do we narrow it down, to be more specific as to what the worries are about? We do this by modifying the word 心配/worries.
Consider the following in English:
“My worries keep me up at night.”
This doesn’t tell us what kind of worries they are.
“My worries about whether I’ll oversleep keep me up at night.”
Now we know what the worries are, because “worries” has been modified to be more specific.
How about if we modified worries with a question?
“My ‘will-I-oversleep?’ worries keep me up at night.”
Going back to the sentence from the panel:
「『怒られないか』心配かな?」
Here, I’ve clearly marked the sentence that modifies 心配 to more narrowly define what the worries are.
“Is it ‘won’t I receive the action of getting angry (from my parents)’ worries?”
“Is it ‘won’t (my parents) get angry at me’ worries?” (passive voice)
In English, we’d probably also replace the noun “worry” with the verb “worry”:
“Are you worried your parents will get mad at you?”
Looking at my breakdown above, do you see where this か is indeed being used at the end of a sentence, which is embedded into the main sentence as a modifier for 心配?
Page 153
「お兄ちゃんがレンタルなんて利用されてるだけだって怒って…」
You’re correctly identified the って as “said”, but I’ll add some inner quotation marks to make it more clear before diving into it:
「お兄ちゃんが『レンタルなんて利用されてるだけだ』って怒って…」
“My big brother said […], and he got mad (became angry with me), and…”
The quoting of what Kazutaka said is:
『レンタルなんて利用されてるだけだ』
Let’s focus on this portion:
「∅が利用する」
Again, I’m using ∅ to denote an unspoken subject. We’ll have to infer the subject from context. We already know it can only be either Kanami or Rental Big Brother.
On its own, the word 利用 (りよう) is a noun, meaning “use”, as in “A textbook’s use is to spread knowledge and information.” However, because it has する on it, that means the action of 利用 is being performed. “Use this textbook to spread knowledge and information.”
This brings our English translation thus far to “∅ uses” (where ∅ may be a pronoun such as “he” or “you”).
する is in its せる form, させる. This is the “causitive form”. In English, this includes works like “make” (“I made him clean his room”) and “let” (“I let her go to the mall”). At its essence, this form is used when causing an action to take place (whether by force or allowance).
「∅が利用させる」
“∅ causes to use”
Someone causes (makes or allows) the use of something.
「∅が利用させてる」
“∅ is causing to use”
Someone is causing (making or allowing) the use of something.
I often had difficulty when I see なんて, so please forgive me for a poor explanation here. なんて is similar to “something like […]” in English. So, 「レンタルなんて」 is similar to “something like a rental”. Also, the fact that there’s no particle here, I don’t know how to tell if なんて marks a topic, subject, object, or otherwise. For all I know, it’s modifying 利用…
And so, due to “I don’t know”, I’m going to write this as:
「∅がレンタルなんて利用させてる」
“∅ is causing to use such a thing as a rental”
For the subject, is Kanami causing the use of a rental, or is Rental Big Brother causing the use of a rental, in Kazutaka’s eyes? Here’s my read on it:
“He’s making you use such a thing as a rental.”
「∅がレンタルなんて利用させてるだけ」
Now let’s add in だけ, which means “limit”. It’s similar to “only” in English, but without any implications. (In English, “I have only five dollars” implies that five dollars is a small amount. だけ doesn’t have that kind of implication.)
“He’s only making you use such a thing as a rental.” (“That’s the limit of it. There’s nothing more. He doesn’t care about you. The only thing he’s doing is making you rent him, so he gets paid.”)
And the final だ:
「∅がレンタルなんて利用させてるだけだ」
“It is that he’s only making you use such a thing as a rental.” (“The fact of the matter is, that’s all there is to it.”)
Disclaimer: I’m still a learner myself, and I may have errors (especially where I’ve noticed my weaknesses).
General grammar question
There is no passive voice in Japanese. The passive voice is often used in an English translation when the うけみ (る/れる) form in the active voice doesn’t sound right in English.
Compare:
“John received a hit in the face by the volleyball.” (Active voice)
“John was hit in the face by the volleyball.” (Passive voice)
I’m not familiar with if the causitive form ever gets translated into a passive voice. This is entirely because I’ve never looked into it. I don’t have the experience of knowing whether that happens or not. That said, looking at the line you’ve quoted:
「お兄さんに会わせてほしい」
“I want to be let to see your big brother.”
This is a fairly literal translation in the active voice, but it is awkward in English. Less awkward would be:
“I want you to let me see your big brother.”
I expect an official English translation would use:
“I want to meet your brother.”
Consider Kanami lets Rental Big Brother meet her big brother. We could say:
“He was let to see her big brother.”
But this is awkward in English. We do sometimes use let passively:
“He was let in.”
However, I can’t think offhand of many passive uses of let outside of a small number, such as:
he was let in
he was let go (he was fired???)
he was let loose
To round back to your question on the use of passive voice:
The うけみ form often sounds awkward in English when using the active voice, but “sounds right” when using the passive voice. (The passive voice may change the meaning of the sentence, though!)
I expect the causitive often translates into the active voice. I’d have to see examples of it translated into the passive voice to comment on them.
Page 157
「俺に関わるな」
You used “concern” in your first translation, and “blame” in the second. If you keep “concern” with your second translation, I’d say that’s about right:
“Don’t concern me!”
“Don’t involve me!”
You can see here where it’s a “harsh prohibitive”.
Omg, a million million thanks for all that breakdown!!! Everything is so much clear now. If I have troubles again with all these grammar points I´ll surely come back to your text as a life-saver. This is the kind of grammar that pushes the “absolute beginner” to the limit and which I remember was being talked about in the first threads of the bookclub. It´s complex, but once you understand it maybe just 70-80%, you feel like your progress has rocketed, and that keeps you motivated to continue. Many thanks again!!
P.S: I can´t wait to see how this first volume ends… Ready for week 13!
Isn’t it nice that things get hardest right near the end of the volume (rather than in the middle, or in chapter two)? That’s one of the reasons I wanted this to be a ABBC read =D
Howdy friends, so happy to see there has been a healthy discussion here, since it covered most of my doubts as well–special thanks to @kousei22 for making most of the questions and to @ChristopherFritz for the always mindful answers!
After reading this thread up to now, I’m left with just one (rather silly) question:
Page 151
すみませんが妹を怖がらせないでください
How the が marking the subject of the sentence as being すみません works here?
I translated it as: Sorry but please don’t make she (younger sister) be afraid.
But that’s just the “English version” of this sentence that made more sense to me, since I could not arrive into a more “literal translation” that let’s me inspect the nuances of the Japanese grammar being used here.
I don’t think this が is marking the subject of the sentence, I think it just means “but”. The topic of the sentence is the person he is addressing, but this is obvious from the context of the situation, so there is no explicit topic mentioned within the sentence.
I was going to say the same as @Micki. As far as I´m concerned (to add to what he has said) this が is the formal version of けど, and, according to Bunpro, is widely used in literature. I infer from this that it would be natural for it to be in fixed polite expressions such as in this one including すみません: “I´m sorry but…”. I think the Bunpro fact that it is “widely used in literature” could be misleading, though. I´d say it´s just the formal version of けど (which, of course, would be the most appropriate too when writing an academic essay or something similar).
I’ve mentioned before that が marks the subject, but I may have left out one minor details: only a noun (including a clause ending in の) can be a が-marked subject. When you see が after something other than a noun, it’s as @Micki replied.
I avoided mentioning this other が before because I didn’t want to confuse things. But now’s just the time to expand!
Noun+が is the subject, but what about when が is at the end of a sentence? This completely Japanese page on grammar talks about this が a bit. I’ll give translations:
Usage
Sample
確定の逆接
努力した が 、失敗に終わった。
Contrastive Statement
They tried, but they ended up failing.
単純な接続
食べてみた が 、おいしかった。
Simple Connection
I tried eating it, and it was good.
並立の関係
見た目もよい が 、味もよい。
Parallel Relation
It looks good, and it also tastes good.
I’m only familiar with the first usage, so I don’t know how if I translated the latter two sample sentences correctly.
Well… that explains a lot! thanks y’all, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on that next time I encounter it, really glad I asked!
I guess I’m just too early (and too deep) on Cure Dolly’s material to have learned that, right now が always marks the subject is pretty much stuck in my mind!
) Many many thanks for your detailed breakdown!! 
)