行かれる vs 行く

フィンに行かれるのか。

According to google translate that sentence means “Are you going to Fin?” Could someone tell me why 行く is in that particular form? From what I know 「フィンに行くのか」means the same thing.

Thanks

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The passive is often a more polite form.
That could be it? Not 100% sure here, but it’s the only reason I can see.

Edit: Then again, the verb isn’t in polite form. I need to think about it more.

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You’re right in that it’s polite, but it’s google translate, so it’s just funky.

In short, OP, google translate is an approximation at best when it comes to certain things. You are correct in saying フィンに行くのか. the Google translate answer here isn’t grammatically wrong per se, but it’s just unnatural. It’s just wrong.

Imagine saying “This day I am traveling to a field of baseball to let the exhibition pass into my eyeballs.”

Nothing is really grammatically wrong with that sentence, but we know it’s just wrong.

Even that being said, フィンに行くのか is still a bit rigid, but it’s better than the answer GT gave you :sweat_smile:

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The way I understand the OP, the Japanese sentence didn’t come from google translate.

I can imagine this being said in a game or fictional setting, where the honorific られる and plain form could go together.

In a normal conversation you might have in the real world, we would expect something more like [place]に行かれますか as a polite / honorific way of asking “Are you going to [place]?” So knowing why this one isn’t like that could be helpful.

It’s always best to give the entire context when asking questions like this. Who said it, to whom, in what situation, surrounded by what other text, etc.

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My first guess was that it’s something like 「バスが」フィンに行かれるのか
Since it’s the passive form the subject could be a thing…

フィンに行くのか
Would translate to “Are you going to Fin?”

HOWEVER there is yet another option.
If Fin is a person… It could mean “(yuck) Finn… is going?” With the understanding that Finn going is in some way annoying or undesirable to the speaker.

We really need more information…

Oh actually! Is it also possible that this の is actually the shorten form of もの, meaning "Is this “the one” going Fin? Eh, maybe not…

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This demonstrates why when you ask a question about Japanese it’s really really important to provide context, not just a single sentence. Often with Japanese parts of the sentence are omitted because they are obvious in context, but then when you only see the single sentence it becomes ambiguous. Also even if a sentence is not ambiguous or difficult for a native speaker, the people on this forum are fellow language learners, and providing the context can turn a really tricky question into an easier one.

In this case, Google search comes to the rescue – I’m assuming this is from Final Fantasy 2, and in particular this line of dialogue by an old guy NPC:

フィンに行かれるのか?悪いことは言わぬ、やめなされ。あそこは帝国の魔物たちがうろつく危険な町じゃよ。北に行ったところにガテアという小さな村がある。おぬしらではそこに行くのがやっとじゃろうて。

So with this context we can gather that Fin is a place and that the old guy speaks with a bunch of old guy / fantasy speech mannerisms. So @Leebo is right, and this is the use of the passive verb inflection because the old guy is being polite to us, and it sounds a bit odd because it’s supposed to, like English fantasy dialogue with thee and thou. The underlying meaning is “You’re going to Fin?”, same as フィンに行くのか.

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Damn, sorry about that. I thought that because the sentence was so short and seemingly gramatically simple it didn’t need any context, lesson learned, I will always provide it from now on.

Thank you for the help.

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Dang, good job of this one. I even tried to google the line and didn’t find the source. This is the reason that trying to learn Japanese from fiction can be tricky.

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