I am a bit confused here. I would have thought “to let something pass” would be 通させる. Can someone explain to me why I am wrong?
Kr,
This one’s mostly down to the imprecision of English. 通す is kind of like… you let things pass simply by failing to block them. I don’t want to start using other words that are also grammar terms, but it’s kinda like a passive sense of “let” (but it’s not passive voice). You’re not a bouncer outside a club who’s letting people pass that meet the entry requirements and blocking everyone else, it’s more that you’re just standing out of the way so that people can pass by.
I tried doing a Google image search to get some concept ideas, and one that frequently pops up is an image of someone threading a needle - the thread can pass through the eye of the needle because there’s nothing there to block it.
If, uh… if that makes any sense.
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I think this is one of those words that’s better learned by encountering it and learning phrases that it’s in, rather than learning it as a word on its own with some English equivalent. The WK explanation says
The way this verb is translated into English changes a lot depending on the noun it’s paired with. For example 火を通す is literally “to let the fire pass through”, and means “to heat through”. 針に糸を通す is literally “to put thread through a needle”, so means “to thread a needle”.
When you’ve encountered a few of those various use cases then they’ll kind of join up to give a sense of what the word means overall.
As for why it’s not a ~させる ending: the base verb just already includes (in some of its senses) the idea of letting/allowing, so you don’t need to add させる on as well the way you would for a different verb whose base meaning didn’t have that idea built into it. (Another similar one you’re going to encounter soon is 聞こえる at L12, which often means something is able to be heard: the base form just has that sense and you don’t need to conjugate a potential form for it.)
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I think you actually could use this for a bouncers job doe
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