Getting a day off vs. taking a day off

Japanese Language Questions
#1

While watching anime I noticed that the verb 休んだ was used to say that the character took a day off work because he requested it, like voluntarily. Immediately after it was corrected with the phrase 休みになった which seems like it was used to say that he GOT a day off, like a national holiday or a forced company holiday. I think it was corrected because it should not be obvious that he took the day off and it should look more like he got the day off from his boss or so.

So my question is if there is a difference in meaning of the words and if 休みになった is a real structure at all (I might have misheard it, although I think is what was said.)
It seems like 休んだ carries the nuance of taking a day off without it being a general holiday.

I know the Adjective + なる structure that looks just like this, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense with 休み being a noun.

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#2

なる is also just a verb on its own, meaning “to become”. So it became a day off. :man_shrugging:

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#3

I think its saying in the first bit that he’s absent or something 彼は今日は休んだ, but then they are like no, he got off work 休みになった.

Usually to take holiday you’d say something like 会社から休みをとる. So I don’t know the nuance of using なる, I feel its ‘getting time off’, so they are talking about him getting time off work. Maybe someone else can explain better.

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#4

Hmm I can’t remember clearly what was being said, otherwise I would post the whole sentence. Saying it “became a day off” sounds weird to me, maybe I’m thinking to literal. I try to find out what exactly was said, maybe then it makes more sense.

I’m pretty sure that this was their intention, otherwise the correction would not make much sense if the meaning is the same.

#5

I don’t think it sounds that weird in Japanese. Searching for it on google in quotes gave 22 million results. And the first link was someone basically asking how to say 休みになった naturally in English.

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#6

No, in Japanese it doesn’t sound weird. It’s just that the translations sound often clunky. That’s what I mean with it sounding weird, you can’t really translate everything word to word. I should really know that by now :sweat_smile:

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#7

お+Verb in the root form +になる is a polite way to say “verb” (since it sounds less direct and thus less agressive).
It’s possible that the character was corrected for politeness rather than meaning.
That being said, there’s no お in your example, so I’m not sure.

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#8

Well, if you want to get more of definitive answer, let us know which anime, the episode, and the approximate time in the episode it was said. I’ve always find having additional ears hearing lines in context helps pick up parts one might miss.

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#9

It doesn’t sound weird to me, in fact it’s happened to me almost just like that.
I had scheduled a day off work in advance, and then before that day came, it became a holiday anyway. So I can imagine this conversation:
Me: I took the day off.
Someone else: well, you didn’t really take the day off, it was a holiday.

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#10

Sure, I just looked it up.

The anime is Kazurasou no Pet na Kanojo, the scene is from the third episode, roughly 12:30 minutes in.

Given the context I’m pretty sure that 休みになった is used here to make it seem like she got the day off from her boss. It goes like this:

かんだ君ん、ほうこごのバイト、休んだ！
じゃなくて、休みになったの！

I’m not sure what ほうこご means. Maybe it’s the place where she works but it could also be a misunderstanding on my side.

I noticed that I referred to the character as he, although he is actually a she. If you talk about a character in third person, what is the normal way of addressing them? Do you say it, or differentiate between male or female and use he/she in English? Just wondering about it now.

#11

Sorry for getting back to you so late. The information you typed was different than where I found the clip you were talking about: Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo fourth episode (from the source I checked).

In any event, it seems like the girl is talking to 神田かんだくん, and she seems to like him. So right after class she says the line you brought up:

神田くん、放課後ほうかごのバイト休んだ…じゃなくて、休みになったの！

It’s as you suspected with the nuance here. She claimed at first that she took the day off, but corrected herself by saying that it became a day off (perhaps because she was called off from work, etc.). You heard it right, she does say 休みになった, which is related adjectiveくなる. In this case, what she said means, “it became a day off” which implies that she had no control over the decision. 休んだ or 休みにした would suggest that she chose to have the day off. You can review the grammar here.

放課後 means “after school”.

Since the character is a girl, you could say “she”. If it’s unclear or you’d like to keep their identity ambiguous, you could also use “they”. The convention of using third-person “he” for generalities or unknown cases isn’t so common anymore (at least to my knowledge). I do both (that is, differentiate and use “they”).

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#12

No worries, I was sleeping during that time anyway and I don’t have time during work to check up on private stuff.

So Thank you very much for taking the time and explaining it to me. I bookmarked the link you put in there, seems like a useful site for studying grammar.

I see… I kind of mixed up the third person with the gender of words in my native language, hence my confusion. Thanks for clearing that up as well!

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#13

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