Well, “qui ne dit mot consent” as they say.
米大統領選: president of the USA;
民主党: Democratic Party;
バイデン氏: mister Biden;
副大統領候補: candidate for vice-president;
決定: decision;
8月上旬までに; first 10 days of August;
“Mister Biden of the Democratic Party has until the first 10 days of August to make a decision regarding his vice-president regarding the presidency of the USA”
Is that ok?
It sounds like you’re implying there’s a deadline when you say he “has until.” までに just means “by” and I think it’s his choice when to decide.
There probably is some actual deadline, but I don’t think this is it. Just from following the race I haven’t heard anything about that anyway.
ⓐ “This fall’s American presidency election”;
ⓑ 
Vocabulary:
野党: opposition party;
民主党: Democratic Party;
候補者: participant;
指名: nomination, nominating;
副大統領: vice-president;
based on sentence ⓑ 確定させている, just want to make sure, why is させている used here?
To me 候補者指名を確定している would make it sound like he chose himself to be the candidate, which he didn’t have the power to do unilaterally, whereas 候補者指名を確定させている sounds like he caused it to turn out the way it did.
It looks like every paragraph also happens to be a sentence so that makes it easy to number them. I couldn’t be bothered to look up the actual Biden quote from the press conference so I translated it as an indirect quote instead.
I’ve moved things around a bit because the sentence would have been awkward in English otherwise, but the below should be a translation that doesn’t omit anything from the original without clinging to it too much.
② バイデン氏は6月30日、地元の東部デラウェア州で記者会見を開き、女性を選ぶと明言している自身の副大統領候補について「候補者たちの名前は明かさないが、多くの白人以外の女性がいるし、ラテン系やアジア系もいる」と述べ、多様な候補者の中から選定を行っていることを明らかにしました。
In reference to his statement that he would nominate a female running mate, Mr. Biden noted at a press conference held in the eastern part of his home state of Delaware on June 30 that he wouldn’t reveal any names, but clarified that he would choose from a diverse pool of candidates made up of a number of women of color, including Hispanic and Asian-American women.
記者会見 press conference
明言する to declare
副大統領候補 running mate
候補者 candidate
明かす to reveal
述べる to note
多様 diverse
選定 selection
明らかにする to clarify
Something along the lines that he will disclose if he wants to pick a female vice-president in the first 10 days of August.
女性: female;
選ぶ【えらぶ】to choose;
自身: oneself;
副大統領候補: candidate for vice-presidency;
Is the first 『と』a conditional in the sense of “if he choses a female”?
It’s part of とする, which has many definitions.
So here it’s “try to decide” I suppose. I thought it was “try to decide for himself” because of 「自身」but I figured I would then need 『で』? I’m not sure about the connection between 自身 and 副大統領候補.
I don’t think you need the “try” nuance. That’s usually only when it’s something like 選ぼうとする. If it’s 選ぶとする then it’s just “decide to choose.” And ている makes it “has decided to choose.”
自身の副大統領候補 is just a way of saying “his vice presidential candidate” using a reflexive pronoun.
Could you (or someone else) detail this further? I read but I don’t understand…
を確定する means をはっきり決める
Basically “to decide,” for the purpose of this discussion.
He didn’t “decide” to make himself the presidential nominee, even though he wanted to be the nominee. The people who voted for him did that. So by using させる it basically means that he brought about the decision (by campaigning and convincing people to vote for him), though he wasn’t the one who directly made it.
This is an interesting topic. Japanese newspaper headlines in particular can seem very confusing at first because they omit verbs (lots of phrases ending in particles) and often contain multiple non-connected parts (denoted by the use of spaces).
Here’s a decent article explaining how to interpret headlines ending in を、に、へ、か and で. In general the question “which verb was omitted?” should help figuring out the meaning. There usually aren’t many option.
One more thing I found strange at first (but very useful now) is that newspaper articles, especially on NHK, almost always seem to repeat themselves. That is because the first paragraph is usually a summary of the article – and typically good enough that you get the gist without reading anything else. This also means that the density of difficult vocabulary is often especially high here. It’s very useful for learners, though, because it means you’ll encounter much of the vocabulary at least twice during the article.
It’s also worth mentioning that newscasters typically speak in the same way or very similar to how the articles are written. That’s why I recommend also watching news from time to time, it helps getting used to the most common expressions and phrases. Like によりますと which is a very news-y expression (による is way more common in other contexts, even in formal contexts according to my experience).
I think I have trouble understanding the causative which recurrently leads me to misunderstand sentences.
Verbs conjugated into the causative form are used to indicate an action that someone makes happen. Like Captain Picard so succinctly puts it, the causative verb means to “make it so”.
(From Tae-Kim)
It’s a concept absent in French and English (as far as I know). From what I understand the causative is expressed by inflicting the verb in Japanese as opposed to using phrases in English/French. It’s a novel concept to me.
I don’t understand the idea of “make it so”. It doesn’t explain anything to me and leaves me confused.
The causative is used when you cause a “verb” to happen, but you don’t do the “verb” yourself.
There is a causative-form in french a bit similar, it’s “faire + verb”.
“J’ai fait construire ma maison” (I had my house built): I’m not the one who built the house, but ultimately I’m the cause of it (probably by hiring a house making company)
“J’ai fait faire du piano a mon fils.” ( I made my son play piano): I’m not the one who play piano, it’s my son, but ultimately I’m the cause of it.
Now in French it sound quite forceful, it sound like I forced my son to play piano. Japanese causative is a bit different, simpler maybe. If I say 息子にピアノを弾かせました, I just state that I caused my son to play piano. Maybe I forced my son to play piano, maybe my son really badly wanted to play piano and I said ok and paid for piano lessons, it doesn’t matter in this sentence, it just matter that I’m somehow the cause of it.
As leebo said, Biden didn’t decide by himself to be the presidential nominee, because he can’t do that, he has to be elected by the people of his political party. However he caused it to happen, by presenting himself and by doing a successful campaign.
I guess it’s hard to know what’s confusing about it… even if we don’t use inflections, we still express the same ideas, so shouldn’t it still work out? I guess I don’t know what it’s like from a French perspective.
we still express the same ideas
So you’re essentially unsure why saying the same thing from a language to another is difficult? Well, I’d say transitioning an idea from a L1 (first language) to an L2 (second language) is the very core of the challenge of learning a language, isn’t it? Besides learning a vocabulary, learning a second or third language requires adapting the expression of ideas with the proper grammar. I might have misunderstood what you meant.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone as that would be short sighted but using different ways to express a same idea from language to language is definitely a challenge for me.
To give you an idea, French conjugation is more varied and complex than English conjugation. This means that for an L1 English speaker, it is de facto more difficult to express in L2 French an identical idea.
The two sample sentences here have very different connotations. I’d say the first example is voluntary while the second is involuntary.
If I may attempt a translation:
(a) I had my house built.
Meaning whoever built the house agreed to do something for me on a voluntary base.
(b) I made my son play the piano
Implies that I coerced my son to play the piano. If it was my son who had requested to play, I’d say:
I let my son play the piano
Means you allowed it.
So the difference between the two sentence, from my interpretation is very distinct.
I’d say in the first example, I indirectly caused the house to be built (with some agency from the builder) but in the second sentence I indirectly caused my son to play the piano (without his agency).
From that point of view, to conflate both in Japanese makes it a novel concept since it deprives both sentences from their nuance.
Now this is from the point of view of someone who is not familiar with the concept.
Sorry Zizka, you mentioned French so I thought you perhaps understood it. I mentioned faire + verb, because it’s an interesting causative form that doesn’t map cleanly to English. And Japanese causative also doesn’t.
I think the essence of the causative in Japanese is just: “subject cause someone else to do verb”. The details about if the subject indirectly cause something, directly cause something, was coercive or not are unimportant. Japanese doesn’t conflate anything, because causative is usually not used in context in which those details truly matter.
In English we tend to really want to see it through a lens of coercion/permission but there is plenty of case where the causative is used in Japanese to mean neither of those. If you say “犬をたべさせた”, it could mean that you forced the dog to eat, it could mean you allowed the dog to eat (like took it of its chain so it can reach the food), but most of the time it just mean you gave the dog some food, so set up the condition in which the dog was able to eat, caused it to eat. End result is the same in every case.
I think that’s what happen in the original sentence btw, Biden didn’t forced or allowed anything, but he set up the condition to be chosen, it ultimately caused it.
I’m not sure if I’ve said this somewhere before, and it’s definitely true that the Japanese causative works differently from similar structures in English and French (in terms of both form and function), but the Japanese causative is a lot like the German causative (lassen + another verb) because both of them can mean either ‘to make (someone) do’ or ‘to let (someone) do’. I guess that vaguely means that the structure is equivalent to ‘creating a situation in which someone does something’
As for the sentence being discussed, what I’m trying to figure out is whether or not one could have said 指名を確定されている, because he did ‘receive’ the action of having his nomination confirmed. However, it’s completely possible that that structure is rubbish and that I’m misunderstanding the way 確定する should be used as a verb.
I think 指名が確定されているバイデン would be better, even if you could write a full, non-relative-clause version that used を. But there might be more than just grammar at play. I have no idea how Japanese people typically talk about these things, and that might sound weird just because they don’t usually say it that way.
The funny thing is that I’ve seen dictionary examples that use 確定する with が to mean ‘to be settled/decided’, so I’m not sure if using a passive form is actually redundant here. The definition I have in Japanese said はっきり決まる. (On that note, I wonder when it can/should be used with を then…) My friend – who’s been studying and using Japanese much longer than I have – said he honestly isn’t very familiar with 確定する. It might be a relatively rare word, even if it’s not hard to understand what it means.