I would say it’s “My father was told by the doctor not to drink alcohol.”
So, no absolutely not “My father told…”
I think it’s as Leebo said, yeah. I’ve also never heard the “~な” before to describe an action that the speaker themself is doing. That is, 「お酒を飲むな！」 would always read as “Don’t drink alcohol!”. As a command, not describing yourself.
Thanks! I was worried it was something like the father was telling the doctor at an exam or something very strongly about his habits (there’s a note in my textbook that this form is used particularly by males, but that’s always suspect) and I was missing something.
(and thanks to @girakacheezer too!)
BTW, the ている in this doesn’t imply “telling” as a continuing action. It implies “reported speech.” You use this when you are talking about something you heard was said from another source. If you heard it yourself, you can use the plain た form.
So the dad could say 言われた for the same sentence (though he obviously wouldn’t say 父は).
And it’s also unlikely the doctor actually said 飲むな in the meeting with the dad. He probably said something appropriately polite, like お酒を控えた方がいいですよ or something, but people will just extract the main point when talking about what people said.
Oh, interesting! I always thought that when something is quoted with と, it is basically direct speech, and when the gist is being reproduced, this would be done with ように?
But in this case 飲むなように wouldn’t work, I guess, so is that why they used と？
Ooof thanks for pointing that out, I should’ve caught that especially as I just reviewed it. Guess I need to go over that again. And that reported speech makes the use of the grammar point make more sense in my head (as, like you said, it’s not a direct quote).
Thanks again for the help!
There are definitely ways to make it 100% clear that it’s not direct speech. Like I’ll usually say っていうことを言った or something.
But here, from the context of knowing a doctor wouldn’t say 飲むな unless you were about to drink a vial of acid or something in their office, we can tell it’s not a direct quote.
Yeah that trips me up as I think it’s happening now when it’s actually something that happened in the past.
I have encountered this example sentence many times… Usually I understand what’s going eventually. But this I can’t get through, and I am starting to think it has a mistake. ¡Help! with the bold part.
殺人者とうたわがわれていましたが、ついにようぎが晴れました。
I’d been suspected of murderer, but I was finally cleared.
It’s the て form of the passive form of 疑う, which is 疑われる.
But then shouldn’t it be… うたがわれて instead of うたわがわれて ?
Just email them about the typo.
Ah yes! Thank you. I was starting to think it was a grammar rule, and couldn’t find anything on the internet about it.
「ようこそ お越しくださいました」
What is going on grammatically with “くださいました” mean here? I’m thinking it’s a conjugation of “くださる”, but I can’t figure out how exactly.
Some keigo verbs have a weird (i.e. old-fashioned, I think) conjugation. Here is an overview for 下さる:
Hello people! I have a tiny doubt.
In the sentence:
その町の中心から一番近くの空港までどのくらいで行くことができますか。
I understand the meaning of the sentence BUT I do not understand the usage of the の there. I know it can be used to nominalize and to show possessiveness (in many ways) but why would it appear after and adverb 近く? What does it respond to?
Thank you so much!
From what I can tell, 近く here is actually functioning as a noun more or less so this is simply a possessive の. That is, 一番近くの空港 is just the “nearest airport”.
If you look up 近く in jisho you can see it’s listed as its own noun:
Yeah 近く can be a “の-adjective.” Also, there’s no possession here. It’s just a noun modifies noun usage.
「今回は テントを用意させて もらった」
What’s the させて here? My understanding of the sentence is “This time I’ve prepared tents, so receive them.”
させる is the causative form of する. So literally “I had someone let / allow me to set up the tent.”
Not sure what the context is exactly, but it’s a way of saying you set up the tent, heh.