Thank you everyone for your help on what is possibly now the most not-short grammar question in here lol
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Upon reading some more 泉鏡花, I came across some kanji usage that I just can’t wrap my head around. The specific line in the book I was reading was "
I can stomach a lot of strange kanji usage, and usually delight in figuring out why they are used, but what should be a particle being replaced with kanji vexes me. The only other clue I’ve found is that there are also cases of "
Everyone who reads 泉鏡花 must already know why it’s used or just aren’t curious because I see 0 results explaining it online. Anyone have some knowledge about this strange case?
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I mean, everything can be kanji if you go back far enough, right? 
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Everything’s a kanji if you’re brave enough. Like WaniKani literally using the English letter L as a radical.
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But if you go back that far, the particles may disappear as well 
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Which particle is 唯 supposed to be, the conditional と ?
Can you post a full sentence using it?
(there is also 迄)
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I’ve never thought about it before, but which と is the one in とある~ anyway? (as in “a certain ~”, notably used in the LN series titles とある魔術の禁書目録 etc).
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Googling suggests that it’s an adverb in classical Japanese meaning そう。そのように。あのように。 (Weblio, about halfway down the page.)
Also, the ある, to be clear, is not 有る but rather 或る.
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I discovered this ＊way＊ too late, and I’m still disappointed. Always liked thinking of ある日 and ある人 as “an existing day” and “an existing person”.
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At first I thought it was a 接助 as it commonly is in と同時に, but as @Belthazar pointed out, とある is likely different as it uses と as a 副詞. Looking at the weblio entry for とある, I learned that I had been interpreting some usages of it wrong. It lists it as ちょっとした, which makes much more sense in some of the contexts I’ve seen than just a vague “a certain~”.
とみれば is also different as the meaning is ふとみると. Unfortunately kotobank doesn’t list what part of speech the と is, so it’s hard to tell. In any case, the author has written all of these three examples with 唯, but not every time, and sometimes with 只 instead.
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Unfortunately, even after a 30 minute discussion and research session with a 国語先生, the answer we ended up with was 「分からん」
I found so many examples from novels, newspaper articles, and even descriptions of art pieces, but none of them gave any hints as to the origin of it or why it stopped being used. I guess I’ll just have to accept it as one of those quirky kanji expressions that fell out of favor in the early 20th century.
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Is this an example of the infamous Japanese double negative?
2026年4月1日から、交通のルールに違反して自転車で危険な運転をした人は、お金を払わなければなりません
Bolded bit is where I’m getting lost, literally it’s just “you don’t have to pay a fine/money if you don’t break the rules” but it actually translates as “you break the rules then you pay a fine”?
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V_nai + なければならない is usually considered as a bit of “grammar” meaning “must” (e.g. here’s bunpro’s entry for it).
It does technically literally have a double negative conditional in it (if the driver doesn’t pay then it won’t become [an acceptable situation] I guess) but this is such a standard set phrasing that it’s really better not to try to break it down like that I think.
Compare なければいけない, also a way to say “must”.
So the whole sentence is “From the 1st of April 2026, people who cycle dangerously in breach of the rules must pay a fine”.
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Oh, I half recognise that grammar bit!
thanks
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Sorry for the basic question. I just heard something in a dialog lesson that sounded strange at first to me – the use of 「行かれる」in the (partial) casual phone conversation between a man and a woman:
女： あ、それより、何か用事だった？
男：いや、また週末にでも食事にどうかなあ、と思って。
女：そうねえ、この仕事のプレゼンが金曜日なの。だから、週末なら行かれると思うわ。
男： そうか、よかった！じゃあ、また電話するよ。
The teacher, a native speaker, mentions: 「次の表現、行かれる。これは、違うんです。Passiveじゃないんですよね。気を付けて下さい…これはね、Possibilityなんです。」
This was my first time hearing 行かれる used in this way – is it maybe just a non-standard usage for 行ける? Thanks in advance.
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This surprised me, but apparently it does turn up occasionally. I found this article about it which says:
- there’s nothing inherently grammatically weird about 行かれる for expressing “can”, as it’s the same られる auxiliary that ichidan verbs use (e.g. 起きる → 起きられる)
- it’s the older form: 行ける didn’t catch on until the Edo period (the article speculates that the rise of 行ける is because having passive and potential have different forms is pretty useful)
- there are still some people who use 行かれる, but about 80% of native speakers find it weird (違和感がある)
- the article speculates that the casual ら抜き potential form for ichidan verbs (起きる → 起きれる) may be essentially the same process acting to disambiguate passive and potential, but less far advanced
If you google for “行かれる 可能” you can also find questions from people (presumably in the 20%) saying “I’ve always said this, but is it wrong?”.
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I just encountered this sentence
震度6弱の地震がありました。
What does the 弱 do here? Is it like a unit of earthquake strength? I tried to look for it but couldn’t find a reference for it.
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You’re most of the way there - check out #3 in the Jisho definition for 弱!
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And also the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale. 
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Dangit, my dictionary app pranked me. I got the two definitions at the start, but not the one at the end.
So it’s like “a weaker 6” compared to “a stronger 6”
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