“Earlier” and “Early” are not the same. In the first sentence you gave, earlier is a time reference, not an adjective, so you would use この前 or さっき.
In a sentence like “I got up early this morning”, early is an adjective and you can use 早く
今朝は早く起きました。
In your second example it works: “Don’t wake me up so early” こんなに早く起こさないでください
(I think)
早く起きた would mean “I woke up early.”
“Quickly” would be 速く
Yeah you could use that kanji to explicitly mean quickly as opposed to early, but what I was getting at was that if I heard はやくケーキを食べる I would think the meaning was “quickly” and not “earlier” like they were trying to say. I think Heiopei explained it a lot better than I did.
Yes, まだ早いです。means “It is still early”.
(Erm kinda relating to the question above?)
I was using an app to supplement my studies, and the app was teaching me adjectives and “近くに” popped up . I’m guessing the に here is the particle に? And not the “change something into an adverb” に? Because 近く meaning “near” is a noun, so versus all the adjectives I was learning, it requires the particle に … right?
Actually 近く can be a noun, an adverbial noun or an adverb. When used as an adverb it can mean something like soon or shortly. Or it can be used as an adverbial noun to modify a verb meaning near or close, etc. For example something like 近くに住む to mean “to live nearby”. It’s more than just a simple noun.
Was there a sentence it was used in to provide more context to the usage of it you saw?
Thanks for your reply. Yes, there was a sentence:
“私はメインストリートの近くに住んでいます”
Hello. I’m reading now “Breaking into japanese literature” parallel text book and here is one sentence with different usage of と particle and って that I can’t understand.
じゃ、私の顔が見えるかいと一心に聞くと、見えるかいって、そら、そこに、写ってるじゃありませんかと、にこりと笑って見せた。
And translation in the book is:
“Can you see my face?” I asked her urgently.
“See it?” she smiled. “It is reflected here in my eyes, is it not?”
My questions:
What is a function of と in “一心に聞くと” ?
Why after that it changes to girl-answering context, is it because of って？
Why there is again と in the girl answer “写ってるじゃありませんかと”?
In both instances they’re quoting particles.
Does this clear it up?
「じゃ、私の顔が見えるかい」と一心に聞くと、「『見えるかい』って、そら、そこに、写ってるじゃありませんか」と、にこりと笑って見せた。
You wouldn’t write it that was because, well, it’s ugly, but hopefully that shows the nesting quotes. The narration uses と because it’s book narration, but when she asks the question back, she said って out loud.
Oh wait, were you asking about the と at the end of 一心に聞くと?
That’s the conditional, and here just means “when” or “after” the verb. When he asked, she then answered.
thank you! it’s pretty clear now, seems I was confused by double nested quotes
I am perplexed by the use of passive tense in the following sentence of a novel I’m reading:
あの女の子は指導に従うようなことはなく、好きに泳ぐし好きに歩く。最初は大人も注意していたけれど、今は諦めて放っておかれていた。
(Context: the MC is attending swimming classes, and there’s this free-spirited girl the MC is describing in that paragraph).
While the meaning seems quite straight forward, I am confused as to why 放っておく is in passive form. 今は諦めて makes 今 the topic, and 大人 seems to be the subject, since they 注意する in the previous sentence. So, at the start of the part in bold everything seems to fit since the adults are the ones giving up: 大人が諦める.
But what’s with the 放っておかれていた? 放っておく means to leave alone, so why would the adults be the ones left alone, when clearly it is the girl that they are leaving alone / neglecting?
Any help is appreciated!
I’m not certain, but I think this sounds like indirect passive. The grammar dictionary has a section explaining it, but I never really got the hang of it. The meaning is something like “the subject is affected by the doing of the verb” if memory serves.
Lemme see if I can find an explanatory link…
Thanks, that’s a very interesting article. So, if I understand correctly, in this “indirect” passive tense, the 大人 are not the ones “passively receiving” the action of the verb, but instead are somewhat “inconvenienced” by the fact that she’s being left alone?
The article you linked also links to a Tae-Kim blog post that shows an interesting example:
(私が）ケーキを全部 食べられた
Which roughly means that the subject 私 is “inconvenienced” by the fact that someone else ate the whole cake. As most textbook examples, that seems to make sense very well (Tae-Kim goes on to debate that the “inconvenienced” implication is not really there in japanese, but I think I get the idea)
But in my example something feels off, since the 大人 are the very actors that are performing the 放っておく action. They seem to be “indirectly affected” by something they themselves are doing; I am guessing in a sense of “there’s no helping it” way. Is that even possible?
=@.@=
No, it’s the girl who’s being affected by the doing of the verb. Or possibly the first person.
Honestly, I’m just guessing.
A fill-in-the-blank exercise from my Basic Kanji workbook:
大学まで電車で（ 通うと ）、30分かかる。
Is the と in the answer acting as a type of quotation particle for the description of the type of commute being undertaken???
I don’t think it’s that use of passive voice, because it functions grammatically identically to the “direct passive.” If you want to emphasize the inconvenience of rain, you still say 雨に降られた. The に is absent in that sentence, and trying to read it that way doesn’t help it align any more obviously with the first clause regardless.
It just reads like an implicit sentence switch between clauses. At least that’s the only way I can make sense of it. The explicit subject of the first clause is the adults, and the implicit subject of the second the girl, who has been given up on and left to her own devices.
My non-native expectations would be for both clauses to align and have に（も）注意されていた in the first clause, but I suspect that consistency just isn’t an important enough factor to have overridden the desired flow of the sentence for the native writer.
That’s a correct understanding of that (slightly figurative) use of the passive voice:
雨が降った。It rained.
（私は）雨に降られた。I got rained on/out/rain ruined my plans even if I wasn’t caught in it directly.
Though I don’t think that’s what’s happening in this passage. (Or rather, I don’t think it’s a particularly non-literal use of passive voice.)
Edit–
Unless!
The narrator feels particularly put out themselves by the adults coming to ignore the girl, or that the girl is particularly close to the narrator. In which case you could read it as the “indirect passive,” with an implicit （彼女を）.
最初は大人も注していたけれど、今は（彼女を）諦めて放っておかれていた。
Such that the implied subject of the second clause would become the narrator, and it would become, essentially, “I had had my girl given up on by the adults.” But … that’s a lot of round-about work when it seems easier just to read the subject switching to the girl herself. It also doesn’t really change the meaning or make the sentence any cleaner. Hard to say without more context, but I can’t imagine any native speaker would read it that way.
It’s the conditional と. If you commute by train it takes 30 minutes.
Thanks, Leebo - that’s a form/use of と that I’m only vaguely familiar with; I will look it up now that I know what it is. Cheers!
I came to this conclusion on my own but nice to see some confirmation on my own theory, thanks !