I think I answered my own question reading the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar but as for
the dictionary states “the difference between direct passive and indirect passive is that in direct passive sentences a person / thing is directly affected by an event (i.e., a person / thing is the direct receiver of someone’s / something’s action) , while in indirect passive sentences the effect of an event on a person is indirect (i.e., a person is not the direct receiver of someone’s / something’s action).”
Oh… ok, I think I get it. ‘Direct passive’ would be when the person or thing involved would be marked by を in the active form, like 彼が愛される or ケーキが食べられた. ‘Indirect passive’ would be stuff like 俺は財布を盗られた. I’m not sure which category the passive forms of intransitive verbs like 怒られる and 降られる should go into though. Thanks!
(Someone please correct me if I’m wrong) I think both direct & indirect passives can use transitive verbs, but only indirect passives can use intransitive verbs.
The dictionary states after some examples, “notice here that in (1a) the verb nigeru ‘run away’ is intransitive and in (1b) there is a direct object tabako ‘cigarette’. Neither (la) nor (1b) can be expressed using the English passive construction “be + past participle”. This type of construction, however, is frequently found in Japanese and is called the indirect passive.” And then further down they mention “in indirect passive sentences the agent of the event is usually animate and the action is volitional.”
But there are a few exceptions like the example Leebo gave of 雨に降られた.
Wait, so is this direct or indirect? I would say indirect since the rain’s action doesn’t inherently have a target. (I know that ultimately, these distinctions probably don’t matter as long as one understands that the Japanese passive is broader than the English passive, but I think it’s still good to figure everything out.)
Is the ん in sentences such as 128MBのRAMがあるんですが、64MBしか認識しません saying you are explaining something in the “128MBのRAMがあるんですが” part or saying you are going to explain something in the “64MBしか認識しません” part?
In compound sentences, んだ kind of sounds like it is adding reasoning to the construction, making it clear that it is objective and uncontroversial. So here it is like "While it is a known fact that it has 128 MB of RAM, it recognizes only 64 MB of it.
I guess so. I was just hesitant because the active construction for the verb ぶつける is generally ‘[thing/area hit] に [thing with which the hitting is done] をぶつける’. Its more literal meanings translate as ‘to use/throw (something) to hit’, so I wasn’t sure how that would affect the passive form, especially the use of に. Also, I wasn’t sure if ぶつける would imply volition, which wouldn’t be appropriate for an unthinking merry-go-round. 当たる seems more accidental, in my opinion.
Ultimately, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with your sentence since I found an example of something similar for a truck in the Wisdom EN-JP dictionary, but I can’t find many other example sentences for this construction, especially in monolingual sources, so I’ll be doing a bit more research before I start using that structure personally. (I’ll also ask a friend who’s more fluent than me, since I don’t have that much practical speaking experience.)
PS: Yes, I’m probably being too careful about trying to sound ‘authentic’, I know.
In Genki lesson 14 they say we can express “as many as” with number word + も. And then give the example:
私の母は猫を三匹も飼っています。
Today, I happened to come across this grammar point in the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar, and they state “the number is optional, … When a number is used it has to be a number that ends in 0, such as 10,100,1,000,10,000, etc.” So I’m kinda confused as to why Genki gave 三匹も as an example?
Where in the Advanced dictionary is this? Having trouble finding it. The Beginner dictionary covers も as “as many as” too, but doesn’t specify that it has to be a multiple of ten, though curiously all of the examples used are multiples of ten.
My understanding was it just had to be a number that you personally think is high. Like, it could be 3 if it was the number of people in the same room who share the same rare last name and are unrelated.
That’s explicitly the phrase 何(counter)も - you can insert a power of ten after the 何 to make “tens” or “hundreds” or “thousands”, but inserting something else doesn’t make sense. “Threes”? “Fifty-sevens”?
Where did the quoting particle go in 人混みで一緒にいるときLINEで「ちゅーしよ？」とか送られてくるんですよ ? Also, can I say (or rather type) 「何々」は…ですか to my teacher without having to use quotations for the 「何々」part?