Can I use ~しかできなくさせられた to mean “I was made to do something” with the nuance of “they left me no choice but to do that”?
I don’t think so. I think you need to make it into two clauses:
Something happened, so I had no choice but to do the thing:
何かがあったので、何かをやるしかなかった。
What kind of sentence did you have in mind?
Exactly the one you used as an example. Let’s say, there’s some kind of conflict, and I say “If that’s how you put it, then I have to quit”. Then, people within the group reply with something like “Yeah, we don’t need your kind of people here, go away!”, and so then I want to convey that after being told that, I couldn’t do anything but quit == I was made to quit with that “encouragement” 
Or maybe in that context 辞めさせられた would be enough? Or even just 追い出された?
Here’s a great collection of ことs from the sponsoring company pledge (誓約書) for visitors from Covid-affected countries:
不特定の者との接触を行わないことが要請される場合があることを理解すること。
Full text here: https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/100094426.pdf
そう言われると辞めるしかない!
Thanks! So I was just trying to make it more convoluted than it needed to be?
I think so. My teacher says that even for Japanese the causative passive is a convoluted thing, that makes you pause and think. Especially if you make a mistake in a particle somewhere. Of course you can use it in certain situations.
Oh… got confused about this. Not really sure but I think it applies to both? I think it also depends to who you are talking to. Will also ask friends who might know about this. Kinda thankful you brought this up. It also got me thinking hahah 
While reading 惡の華 I came across this sentence
警察に何もかも言うべきだとお父さんは思う ちゃんとした罰をお前は受けるべきだ
I think it means “As your father I think you should tell everything to the police, and that you should be punished properly”
Though I wasn’t sure and checked a fan translation and they translated it as “As your father, I don’t believe that we should tell anything to the police. Rather than that, you should be properly punished.”
But “should not” would be べきではない, and I don’t see why べきだ wasn’t translated as “should not” as well. Am I missing something obvious or is that fan translation just wrong?
Maybe they didn’t understand 何もかも? Usually 何も on its own is paired with a negative verb…
Huh, yeah. That could be it, I guess. So my interpretation should be the right one then?
Would the grammar make sense if the intended meaning was seperate 何も + かも (as shorted かもしれない I guess)?
Yeah, I agree with your version. Just from context it doesn’t make sense that he says they shouldn’t tell the police. The previous sentence is that hiding it was a sin. So it just makes sense that the next sentence is to not hide it.
I started reading the City Hunter manga and just had a couple of questions about a few points of grammar this sentence:
そんなボロ自転車でロードワークにつきあおうってのがまちがいさ
Am I correct in assuming that the って in this case would be the contraction of というのは?
With respect to the volitional form used in つきあおう would this be a somewhat appropriate rough translation (not really caring about writing amazing English prose here) of the idea being expressed?
It was a mistake that you would choose to follow along on roadwork on such a run-down/junky bike!
My issue is just in making sure I’m reading the intent behind this in situations where the volitional isn’t being used in the ‘Let’s do x’ or ‘Shall we do x’ sense that is usually the translation you get given for this form. In this case it seems it’s more about him saying it was a bad choice on her part to use that bike to ride around with him, no?
Here’s the whole panel just for context in case it helps any:
Looks to me like it could be short for ~おうとする.
そんなボロ自転車でロードワークにつきあおうとするのがまちがいさ!!
Though I’m not sure if that ever gets contracted as such.
OK, so, first of all, all the definitions of 付き合う seem to involve ‘going along with’ someone or something like an event or activity. They don’t mean ‘to follow’ something like a path. That would be… 沿う(そう), I think. That left me really confused though, because I couldn’t figure out how that would work with ‘roadworks’, which I thought was what ロードワーク meant. But then I found out that ‘roadwork’ (without the S) referred to doing training on a road for sports like running. Perhaps you understood that from the beginning – in which case, good for you –, but I’ll just leave this here for anyone who made the same mistake as me. I’d never heard the word ‘roadwork’ before, though I’m sure I would have understood it in the context of sports. I thought there was some kind of adventure/investigation going on in this panel because the manga’s called ‘City Hunter’ (which I know nothing about), so I didn’t make the link.
As far as the translation is concerned though, I think you’ve got the idea. The volitional form indicates intent without necessarily leading to successful action. That’s why it can be translated as ‘let’s do’ or ‘I/we shall’. A more literal translation would be something like
The idea of ‘let me come along for roadwork’ on a bike that’s so run down was a mistake.
It’s really as though the other person’s speech has been frozen in time and attached to the の in のが in order to describe it. Also, I’m only using ‘was’ because it feels more natural in English though. ‘To be’ is only dropped at the end of a sentence in Japanese when it’s in the present tense (である・だ). To preserve that, we could go with ‘The idea of wanting/deciding/choosing to come along for roadwork with a bike that’s so run down is a mistake/is wrong’.
That makes sense in context, but as far as I know, that’s impossible. って is always equivalent to と or という. Even the colloquial usage of it as って=‘hey/eh/come to think of it/on that note’ is linked to という, since there are expressions like というか or そういえば that mean almost the same thing.
In other words,
ってのが=というのが. There’s no は anywhere. If you’re talking about the case where って is used to at the beginning of a sentence, there are two cases:
- 「菓子って何?」: in this case, it’s equivalent to というのは. (Because the sentence is about explaining what something is.)
- 「ゆうくんって、猫が好き?」: in this case, it’s equivalent to は (Because ゆうくん is the topic: does he like cats?)
Thanks for the explanation as that helps.
Yeah, in this specific case Shun is a boxer training for a match. So as you found out the “roadwork” is the running done for their cardio training. I had only really learned this from previously watching the boxing anime Hajime no Ippo. So that’s the only reason I understood the term. 
Yeah, you are generally right about the premise of the series. This and the first few panels are basically just the set up to the case which involves boxers and the girlfriend of one of them. The main character has not yet shown up as this was only page 1.
This one confuses me. It’s from Tae Kim’s:
みきちゃんが
Since there is no verb after って, I would assume that it means “みきちゃん said” but the translation in the guide is:
I heard that Miki-chan broke up with Yousuke.
With って is heard and said interchangeable? Thanks in advance.
The って means that somebody said it. And the が means that みきちゃん is the subject of the first verb you come across. So 別れた. So all you know is that ‘Somebody said that Miki and Yousuke broke up’. Who said it, is not clear.
And of course, because somebody said it, and you’re repeating it, you must have heard it. って is short for と言った in this case.
This interpretation is possible, I believe, but I think it makes less sense. Only context will tell, but in most cases, it’s @Saida’s interpretation that will fit. The reason is that your interpretation would mean ‘Miki-chan (and not someone else) said that she broke up with Yousuke’. That’s probably not the most common way of breaking the news. On the other hand, saying that an unspecified someone said they broke up is a more common situation, since in the other case, the speaker would have to have spoken directly to Miki and heard it from her.
Therefore, the answer to this is no. You can put either verb after って, sure, but when interpreting って alone at the end of a sentence, you’re looking at と言う・と言った.
As far as all other aspects of this question go… I agree with @Saida.
Thanks for the reply. The problem is, I then ran into this sentence in Tae Kim’s:
みきちゃんが、明日こないって。
“Miki-chan says she isn’t coming tomorrow.”
I guess it’s like what @Jonapedia said, I had to read between the lines. Thanks for the help guys.

