q -Rareru : the Passive Form
q Example Sentences
q Useful Words
-Rareru : the Passive Form
Did you ever want to say something like "The monster was eaten by Ranma."?
Of course I doubt you ever wanted to say a strange sentence like that! Besides
being strange, the sentence is also in the passive form.
Grammar Review: Passive vs. Active
What does passive mean when you're talking about sentences? I'll give you a
couple of very clear examples!
Examples:
Active - The man hit the apple.
Passive - The apple was hit by the man.
Active - Jack killed the snake.
Passive - The snake was killed by Jack.
As you can see by the examples, you are making the sentence sound more
"formal" or "intellectual". Experts say that the brain has to go through an extra
step to process a passive sentence. Your brain converts it to an active sentence
first! So basically, you want to avoid those kind of sentences when writing. You
don't need to use them, really.
What if there was a monster approaching in the distance, and you didn't want to
be eaten by the aforementioned monster? You could express your desire to
continue living in two different ways:
1. I don't want the monster to eat me!
2. I don't want to be eaten by the monster!
You might be able to guess which one is passive -- It's the second one.
In Japanese, the first sentence would look like this:
ano bakemono ga boku wo taberu nante iya da!
that monster (subject) me (who) eat (a thing such as) disliked is!
I would like for that monster to eat me!
