Category Archives: Grammar

The subtler points of 「以」

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「以」 （not to be confused with 「似」）is a very useful character used in all sorts of words that compare time, space, or objects such as 以来、以降、以上、以下、以外、以内、以後、and 以前 . In all these words, the 「以」 essentially means “besides” and the second character indicates what to compare.

For instance, 「以外」（いがい） uses the 「外」 character for outside so it is describing anything outside of the thing we are comparing to.

田中さん以外に、行く人はいる？
– Is there person going, outside of Tanaka-san? (Is anybody going besides Tanaka-san?)

Notice how there is no particle between 「田中さん」 and 「以外」. While it is possible to insert 「の」 in between, in practice, it is more natural to directly attach the word to the end of the noun that is being compared. This applies to all the 「以」 words given above.

「以」 is an inclusive comparator

I think it’s important to mention that 「以」 means “besides [x]”, therefore, the thing that is being compared to ([x] in this case) is included in the comparison. For example, if we say 「三つ以上」, this means “three or more” and not “more than three”. Or when we say, 「明日以降」 this means “tomorrow or afterwards” not “after tomorrow”.

カードを2枚以上選んでください。
– Please select 2 or more cards.

In English, words for comparisons such as “more” and “less” implicitly exclude the thing that is being compared. People who are used to the English way of doing things need to make sure whether they need to do a little adding or subtracting before using any of the words covered here. For instance, if I wanted to say, “less than three”, I might change this to 「二つ以下」 or use some other expression such as 「未満」. Unfortunately, these comparators are not really systematic and it becomes a matter of learning vocabulary and learning when to use them based on practice.

10歳未満のお子様は乗れません。
– Children under 10 cannot go on the ride.

Here are other ways you might want to say “more than” and “less than“. Unfortunately, you can already see an inaccurate translation of 「以上」.

Sometimes, it might not be necessary to be that picky, but you should be aware of the difference for the times when it really does matter.

Finally, to prove I’m not lying, here is a similar page that explains the difference from a Japanese point of view.

Don’t Suffer Passively

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Some of you may have noticed I recycled content from my personal blog for my last post. For the 2, 3 people that actually read my blog, I offer my apologies as I’ve been busy with real life which sucks as usual. As reprieve, I’m actually going to write about a breaking insight into Japanese. You heard it here first.

There is no such thing as a suffering passive

You may have heard about a “suffering passive” from various textbooks or teachers. In fact, here’s an explanation right here.

Essentially, the concept is that when a passive verb is used, it can sometimes indicate that somebody has suffered from that action. The first two questions that should come to mind is, “What makes it suffering?” and “How can you tell?” The only explanation I’ve seen so far is, “it just is” and “guess”. In other words, no explanation whatsoever. But don’t worry, everything will be cleared up after reading this post.

The suffering passive is essentially a fabricated concept designed for non-native speakers so I won’t go into too many details. Ask any Japanese person with no experience in teaching Japanese and he/she will have no idea what you’re talking about. To put it quite simply, there’s nothing in the language that indicates somebody is suffering from a passive verb. The suffering is only suggested from the inherent properties of the passive form.

Let’s take a very simple sentence.

いいと言った。- Said, “good”.

Now let’s change it into the passive. (reference)

いいと言われた。- Was told, “good”.

The only difference between the two sentences is that the first performed an action (somebody said something) while in the second, the action was performed on someone (was told by somebody).

Now let’s look at the following sentence.

ケーキを全部食べられた。- All the cake was eaten.

Since the verb is passive, the action of eating all the cake was performed on somebody. Let’s say that somebody is myself. Then the sentence means that somebody ate all the cake and that action was done to me. If you think of it the right way, it makes perfect sense.

The Japanese word for “passive”, 「受身」 using the characters for “receive” and “body” expresses what the passive is in Japanese much more accurately. People are doing things to you and you have no choice but to take it like a bitch. The passive indicates that the action was not done by the subject but done unto the subject. In other words, the subject had no control or input on the action.

It is this property of the passive form that can create the sense of “suffering”. However, whether the subject is suffering or not depends entirely on the context. Am I suffering because all the cake was eaten by somebody without my say? Sure, probably… but then maybe not. There is nothing in the language that says. The only thing we know for sure is that the action of eating the cake was done by others, unto me, outside of my control.

Again, think in Japanese, and things seem much simpler and clearer.

Being hungry or full

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Just like I promised, I’m going to go over some actual expressions and some grammar instead of single-word explanations. In this post, I would like to go over how to say whether you’re hungry or full, obviously something that’s going to be useful, especially if you want to ask someone out for a bite to eat. The reason I’m covering this is because just learning the Japanese word for “full” and “hungry” and attaching 「です」 is not going to work. (Well, it works for “full” but not “hungry”.)

How to say you’re full
Saying you’re full is the simple part. The word most commonly used here is the adjective 「いっぱい」, which, as you might expect, means “full” in Japanese. Unless it’s understood from the context, you’ll also need the word for stomach which is most commonly 「お腹」（おなか）. So to simply say you are full, you would most likely say something like the following.

１）お腹がいっぱいです。- Stomach is full. (polite)
２）お腹がいっぱい。- Stomach is full. (casual)

Here’s a sample conversation.

Aさん）お代わりはいらない？- You don’t need another helping?
Bさん） もうお腹がいっぱいだから、大丈夫です。- Stomach is full already so it’s ok.

As an aside, if you want to sound fancy, you can also use 「満腹」（まんぷく） instead of 「いっぱい」. It also has a nuance of being a little fuller than just full as shown by this next example.

１）食った食った！もう満腹。- Ate, ate! Already stuffed.

How to say you’re hungry
Here’s the part where things get interesting. Unlike the Japanese word for “full”, which is an adjective same as English, there is no adjective for the word “hungry”. Well, technically there is the word 「空腹」（くうふく） which means “hungry”, but it is not normally used.

Instead, the verb 「空く」（すく） is normally used to say that your stomach was “emptied”. This means that we must use the past tense of the verb to indicate that the emptying already happened. In this case, it would be either 「空いた」 for casual or 「空きました」 for the polite form. (reference for past-tense, reference for polite past-tense)

１）お腹が空いた。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)
２）お腹が空きました。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)

You can also use the enduring-state form to say that your stomach is in the state of being emptied. The meaning is essentially the same but the nuance is different because the stomach already emptied and has stayed in that state. In other words, the hungriness has continued for a certain period. With the past tense, you get the sense that you just got hungry.

１）朝ご飯を食べなくて、お腹がすごく空いているよ。- I didn’t eat breakfast and I’m really hungry.

Finally, there is a more vulgar expression that is used for being hungry. It’s mostly for the rougher men-folk. Basically, instead of using 「お腹」 for stomach and 「空く」 for emptying, you use 「腹」（はら） and 「減る」（へる）. 「腹」 is simply a 「お腹」 without the honorific 「お」 and 「減る」 is another verb that simply means “to decrease”. The idea is basically the same as before.

１）いつ食べるの？俺、腹が減ったよ。- When eat? I’m hungry.

So let’s go back to what we were originally after, how to ask someone out for a bite to eat!

ボブ）　お腹空いた？どっか食べに行こうよ。
– You hungry? Let’s go somewhere to eat.

みき）　ごめん。もう食べたから、お腹いっぱいだよ。
– Sorry. I already ate so I’m not hungry.

一郎）　俺は腹が減ったんだけど。
– I’m hungry.

ボブ）　お前には聞いてないよ。
– I’m not asking you.

Main Vocabulary Covered
【お腹】（おなか） – (n) stomach
【腹】（はら） – (n) stomach (vulgar)
【いっぱい】 – (adj) full
【満腹】（まんぷく） – (adj) full stomach
【空く】（すく） – (v) to empty
【減る】（へる） – (v) to decrease