Mina-san,
Which is cooler? The causative or the causative passive?

Have you heard about the new TV-show “jPOD”? I was so dissapointed when I saw it wasn’t about you guys xD

The passive causative…let’s not beat around the bush here, folks, it’s just plain evil: less a grammatical structure than an evil ploy to discourage foreigners from even trying to learn Japanese.

I have never, ever picked up on it on the first go in conversation. Never. I’m writing a letter to the emperor asking him to abolish it.

Yeah, I hate both of them. But the causative passive has to be the worst.

Anybody have any tips on how to remember it?

Same problem as Michael, its reading this lesson as a 2 min video that wont download.

There’s something wrong with the podcast feed in iTunes. It’s broken and won’t download this lesson. Can someone please try to fix it?

Thanks.
Love&Kisses

Mike

Hey guys,

I am still confused by this sentence (second part of it)

子供が、無理やり読書させられたと感じないように
子供と一緒に本を選ぶようにしています。

I’d probably translate it with “I’m selecting books together with the kids… ”
rather than “reading with the kids”?
What function does the (second) ように have here?
Thanks for any help!!!

〜ようにする means something like “to make sure that”. So I guess the sentence should be translated as “I make sure to select the books together with the kids so that they won’t feel they have been made to read against their will”

“A dictionary of basic japanese grammar” gives 〜ようにする as meaning “someone causes some circumstantial or behavioral change to take place”…:???:

This is a valuable lesson. After all these years in Japan, I am still very shaky on the causative and causative passive (suffering passive) verb tenses, just as Japanese speakers of English tend to be weak on subjunctive, present perfect and past perfect verb constructions, for which there is no direct correlate in their own language. And as Peter mentioned, Japanese use the causative and causative passive constructions very frequently. Without them, polite Japanese 「敬語」 and many subtle expressions would be impossible. I need more practice with this, so here is a 「無理やり」 attempt to employ my tenuous command of these verb forms.

Yesterday Miki-san wrote in her blog that she had never been to the Sapporo Snow Festival, but would like to go someday.

ピーターさんに美樹さんをさっぽろ雪祭りに出張をさせて、氷や雪のオブジェの写真を撮らさせたり、チンギスカーンと言う羊の肉料理をたべさせたり、jpod101の他のスタフに妬みの種をまかさせられたり、どうでしょうか？

jPod に勉強をさせられた！

Bjornさん

It’s really a great book. The only complaint I have about it is that if there is only “basic grammar” in it, I probably won’t be any good at japanese for another hundred year or so. There’s also a “dictionary of intermediate japanese grammar”, and I shudder at the thought they might produce a “dictionary of advanced japanese grammar”….

Wow. I’m still confused about how to make and use the causative and causative passive.

And I don’t think anybody was slurring in this lesson? The words were pretty clear. I used the Learning Center too. It was easy to follow….