The newsletter is online! This month I wrote about the nice, efficient phrase 初めて言われました (Hajimete iwaremashita, That’s the first time anyone has said that about me). I think it’s potentially a nice way to gain a clearer understanding of the Japanese passive form. Give the podcast a listen where I go into further detail:

Passive was one of the very first things that I wrote about when I started How to Japanese back in 2008 (please ignore the fact that I refer to it as a “tense,” thank you!), and I mentioned a similar expression よく言われます (Yoku iwaremasu, Everyone says that about me) in my August 2011 Japan Times article about humor.

Looking at よく言われます and 初めて言われました together, it does seem like “someone”/“everyone”/“no one” can be edited out of many Japanese phrases and replaced with/implied by a passive verb. Because these people aren’t specific people, and because there’s no need to emphasize the everyone- or no-one-ness of the situation, there’s no need to say 誰も (dare mo, everyone/no one).

This holds true for one of the examples I shared in my 2008 blog post: カンチョウされた！ (Kanchō sareta!, Some kid poked me in the butt!) This is a great example of the “adversative passive.” The passive implies “Not only was I poked in the butt, I did not enjoy this and suffered this happening to my person.” If you’re sharing this story with someone, maybe it doesn’t matter which kid it was; you’re just trying to communicate how you were harmed, so “Some kid poked me in the butt!” is fine. No specificity needed.

But we can add specificity if we need to, of course. All we have to do is mark the kid with に (ni). 太郎にカンチョウされた！ (Tarō ni kanchō sareta!, Tarō poked me in the butt!).

Speaking of カンチョウ, has Japan grown up a little? Maybe I just haven’t spent much time around kids or haven’t been watching enough Japanese comedy shows, but I feel like it’s much less a cultural “thing” than it was when I first visited Japan in the early 2000s.

Getting back to the point, I’d say that passive is probably the single most useful form to master in Japanese (and I might lump in いただく (itadaku)・もらう (morau) in there alongside passive because they really are similar in many ways) to take you to the next level and give you access to more natural expressions. It’s difficult to imagine not using it once you get it.