When To Be Passive
“Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening!” – Gertrude Stein
Passive form is one of those things that’s speckled about everywhere, but just a little bit at a time. Kind of like pepper on a salad, small but spread out. It’s not super common, but it’s not uncommon, either. It has plenty of uses, and depending on what you’re watching, reading, or writing, it’ll show up more or less depending on a few things.
In English “the passive voice” is often discouraged for some reason which is irritating because it makes learning passive form in Japanese all the more difficult :p
The Japanese people, on the other hand, aren’t exactly known for their directness. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you haven’t noticed already, passive form sort of softens the meaning of the sentence, even if the meaning is nearly the same. Take the following sentences, for example.
A. John hit Frank.
B. Frank was hit by John.
So, it sucks either way for Frank, let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. But… when you read these two sentences, which sounds like the (slightly) better situation? I’d go with (B). For some reason, it just sounds better. Why? because John isn’t directly performing the action anymore – it’s just something that happened.
While passive form can be interpreted as a “wording choice” it also has the benefit of making a sentence sound more polite. The Japanese are all about their politeness levels, and surprisingly, the more passive your sentence is, the more polite it tends to be. Japanese like to beat around the bush. It’s one of the things that some Japanese have trouble getting used to when dealing with non-Japanese… their directness can come off as a bit rude and… well… direct? Maybe that’s why passive voice is discouraged in English (because us English-speakers are more direct, overall) and Japanese don’t discourage passive voice (because culturally, they passive voice is an important social skill).
So, we’ll continue to sprinkle in passive form into future sentences in TextFugu. It won’t be every sentence or anything – far from it – but it’ll be there enough to help you to learn it over time. Just don’t forget the big picture concepts you’ve learned here today!