@Video_Game_King said:
@Sooty said:
so long as you can think of random stuff/sentences to type up.
That's the crux of this situation. You can know that the he particle designates a generic destination, you form the causative with saseru, you ni does....something...(I'm never been too clear on what the hell that means), etc., but still have no goddamn clue how to form a sentence.
Don't expect me to contribute a whole lot to this thread because of time constraints and general life commitments, but since I'm here right now and saw you mentioning that you're struggling with ように, I thought I'd help out since that's actually a not cliche (but very valid) issue I've seen from a Japanese language learner for once.
So よう has a bunch of uses, which makes providing a corresponding English translation somewhat hard since it's grammatically contextual. The big thing to keep in mind is that it's actually a な adjective, so ような is technically its "default form." ように, on the other hand, is its adverbial form. I'll discuss how you go about properly using that in a moment, but let's stick with ような, since that's the fundamental base that ように draws off of as a grammatical point. Your most common use of ような, is for setting up metaphors/similes. In English, a sentence such as "His nose is like a dog's" would probably be translated using ような. For example, what I'd have in mind in Japanese would be something like 「彼は犬のような鼻をしている。」
Setting up ような in this capacity is therefore pretty simple and works like this:
- Nouns: Noun+ような. Pretty easy. Another example in addition to the one I already provided would be 「彼女は性格が政治家のようだ。」 (Her personality is like a politician's.) As you probably know, when you're ending a sentence with a な adjective, you drop the な in favor of a copula, usually だ or です. (There are others beyond those, but don't worry about them at this stage.)
- Verbs: Plain form+ような. The plain form can technically be any tense or conjugation that you need if you know what you're doing, but most of the time, it's just the raw dictionary form used here. Here's an example of a sentence that can be used in this capacity: 「バラバラに破られたような本を買った。」 (I bought a book that looked as though it had been torn to shreds [by someone/something].) In the example sentence, I used the passive form of 破る, to be torn/ripped, since that sounds most natural in that sort of context, but again, any conjugation works as long as it's properly contextualized.
Verbs, however, tend to actually be used with ように, the adverbial form, rather than ような and the reason is pretty simple: you tend to make verb comparisons to other verbs and not to nouns. It's just more intuitive. Setting up verbs in this way is the exact same, the only differences are: 1. you obviously need to change な to に to make the statement an adverb and 2. the text that comes after ように has to be another verb statement/preposition of some sort. Examples, of course, are always helpful, so here's one: 「最後のレースに参加しているように走った。」 (He ran as though he was participating in his last race.) Again, in this capacity, any conjugation and tense of the verb you want to use with ように is valid, but you need to be careful with how you apply them. In past-tense sentences like the one I just used, most of the time you're just going to go with the plain, present tense of whatever conjugation you want to use. The reasons for this are somewhat complex and probably don't need to be made apparent at your stage in Japanese learning, but if you're really curious, feel free to ask and I'll explain what I'm talking about to the best of my abilities.
Nouns can also be used as adverbs with ように and are formed in the same manner as when they're used as an adjective. The purpose for doing this is usually to make a comparison between an action that's taking place and how the noun you use in ように approaches that same situation. This allows for the sentence structure to get potentially more complex than verbal statements used with ように, although they're both deeply flexible. I'll provide two examples to illustrate what I mean. 「キリンのように首を伸ばした。」 (He stretched out his neck like a giraffe.) In that example, you're making an implicit comparison between a giraffe, which obviously has a long neck, and the guy stretching his neck out, with the end result stating that the way he's stretching it out makes him look as though he's like a giraffe. Here's a more complex example that works off of similar principles: 「オオカミから逃げ出しているウサギのように走った。」 (He ran like a rabbit running away from a wolf.) The sentence structure itself makes use of a relative clause, which I'm not sure you've studied, but even if you don't know what they are yet, the basic point I'm trying to make is that you can provide more detail descriptions of the noun you want to you before putting on ように and that can include adjectives. The basic set up remains consistent as long as you remain true to how the grammar operates in each part when you want to get detailed.
Those are the main uses of よう and ように that you should worry about for the time being. However, for future reference, ように does take on a different meaning when certain verbs are used after it. The main ones are 願う, to hope/wise for, and 祈る, to pray for. This is because ように is also often used in an entirely separate grammatical mechanic altogether, which is to express the purpose behind doing something. I won't get into the nitty gritty of that grammar point specifically right now because that would take an equally long post as this one, but it is a distinction that you'll have to learn to make the more advanced your Japanese gets. I suspect this other form is what's tripping you up if you already know everything that I just brought up in this post, but for the time being, I wouldn't worry about this other stuff quite yet.
As a side note, みたい is a な adjective that is completely synonymous with ような and can be perfectly substituted into any of these grammar points I've outlined except for the one in the previous paragraph. The differences between みたい and よう are that the former has a bit more of a casual flair to it, meaning that's it's mostly used in an informal capacity, and that for nouns, you don't have to stick a の in front of みたい before using it. It otherwise means the exact same thing and can be used interchangeable when よう is being used for similes/metaphors.
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