4

I have the following to translate for class.

病気になって
頭と首が痛くて
熱もあったので
銀行の隣の病院に
行かされた

This is what I have so far.

I became sick and
my head and neck hurt and
I also had a fever so
to the hospital next to the bank
???

I am not sure what 行かされた means. I would understand 行かれた (went, passive). Is this simply a typo, or does it have some meaning I am not seeing?

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  • 1
    Did you try Google? Search for '"行かされた" conjugation' and the first couple of hits will tell you this is a causative passive.
    – dainichi
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 0:39
  • @istrasci Minor note: If you'd like, you can put two spaces at the end of each line instead of typing out <br/> each time. It has the same effect :-)
    – user1478
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 15:30
  • As an FYI, our professor admitted that he gave us this translation a couple weeks before we learned causative passive. Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 20:29

1 Answer 1

7

It's a different way of saying the causative-passive 行かせられる, so it means that the speaker was made to go to the hospital.

Note in an earlier version of this answer I confidently asserted that this is a more colloquial example. A comment was posted to the contrary and, after researching it more in depth, I was surprised to find I was indeed wrong in that regard. 行かされる has numerous entries on the corpus of modern written Japanese, and appears to be totally fine in most, if not all contexts, and may actually be considered the standard. Nevertheless it seems to be a debatable concept. In fact, some of the confusion about whether it's 行かされる or 行かせられる seems to come from Japanese people who see Japanese textbooks for foreigners where we are generally taught that 行かせられる is the Right Way. I think this is where my initial confidence and confusion came from (coupled with my general ignorance of course). So this confusion is probably a result of the way Japanese is taught to foreigners, or at least it doesn't do much to remedy the situation. Apparently at least some Japanese educators share in this frustration.

Personally as someone who always struggles to say ~させられる I feel somewhat liberated by this revelation.

5
  • For the sake of completeness, it might be good to include that you can only do this for non-す 五段動詞 / "Group I" verbs. Also, if my memory serves, this is the preferred conjugation for 名詞飾る constructions
    – virmaior
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 1:01
  • Unfortunately, only the first sentence is correct. This has absolutely nothing to do with ラ抜きことば. Both 行かす and 行かせる are equally legit. There is no "colloquial" or "shortening" involved here.
    – user4032
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 22:50
  • 1
    OK never mind. I concede the point. I've been careful lately about not posting inaccurate answers, but I was just so sure about this one.. so I'm pretty shocked to learn it's actually wrong
    – ssb
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 0:07
  • Hmm, I'm not sure I'd call it the standard. For example, NHK likes to use this type of causative, but it annoys other people. Not an expert though, wish I had some good references here. Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 2:30
  • @DariusJahandarie if you look it up at all definitely let me know. I'm interested in learning more.
    – ssb
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 2:46

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