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A Japanese student wrote the following text over Hellotalk to have it corrected by a native speaker: 「ビデオでみた。安いから日本に有名ですと言っていました。」

The native speaker corrected it as: 「安いので日本で有名だとテレビで言っていました。」

Every item in the correction makes sense to me, except for the choice to replace から with ので. I know から and ので can overlap significantly, but I'm not familiar enough with the tiny nuances to determine what may have went through the native speaker's brain as this choice was made. Is there any useful insight on this?

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First off, for the particular examples, I don't think there is any difference between 安いから/安いので.

If forced to give a vague reason, the following may be relevant.

Consider

  1. アップル製品は高いから有名である
  2. アップル製品は高いので有名である

Both may not be most natural things to say, but 1 is definitely odder than 2 (even if apple products are both famous and expensive), in the same way (I think) in English 3 is odder than 4

  1. Apple products are famous because they are expensive
  2. Apple products are notorious for being expensive

(I guess 4 is fairly okay, which is not exactly true of Japanese 2 above).

So ので can refer to the aspect/factor for which the thing is famous, but から sounds more like a cause (being expensive isn't a cause for being famous).

Back to the ones in question, 安いので sounds like for being cheap whereas 安いから sounds because it's cheap. In the particular example, both work, but famous for being cheap is kind of plausible and that's why the corrector made the correction - subconsciously. (Again, note that 安いから/安いので are virtually interchangeable)

I haven't read fully but the following may contain something.

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  • If we are to read this 安いので as "for being cheap", it could as well be 安いことで. Then, the question it no longer about the difference between から and ので as the OP thought it was. It's a different kind of ので, isn't it? And this seems to contradict the first statement in your answer.
    – aguijonazo
    Feb 11 at 17:27
  • @aguijonazo You are right. I'm not suggesting the because/for difference is felt in 安いから/安いので, just an idea that ので was preferred by the corrector by unconscious analogy with 高いから/高いので. Not that I think it is really convincing, but at the same time it could be possible because most people (or at least me) don't think that grammatically and don't distinguish の+で and ので so clearly. (高いので is felt as a reason and cause for me, which may be what makes 2 slightly odd, if more acceptable than 1).
    – sundowner
    Feb 11 at 22:41

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