I kept getting this sentence wrong loads
The more information page didn’t show how it was getting to みつけられなくて
Looking at the answer information it looks like the answer should have been みつけられる right? Where is なくて coming from?
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It was looking for this conjugation. The clue was in the word “conjunctive” - it wanted you to connect 見つけられない with すみません, which you do with the て form. However, if you haven’t encountered the て form or ~てすみません yet, I can see how it would be super confusing…
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You are in the right direction.
They wanted a negative form, so you wouldn’t use an affirmative; otherwise, you would be “able to find it”.
If you are not using hints, seeing すみませんでした could help you figure out that it might be a negative form.
If you go back to N4 Lesson 1: 13/18, it teaches you how to conjugate the て form with a negative meaning and connecting it with a result “because I didn’t (A), (B)”.
So in this case, “Because I am unable to find it, I’m sorry.”
Putting it all together:
見つける is “to find”
Potential form 見つけられる “to be able to find”
Negative potential 見つけられない “to not be able to find”
て form to connect a result 見つけられなくて “Because I was not able to find it, …”
I thought this was a good curveball practice to see if you could remember previous lessons.
If you are not going through the lessons in order or haven’t learned the grammar yet, then I can see this getting confusing.
I hope this makes sense, and it was helpful in some way.
Ah thank you, I think an issue here is that I am following the Genki deck (and the Yotsubato one) not the Bunpro path, so that lesson hasn’t come up for me yet.
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