Hi, I have a question about the yellow part of this example sentence.
There is no を and I’m not sure about the です
Is the を just gone for shortening or is this a kind of passive sentence?
Like: The bento hasn’t been eaten yet.
Thanks in advance.
It was just omitted. Perfectly natural when it’s obvious what particle would go there.
です can be added to negative verb forms for an increase of formality. Adding です makes it more respectful
Basic low to high formality
食べない
食べないです
食べません
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Ah ok, thats good to know. It will probably be omitted a lot in more advanced lessons.
It should have known about the です part though. I saw it in the lessons of course but I always used either the casual or the formal form and not the casual + formal です form.
So it looked strange to me.
Thanks again for the explanation
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In the sentence, 君きみが決きめなくてはならないよ。Why is ならない allowed but いけない is not allowed?
Because that review is only testing ならない. They’re synonyms tested as two separate points. いけない doesn’t work only because it wants ならない specifically. Real world application they’re mostly interchangable
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Man this is the second question of mine you have answered, you are on fire! haha thanks again!
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死ぬ前に汽車に一度は＿。（乗る）
I don’t know if my settings changed or if the site changed but all I got as a clue for this one was “Negative non-past, Standard”, which seems a lot less helpful than the “long form / casual / て＋なる” I see earlier in this thread.
Is there something about the prompt that makes なくてはならない clear without cycling through all of the other permutations of "must"s out there? There are no alts for this one.
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The hint was " A very formal, usually written way to say that something must be done." I put in ~なければならない, but it wanted ~なくてはならない. Could anyone help me recognise when Bunpro is asking for なければ vs なくて?
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Same question here, I basically just try いけ always and change it to なら is it’s marked wrong. I can’t see the logic here, especially as the grammar note says it’s for more formal cases but these are listed as “standard”
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I saw the same hint “Negative non-past, Polite” and used the なくてはいけないです and got marked incorrect. The fact that Bunpro has all of these “must do/have to do” synonyms on the study site and then don’t specify which form they are asking for in the reviews is the most annoying thing I have encountered so far on this site.
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I want to mark them as mastered just so i don’t have to try with all 4 iterations every time I find this card
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I Feel you so much! I gave up and created a short cheat sheet to manage the forms + formality level and neighbouring forms as well. I was so annoyed about these forms it was surreal. Now I just use the cheat sheet to get it drilled into my head a bit better.
I have made it by hand in my notes, so I have to physically go there to check on something… Therefore no digital copy of that and my handwriting is so bad I couldnt just take a picture 
It just adds all the forms I kept mistaking on one page and wrote specifically the requested form (Casual, Formal, Very Formal) behind them so i would end up with the right one. it still isn’t perfect, but I was beating myself up about it before and now I have zero stress and somehow already know it most of the time. Switched to give it one try without and then look up, if I still mess it up then use the “solve” button.
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Is there a reason why ～なくてはならない is N5 grammar, and ～てはならない is N2 grammar? Is it so rarely used that it is moved all the way to the N2 category?
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Following this, I also was wondering. Might as well learn them together.
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We organise grammar points based on JLPT level. The JLPT itself broadly follows frequency and importance in terms of ordering. It doesn’t necessarily follow how difficult something is to learn, with some difficult grammar being introduced early on due to being common and important.
At N2 there are a couple of other points which are close to てはならない in appearance, which can cause confusion. Namely, てならない (‘can’t help but…’) and (ねば)ならぬ (‘must do’).
At N2 you are more likely to be asked to judge what grammar is appropriate based on context, as context sensitivity becomes more important as you learn more grammar points which seem to mean the same thing. I can imagine てはならない being used in a multiple choice question in that specific way. There is not much imaginable benefit in trying to test someone at N5 on the contextual nuance of this point. It is also important to note that the JLPT does not restrict grammar points to certain levels, so you may see grammar points at different levels.
If you keep seeing a grammar point in real life and think it is important for your own learning to know it right away, then it can also be useful to add individual grammar points as they come up. From N4 or N3 onwards this is probably more effective.
Quick edit: Also, there are a lot of ways to say ‘must’ or ‘must not’ in Japanese. If all of them were taught one by one as phrases at N5 and N4 then I think people might resent it a bit. Already it is an area that people tend to find annoying with the limited amount that is taught and tested!
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