とみえる - Grammar Discussion

it seems that, it can be deduced, one can conclude that

Structure
・Verb + とみえる
・Noun + とみえる
・いAdj + とみえる
・なAdj + とみえる

[Conjecture/guess・based on some information, often visual ・some confidence]

View on Bunpro

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A Japanese guy told me にみえる is pretty uncertain, so presumably the と is doing something here to make it more certain, as if it is quoting some observation or knowledge?

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Hey :grinning:

It is because it is most of the time used with some basis for reasoning. Like:

テスト落たから、勉強してなかった と見みえる
Since he failed the test, one can conclude that he did not study.

テスト落たから is our factual ground in this case. :+1:

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What exactly does the と do?

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It means “that”. :+1:

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cheers for that!

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Why the て in 彼(かれ)はマラソンを走(はし)った みえて ハアハアが言(い)っている ?

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Looks like it’s using て to connect the two thoughts- “it looks like he ran a marathon” (彼はマラソンを走った) and “he is breathing heavily” (ハアハア言っている). Presumably the latter would be a reason for the former as visual evidence.

On an unrelated note, I wanted to ask why the grammar point is introduced as とみえる, but all of the sentences use 見; seems strange not to introduce it as と見える.

Edit: Aaaand one more question: on that final example sentence, how is 終わらせてなかった conjugated? It looks like 終わる is being put into causative form here, which doesn’t seem to make sense with the sentence…

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Hey :grin:

On an unrelated note, I wanted to ask why the grammar point is introduced as とみえる, but all of the sentences use 見; seems strange not to introduce it as と見える.

I have changed the title to “と見える”!

Edit: Aaaand one more question: on that final example sentence, how is 終わらせてなかった conjugated? It looks like 終わる is being put into causative form here, which doesn’t seem to make sense with the sentence…

It is kind of a trick, you can change intransitive verb with a causative form to transitive one.
So basically 終わらせる = 終える.
Plus, I think it has a stronger nuance of putting energy/effort when compared to 終える。

Sorry for late answer!

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Whoa, that is really cool. :open_mouth: Does Bunpro cover this kind of behavior in any of the lessons?

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Hey :blush:

To be honest, I thought about doing a lesson about this. But for the time being, I wrote an example like that, hoping that someone would ask about it from curiosity.

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I’ll make a note about it for now, then, and see if I can look up more examples. Thanks for the mini lesson!

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Can someone explain to me how this sentence works?

今日の宿題は難しかった とみえて 、誰も終わらせてなかった。

Specifically とみえて I just don’t get it.

The rest is fine.

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This looks like a pretty straightforward example of the grammar point. とみえる means “it seems that”, and とみえて is just the て form, allowing the two thoughts in the sentence to connect: “it seems today’s homework was difficult” and “no one finished it”.

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Do the parentheses mean that “da” is optional when used with nouns?

I’m a bit confused about the translation of the following example sentence for this grammar point.

彼が今プールから出て来たと見えて、全部が濡れている。

“He is completely soaked. It can be deduced that he just got out of a pool.”

I don’t really understand why the order of the clauses is flipped in the translation like this. Based on the other examples, I assumed this would be roughly translated as

“It seems like he just got out of the pool, so/and he is completely soaked” or maybe
“It seems like he just got out of the pool, which explains why he is completely soaked”

Are these also accurate translations, or is there something about flipping the order of the clauses that is closer to the Japanese meaning? Just want to make sure I’m not missing any subtleties here.

I don’t think the order absolutely needs to be flipped because we can do both orders in English.

A key point is that the second phrase is something the speaker has actually observed, and based on that, the speaker deduces what the first phrase says. The bunpro translation makes this very explicit but it’s not necessarily the most natural English.

Your translations on the other hand kind of miss this point. In particular the one with “so” even turns it around. I think something like “It seems like he just got out of the pool, because he’s completely soaked” would work better.


Not sure if helpful, but another approach is treat the first phrase as modifying the predicate (like an adverbial phrase). I.e. the first phrase describes the way in which the second phrase happens. The て form can have many meanings, but in some expressions it’s always used like this. For example if you see a を使って it will usually not mean “use X and do Y”. It’ll be something like ナイフを使って切る “cut using a knife” = “cut with a knife”. We can look at とみえて in a similar way. “He’s completely soaked in a way that makes it look like he just got out of the pool.”

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