Sorry for the late reply, this is from the Chibi Maruko Chan set of books aimed at Japanese kids. I have recommended them several times on the forums, as they are actually perfect reading difficulty for anyone around N4 upwards. The set of books has around 50 volumes covering a whole range of topics and subjects, and are always written by professionals/updated every few years. The two best books in the series for understanding grammar are 文法教室 and 作文教室. The whole series itself is called 満点ゲット, and they are available digitally as well as paperback on Amazon.
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Just to clear that up, it’s a Na-adjective. “It is dogs that… are likeable”
I asked my friend, she told me
犬が好きだから
and
犬が好きだもん
mean the same thing.
Nice, thank you. They look really interesting. I’m going to pick one up and give it a shot
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Just to clear that up, (好き is) a Na-adjective. “It is dogs that… are likeable”
I recommend you check out this Cure Dolly article, which I think does a very good job of explaining adjectives:
https://learnjapaneseonline.info/2015/04/21/i-and-na-adjectives-what-the-textbooks-dont-tell-you/
One of the main points she makes is that: “Na adjectives are essentially nouns. They work like nouns. That is why they need “na”.”
I don’t think I can explain it any better than she does, so I’ll just leave it there for now, but if you do read it, I’d be curious to hear what you think of her explanation.
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I think you did a much better job than I did of conveying the use of the “passive” version of 食べたい. I always have a hard time conveying it in English, because it’s not at all a native English way of doing things.
If I were to try to improve upon the ケーキが食べたい literal translation, it might be something more like, “The cake is (something somebody wants to eat)-ish.” Not sure if this helpful or redeeming in your eyes.
As for the grammar page you posted, the point seems to be that it is preferable to use the polite conjugation of a verb rather than adding です to the end of an い adjective in formal writing. (e.g. You should use 楽しみました rather than 楽しかったです). I haven’t thought deeply about this, but I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that, as Cure Dolly says, “I adjectives are close cousins of verbs”, so it’s better to just use the verb rather than it’s cousin + です.
I quoted this article elsewhere, so forgive me for doing it again here, but it really does do a good job with both i and na adjectives, and their relationship to verbs and nouns respectively: https://learnjapaneseonline.info/2015/04/21/i-and-na-adjectives-what-the-textbooks-dont-tell-you/
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Sorry for not being clear. I was not trying to say that 「ケーキが食べたい」 was a passive sentence. I was trying to say that 食べたい is a passive adjective when used in that sentence. I feel the misunderstanding is my fault because of my crappy literal translation of 「ケーキが食べたい」. My sloppiness caused you to waste time arguing against a position I don’t hold, and I sincerely apologize for that.
Let me also say that I 100% agree that「ケーキが食べられたい」would be a more accurate way to say, “The cake is…wanting to be eaten”. I also agree that the natural English translation (“The cake wants to be eaten”) is passive. However, even though it sounds kind of passive, the literal translation is still an active sentence, just like any other “The cake is…(whatever)” sentence.
So what are Active Adjectives and Passive Adjectives? Well, with an Active Adjective, the word being modified is doing/giving the action, while with a Passive Adjective, the word being modified is receiving the action.
In normal English, Active Adjectives often end in -ing, while Passive Adjectives often end in -ed. So for instance, “I am tired” would be an active sentence with a passive adjective “tired”; whereas “Exercise is tiring” is an active sentence with an active adjective “tiring”.
So like I said in my prior post, in the sentence 「彼がケーキを食べたい」 (lit. “He is…wanting to eat cake”) 食べたい is active because it modifies “He” (彼) who is the one giving the action to the cake.
As for「ケーキが食べたい」, I believe a better literal translation might be “The cake is …(something somebody wants to eat)-ish.” In this sentence, the word being modified, “cake”, is receiving that action from (somebody), and therefore 食べたい is passive - even though the sentence itself remains active.
Clear as mud?
According to the perspectives of multiple Japanese natives on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, sentences like ケーキを食べたい and ケーキが食べたい are identical in terms of sentence structure and meaning, at least grammatically speaking (what is considered natural to say, however, depends on context and is another matter entirely). They may have different nuances, but that’s simply a matter of how を and が differ in terms of how they emphasize whatever they are attached to, and these differences don’t really change the overall meaning of each sentence.
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