Re: 抜かれそうな勢い

tonygonz wrote:
A hint to make your above japanese sentence better would be to change the
latter sentence in the active voice:


Just out of curiosity, is this actually taught in writing style courses
in Japan now? This seems to me like a fetish taken from English
composition style, especially from the early 20th century on. I've
always noticed that Japanese literature, etc., make much freer use of
the passive voice than English does, and had just assumed that the
"passive aversion" that English writers have didn't exist in Japanese.

Interesting thought! I was taught--and accordingly taught, myself,
without bothering to do further research--that Japanese traditionally
avoided the true passive (as opposed to the "misfortune" variety) and
only started using it to any extent as a result of getting used to
too-literal translations.

I don't see any way to tell whether the case in question is a "true" or
a "misfortune" passive. But I think the problem here is that with 抜か
れ[る]勢い there are two subjects involved, the person who's 勢い it is
and the person who 抜かれる; "the power to be surpassed" feels
contradictory, whether it's "she has ..." or "hers is ..." "...the
power for me to be surpassed"? Dass weird.

Bart
.

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