Just practiced indirect passive voice, a topic that is very hard for me. I hope someone can check if my examples are using the indirect passive correctly and correct them.

2 comments

1. レストランで食事をしていた時に隣の席に子供連れの客がいたのですが、そこの男の子が店内を走り回るので迷惑しましたよ。

   レストランで食事をしていた時に隣の席に子供連れの客がいたのですが、そこの男の子に店内を走り回られまして迷惑しましたよ。

   トイレに行きたいのだが、トイレには大勢の人が並んでいる。

   トイレに行きたいのだが、トイレは大勢の人に並ばれている。

   宿題をしようとしたが、同居人は大音量で音楽を流した。

   宿題をしようとしたが、同居人に大音量で音楽を流された。

2. I’m not expert and might be wrong, but for me such situations don’t really look like good candidates for passive sentence. Maybe the last one.

   Indirect passive isn’t so much different from direct passive, in the meaning that one person does some action towards another one. The only difference is that transitive verbs can’t exist without direct object, but intransitive actions like “to smile” are possible by itself. A kind of unique case is taking the first noun from noun chain like 私の(something), where we can take 私, put into topic/subject position and get indirect passive sentence. Basically the idea of passive itself is do it, we want to have specific viewpoint.

   However, indirect passive can be more vague and therefore less acceptable. Because the way how action is done towards such passive subject/topic isn’t clearly stated, it’s all about what kind of verb we have and how easily person can find reasonable connection. Verbs like smiling are very natural with other people, but verbs like running aren’t. It’s harder to understand how exactly running is done towards another person. Was the kid intentionally circling around you?

   Your second sentence doesn’t even have any kind of possible intention. People simply were waiting for their turn, it’s not really something what is done towards other people. Technically, there probably can be some extreme case with malicious intent, but I think such kind of sentence would be the lest natural for native speakers.