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Let’s make it clear at the beginning. When you want to say “I was stolen my money”, which passive sentence is right?

(1) Watashi wa Okane ga Torare mashita.

(2) Watashi wa Okane o Torare mashita.

The answer is that (1) is wrong and (2) is right. Perhaps some people might think (1) is right. In fact, there is a teaching style in which both the teachers and students avoid using the particle “-o” as much as possible in some environments of learning Japanese as a second language. As a result of avoidance of the particle “-o”, many learners end up thinking “wa-ga construction” is versatile. This is the reason to choose (1) for the answer.

The right sentence is (2). As in English translation “I was stolen my money”, the money is MY money. Now we are going to learn passive sentences to express one’s possession gets a passive action. Let’s start with an active sentence;

1. Dareka ga <Watashi no Okane o> Tori mashita. (Someone stole my money.)

From this active sentence 1, it is possible to convert the sentence 1 to be a passive sentence by making the object in the active sentence the subject in the passive sentence as below;

2. <Watashi no Okane wa> Dareka ni Torare mashita. (My money was stolen by someone.)

Turning the object in an active sentence to the subject in a passive sentence, we can convert an active sentence to be a passive sentence. This is what we learned in the exercise A2. For the sake of reviewing, look at the following sentences 3 and 4. The two are an active sentence and a passive sentence, respectively.

3. Sensei wa <Watashi o> Home mashita. (The teacher praised me.)

4. <Watashi wa> Sensei ni Homerare mashita. (I was praised by the teacher.)

The object “Watashi o” in the sentence 3 has become the subject “Watashi wa” in the sentence 4. Likewise, the object “Watashi no Okane o” in the sentence 1 has become the subject “Watashi no Okane wa” in the sentence 2. Here, again, is the sentence 2.

2. Watashi no Okane wa Dareka ni Torare mashita. (My money was stolen by someone.)

Though I said “Watashi no Okane wa” is the subject of the sentence2, if I choose the subject by one word, it will be “Okane wa”. “Okane” is money, and it is a thing, not a person, let alone “Watashi (I)”.

There is an important fundamental in Second language learning. The example sentences need to have Authenticity so that the learners would think the sentences are their own expressions. One way to do that is to make the subject of the sentences “Watashi (I)”. This is important when learning passive sentences like;

 Active sentence : Person A did Something to Person B.

 Passive sentence : Person B was done Something by Person A.

And especially in the case that you got damaged by someone, you would want to say;

<1> I was done a bad thing by Person A.

The sentence <1> has more authenticity than a sentence like “The car A was hit by the car B”, and probably facilitates learning of passive sentences.

Although the subjects in the exercises A4 through A6 are things, we need to pay attention to what are the subjects in A2 and A3. The subjects are all “Watashi wa”.

Therefore, not the sentence2 whose subject is a thing (money);

2. Watashi no Okane wa Dareka ni Torare mashita. (My money was stolen by someone.)

but we have to learn passive sentences whose subjects are “Watashi (I)”, like below;

5. Watashi wa Dareka ni Okane o Torare mashita. (I was stolen my money by someone.)

<This post still needs additional example sentences. Therefore, this has not been completed yet.>

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This post was written with reference to the exercise A3 on Section37 of “Minna no Nihongo (2nd Edition)” published by “3A Corporation”

I am a little busy right now.

練習Aを毎日ひとつずつ解説するのが、だんだん大変になってきました。

ちょっと休みを入れた方がいいように思います。23課まで到達したのだから、できれば続けたいです。