Appearance & Hearsay

Introduction

Japanese carefully distinguishes between what you know directly, what something looks like, and what you've heard from others. These patterns of evidentiality are crucial for accurate, natural Japanese.

Getting these right shows real grammatical sophistication.

Themes

All Japanese Grammar Basic in This Chapter (9)

1. ～ようだ (appearance) ようだ An auxiliary な-type adjective expressing the speaker's judgement that something appears to be the case, based on what they have observed ...
2. ～そうだ (appearance) そうだ An auxiliary adjective that expresses the speaker's conjecture about an imminent event or an apparent quality, based on visual or sensory...
3. ～そうだ (hearsay) そうだ An auxiliary that indicates the information expressed by the preceding sentence is something the speaker heard from another source. It co...
4. ～らしい (conjecture) らしい An auxiliary adjective indicating the speaker's conjecture based on evidence or information they have gathered. It expresses that somethi...
5. ～だろう (conjecture) だろう An auxiliary indicating the speaker's conjecture or guess that is not based on strong evidence. It often translates as 'probably' or 'I t...
6. ～かもしれない (possibility) かもしれない Expresses the speaker's acknowledgement that something might be the case, without certainty. It translates as 'might,' 'may,' or 'perhaps...
7. ～に違いない (certainty) にちがいない Expresses the speaker's strong conviction that something must be the case. The speaker is convinced there is no mistake in their judgemen...
8. ～はず (expectation) はず A dependent noun expressing the speaker's expectation that something should logically be the case, based on reason, evidence, or prior ar...
9. ～がる (showing signs) がる An auxiliary verb suffix attached to psychological or physiological adjective stems to express that a third person is showing outward sig...