notes

  • 「わけ」 (「訳」) originally meant “to divide/separate” (related to 「分ける」 and 「分かる」)
    • consider “breaking something down” to make more analyzable and understandable
  • 「わけ」 expresses a cause, a reason, a conclusion, or a logical judgement (the underlying causality or reasoning)
  • reasoning can run forwards (looking at past events to reason about the current situation) and backwards (looking at current events to reason about how they came to be)
  • ex: 「そういうわけでベッドの下に隠れた。」 means “That is the reason why (I) was hiding under the bed.”
  • ex: 「そういうわけでした。」 means “That is the causality for what happened.”
    • the causality happened in the past, not the reasoning
  • ex: 「そんなわけで宿題を忘れました。」 means “Such a thing is why (I) forgot (my) homework.”
  • ex: 「わけが分からない。」 means “The underlying reasoning does not do analyzed.”
  • ex: 「お金が足りないわけではない。」 means “Lack of money is not the reason.”
    • 「お金が足りない」 is modifying 「わけ」
  • the construction 「○○=○○わけではない」 tends to imply that the first proposition does not have the reasoning of entailing the second proposition
  • the construction 「○○わけ(が)ない」 tends to deny that something exists
    • 「○○」 does not have any reasoning and is therefore not true
  • ex: 「田中さんは嘘をつくわけがない。」 means “Tanaka-san would not tell a lie.”
    • “The underlying reasoning of Tanaka-san using a lie does not exist.”
  • 「わけがない」 can also be used to say that something exists without reason
    • ex: 「そんなにお金のいるわけがない。」 means “There is no reason for the need of that much money.”
  • 「わけ(が)ない」 can also be used to say that is simple
    • 「○○」 has no reasoning and is therefore simple enough to exist without it (hyperbolic construction)
    • ex: 「日本語を話すのはわけがないことだ。」

      resources

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