6.1. COMPARISONS, PREFERENCES AND CHOICE 283
6.1.4 Discussing possibilities
Related to choices, comparisons and likeness, there is the subject of possi-
bilities. In English, we can indicate possibility in a variety of ways; things
”may” or ”might”, things ”can”, or ”could” be, they’re possible, likely, un-
likely, or even ”stand a chance to be”. In Japanese, too, there are a number
of useful ways to describe possibilities, which we shall look at in this sec-
tion.
- Might or might not
The first, and probably most used, is the construction
. This
construction technically consists of the particles and , followed by the
negative short potential of , to know, or be informed;. This
construction translates to ”it could be that ...”, implying that the speaker
doesn’t actually know, but is not ruling out that something could be the
case.
A:
B:
A: ”Didn’t he say he wasn’t coming?”
B: ”He might have said something like that.”
As can be seen from the previous example, can also
be used as - They’re just different politeness levels. Further
alternatives are the more colloquial and.
This is really just a shortened form of , as ex-
plained in the particles chapter:
A:
B:
A: ”Did Ishida lose his glasses?”
B: ”Maybe he (actually) threw them away.”- Probably
When a speaker suspects something to be the case, but they’re not 100
( )
”We’ve not quite decided yet, but we’ll probably head off to Osaka
for the summer.”