English Translation
My friend died from a wound.
I understand “My friend died”. but I am confused by this:
怪我が元で
I expected a simple 怪我で, and I in particular cannot understand why there is a が particle there.
@mike-lima
Interesting question!
- 私の友達は怪我で死んだ。= The injury/wound is (most likely to be) the direct cause of death.
- 私の友達は怪我が元で死んだ。= The injury/wound is the trigger and indirect cause of death.
元 (もと) means “trigger/starting point/origin”, “in a close range of/under the influence of” or “former”. The image of 元 is “tracing back history” or “root cause”.
My friend had her finger cut, which itself was not a serious one. But she unfortunately developed a critical inflectional disease and passed away. In this case, you can use 怪我が元で死んだ (or 亡くなった in a more respectful way). You may rephrase it as 怪我がきっかけで亡くなった, but I personally find 元で is better than きっかけ because 元で死んだ has a more negative (tragic) connotation than きっかけ.
Particle が functions here as “the injury/wound IS the trigger”. As you know, particle が is often preceded by a subject.
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First of all, thank you very much for this, since not all sentences here are grammatically correct, a confirmation that this is valid is very helpful. But now I have one further question:
Yes, well, that’s actually what threw me off, I expected a verb or a predicate after the が and 死んだ is bound to 友達.
I would have expected something like 「怪我を受けた元で 」 or maybe「怪我の元で」(because that’s how it would be phrased in Italian “a causa di una ferita”) – and I don’t know if they make sense in Japanese.
I just looked up on my yomichan vocabulary the definition of が and I got this as its secondary meaning, which I was totally unaware of:
- indicates possessive (esp. in literary expressions)
If this is what is happening here, I can make sense of it again.
@mike-lima
The original Japanese sentence can be divided into two clauses: 私の友達は死んだ。+ 怪我が元だ。= My friend died. + The injury/wound was the trigger.
A was B = AがBだ is the sentence structure. It’s pure and simple like トムが犯人だ (Tom is the perpetrator.) B is a noun (trigger/元) and particle が can bridge a subject and a noun.
元だ was transformed into 元で (= 元だ and then) when the two clauses are merged into one.
怪我を受けた元で and 怪我の元で are grammatically broken and sound unnatural. We never say 怪我を受ける. You can say 怪我をする instead. But you still cannot say 怪我をした元で. For the same reason, 怪我の元で is incorrect.
As explained above, 元 means either 1) “trigger/starting point/origin”, 2) “in a close range of/under the influence of” or 3) “former”. Your proposed expressions don’t function as the first meaning but the second one. So, 怪我をした元で even sounds awkwardly like “my friend prepared to die by injuring herself beforehand”, which doesn’t make sense.
If you look up 元で in dictionaries, you may find example sentences with の元で, but they are used in
トムは有名なシェフの元で料理を学んだ = Tom honed his cooking skills under a famous chef. (A famous chef is Tom’s master.)
メアリーは祖父母の元で育った = Mary was raised by her grandfather and grandmother.
の元で in these sentences doesn’t mean a “trigger” (the first meaning) but “under the influence of” or “in a close range of” (the second meaning). A trigger is a starting point and it’s usually a one-time event. Influence of the second meaning lasts longer.
メアリーは祖父母の間違った教育が元で、数々の犯罪を犯すようになった。= Mary’s grandfather and grandmother taught her in an improper way, which eventually engaged her in many crimes.
Here, 間違った教育が元で means “the improper education was the trigger (of Mary’s criminal activities.)”
Let me know if you need further explanations.
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Thank you, it is all clear now.
My mistake was that I was stuck thinking で as a particle, instead of the ーて form of the predicate 元で.
Now it all makes sense.
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