How is 让 in this sentence to be understood?

[Josh2007]

Let me clarify a bit further: as Chinese has no true passive, and the distinction between the Genuine passive and the False passive is only something concocted up by languages that have past participles, there is little to be gained by asking Chinese people "is this passive?" All that question could possibly mean is "if you forget about Chinese for a moment, and transport yourself back to ancient Rome, could you use a sentence with a passive constructioni in it to express the meaning?" The only thing that can be clear to a speaker of Chinese is the Genuine Passive. Take: yifu rang haizi nongzangle. Rang usually means "made", and so a 1-for-1 translation of the words would be "the clothes made the child dirty". But in fact the meaning is the opposite - the child got the clothes dirty. So it is clear there is a Genuine Passive, not in that Chinese verbs have a conjugated passive or a past participle, but in that what looks like the object is the agent, and so the meaning is genuinely passive.

To ask "is 'how can I accept the world?' a passive statement?" can therefore only be understood in terms of "is there a genuine passive meaning here?" and not "is there a false passive meaning here?" But then the question immediately falls out of the scope of Chinese. Sentences like the one under consideration can therefore only be understood by the Chinese as contractions of longer sentences with admittedly non-specific throwaway words in them .

[anonymoose]

A bit off topic, but, I think we need to distinguish between passive in the linguistic sense, and the notional sense. Linguists like to say Chinese has no tenses, Chinese has no passive form, etc, and from the point of view of verb structure and conjugation (particularly in comparison to English and other European languages), this is true. However, I think this argument is misleading, because most people who study a second language aren't trained linguists and don't really care about such things. The crucial point is that, the past (tense) can equally well be expressed notionally in Chinese as English, as can the passive voice. 昨天下雨了 quite clearly refers to the past, or past tense in English, even if formal Chinese grammar says there are no tenses in Chinese. Similarly, 他被狗咬了一口 quite clearly is notionally passive, regardless of how formal Chinese grammar explains it.

Now back to the original issue...

"A world like this, how can you/anyone make me accept it (a world like this)?" and "How can I accept a world like this?" are not the same, essentially or otherwise.

So we have two sentences here, which have two distinct meanings.

Unless my understanding of the Chinese sentence (这个世道让我怎么接受呢？) is incorrect, it would seem like this corresponds more closely with the second of the quoted sentences: How can I accept a world like this? The implied meaning (whether or not this was the intended meaning by the speaker of the sentence) is that I can accept a world like this, it's just that I don't know how or in what way. Can you tell me the way in which I can accept this world?

On the other hand, the implied meaning of the first sentence, "A world like this, how can you/anyone make me accept it (a world like this)?", is that I know in theory how to accept this world, but I don't know how you/anyone could have the audacity to make me accept it. In other words, you are unreasonable to expect me to accept a world like this.

In this case, I think the Chinese version should be more like this: 这个世道怎么让我接受呢？

Anyway, this is just my understanding, but I'm ready to be corrected...

[darkbyf]

让的意思是"let"

[chenpv]

(1) 这个世道让我怎么接受呢？

As far as I can see, 怎么 in this sentence questions the 'action' 接受, which implies the speaker is currently outraged and wants no acceptance of reasoning. More of a ' You-shut-up-and-shove-it-up' attitude.

(2) 这个世道怎么让我接受呢？

While in this sentence, 怎么 questions the 'means' to 接受, which implies the speaker, though still insists on not accepting, is open to reasoning. More of a 'Enlighten-me-though-I-wont-possibly-change-my-mind' attitude.