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今年も良い年でありますように！ I hope you have another good year!

What is going on exactly where the ように means hope? Does the よう derive from a verb? I would also like to know how to describe this word in the relevant grammatical terms, both in english and japanese. From what I understand from the answers it is a noun that turns into an adverb?

yadokari
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2 Answers2

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What it means

ように at the end of a sentence is a set expression for the volitional subjunctive. In layman terms, it means the preceding sentence is a wish!

Why it means that

様{よう} is "a word that expresses the state of things". に is a target particle. Therefore, if it helps you understand, ように means "towards a certain state". So when I say something like

明日{あした}は晴{は}れるように — May it be sunny tomorrow

I'm saying "towards the state of things where it's sunny". As happens frequently in Japanese, I am omitting the verb of this sentence because it is obvious in context.

明日{あした}は晴{は}れるように祈{いの}ります — I pray it may be sunny tomorrow

It expresses a yearning for a particular 様{よう}.

Tsuyoshi Ito
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Jjed
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  • thank you. then would this make sense? 今年も良い年でありますように望む – yadokari Jan 03 '12 at 05:32
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    @yadokari: 今年も良い年でありますように望む is strange for two reasons: (1) the polite form of a verb (such as あります) is rarely used when it modifies a noun (よう in this case), and (2) …でありますように is so fixed that adding something to it makes it sound odd. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jan 03 '12 at 12:03
  • @TsuyoshiIto. I am slightly confused. Your (1) seems to contradict (2). Unless the fixed version of でありますように is an exception case to (1)? – Flaw Jan 03 '12 at 13:51
  • @Flaw: I agree, they contradict, sorry for the careless comment. I speculate (without a supporting evidence) that the polite form was used in wider contexts in older time, when the expression …でありますように was established. In the current Japanese, it is strange to use the polite form of a verb to modify a noun, but the set phrase …でありますように has remained. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jan 03 '12 at 14:22
  • +1 for "In layman terms" – Flaw Jan 03 '12 at 14:40
  • thank you, all. Judging from examples I see online, it seems sentences like this are pretty common: 来年は是非明るい年でありますように願うばかりです If I may ask one more question, how can I think of the で in the 年であります? Is that an old usage still fixed in the expression? With my limited understanding of jp grammar I would have used が instead if I was making up the sentence. – yadokari Jan 03 '12 at 14:42
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    @yadokari Please ask a new question. This site needs all the traffic and rep opportunities it can get! This sort of "interactive dialogue" we're having is, while useful, not very Stack Exchange kosher – Jjed Jan 03 '12 at 14:46
  • @yadokari Yes please do make a new question, or proceed to create discussion on Chat. Clue: である is a copula. – Flaw Jan 03 '12 at 14:57
  • @Flaw I do not think Tsuyoshi Ito's two points contradict. There is a minor problem with this answer. でありますように actually cannot be used with an explicit verb following it: でありますように願う is ungrammatical. It is as strange as the English counterpart `I wish may it be sunny tomorrow.' –  Jan 03 '12 at 21:55
  • @sawa Hm, there seem to be a number using verb + ように祈る. In any case, the second sentence is to illustrate the omitted rather than indicate common usage. – Jjed Jan 03 '12 at 22:32
  • @j-johan-edwards I don't know what you mean by "number using". And your second sentence 晴れるように祈ります is grammatical because 晴れる is not polite form. –  Jan 03 '12 at 23:20
  • "晴れますように祈ります" vs "晴れるように祈ります" – Jjed Jan 03 '12 at 23:34
  • @sawa- the sentence phrased this way would be grammatical= I wish that it may be sunny tomorrow. This of course would sound archaic, though I assume that this type of japanese sounds archaic as well. there seems to be a lot of でありますように願う examples on japanese sites... are they all incorrect? – yadokari Jan 04 '12 at 04:27
  • @j-johan-edwards You omit too much. I am not a google fundamentalist, so I could not get what you meant. And, to you, 23 relevant examples (mistakes) on the search make the fact about Japanese change? But even if you believe your search results, isn't the difference in the numbers obvious? –  Jan 04 '12 at 05:24
  • @yadokari Which Japanese sites are you mentioning? If there are such examples, they are all incorrect. –  Jan 04 '12 at 05:26
  • @sawa . Does the に in でありますように correspond to the same type of usage of the sentence ending に mentioned in http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4004/sentence-ending-%E3%81%AB-and-%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AB-compared-to-their-non-sentence-ending-form ? – Flaw Jan 04 '12 at 11:40
  • @Flaw If you go back for the origin, it surely has relation with it, and it was originally omittion of the following part, but I think ように has turned into a single word that heads a subjunctive clause, and is different from に mentioned there. –  Jan 04 '12 at 12:02
  • @sawa: I'm not sure that でありますようの is actually incorrect. It's certainly unnecessary; and it's contrary to common idiom; but I'm not sure that it breaks any grammatical rules, as such. – Williham Totland Jan 04 '12 at 13:39
  • @sawa My point is, if you only look there are very numerous examples of wish + ように + wish verb constructions. From Japanese writers. They are certainly dwarfed by wish + ように constructions, but for the sake of illustrating why wish + ように is used they are useful. – Jjed Jan 04 '12 at 16:44
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I believe it comes from an abbreviation of 「〜ように願います」, where ように here means "so as to" or "so that".　In that case it would be the same ように which appears in e.g. 「〜ようにご注意ください」 "Please be careful so as to ..." or 「〜ようにする」 "make it so that ...".

Zhen Lin
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