4

I have a sentence in the form 10月10日をもって辞めたい, for example。 Does this をもって mean "before", or "after". Am I free on 10日 (i.e. work till 9日23:59). Or I still have to work on 10日, and get free on 11日?

Kind of classic time uncertainty in Japanese, but this use of をもって is new to me. I hope it has some certain meaning.

Asdf
  • 183
  • 5
  • 2
    Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/72241/9831 Time: 「10月31日を以てSEを辞めます。」 = "I shall leave SE as of October 31." – chocolate Oct 25 '19 at 09:33
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of What is そんでもって? – ajsmart Oct 25 '19 at 12:39
  • it neither explains the time scope, neither reading is explained there, making 以 disappear in the search for をもって.Meanwhile, でもってis not even related to the topic

    You can see the correct answer below, given by sbkgs4686

     – Asdf Oct 27 '19 at 04:04

1 Answers1

6

The previous state continues until the time specified by 〜を以って / 〜を以て (written in 漢字 so people are aware this is not 持つ). So:

10月10日をもって辞めさせていただきます。

would mean:

I will work through October 10th, after which I quit.
I will be quiting as of October 11th.

In English, the similar expression "as of" takes a look at when the resultant state starts. In Japanese, 〜をもって takes a look at when the previous state ends. This is why I think 〜をもって can be so tough to get the hang of for native English speakers.

sbkgs4686
  • 3,060
  • 1
  • 7
  • 14
  • 1
    I am not native. So, since advanced literature is available only in English, I am often floating in complete void. Thank you for clarification 👍 – Asdf Oct 25 '19 at 08:27
  • @Asdf That's my case too, our hope is to reach a Japanese level good enough to start learning in Japanese entirely – jarmanso7 Oct 26 '19 at 11:02