LEARN + JAPANESE / 102 of 186 JLPT N4
Left Just as It Was まま
You fall asleep with the TV on and wake up hours later: テレビをつけたまま寝てしまいました. まま describes a state that stayed unchanged while something else happened.
I fell asleep with the window left open.
I fell asleep still wearing my suit.
Hint · 힌트
Xたまま describes doing one thing (falling asleep) while a first state (the window open, the suit worn) stays exactly as it was, unresolved in the background. This overlaps with てある in describing a leftover state, but まま carries no sense of deliberate purpose, only that something didn’t get changed back.
No, it's still dirty, unchanged.
No, it's still broken.
Hint · 힌트
まま answering a question like this reports that nothing has changed since some earlier point, still dirty, still broken, a state that was expected to improve but hasn’t, similar in feel to まだ but framed around an unbroken continuation rather than a simple “still.”
Please just leave it out as is.
In Real Life
このまま and そのまま are extremely common set phrases, “as it is,” “just like that,” used constantly in instructions when you want something left untouched rather than adjusted or moved.
Vocabulary
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| window | |
| suit | |
| to wear glasses | |
| milk | |
| to sit on a sofa | |
| dirty | |
| inconvenient | |
| unskilled | |
| the same as it used to be | |
| to turn on, attach | |
| to put, place | |
| to take out, put out | |
| unchanging | |
| state, condition | |
| to leave (something) unattended | |
| to leave as it is | |
| back to how it was | |
| carelessly | |
| to not notice | |
| to maintain |
YOUR PROGRESS
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