Hi, can you explain the difference between かもしれない, はずだ and ようだ? I roughly understand the meaning and usage of them, just needed more clarity. Hope you can help me out ^ ^ Thanks in advance (◕‿◕✿)
I got my first grammar-related ask, yay! I apologize for taking a while to reply.. here goes:
Two things you wanna keep in mind when learning grammar points:
1. Can you recognize the meaning if you see it in a sentence?
2. Can you use it in a sentence of your own?
はず (hazu) has more of an “expectant” meaning, as in “this was supposed to happen”. It’s easy enough to recognize in a sentence. Here’s how it’s used:
決してうそをつかないことは美徳であるはずです。
It is supposed to be a virtue never to tell a lie.
犬夜叉はもう、ここにいるはずだ。。
Inuyasha should be here by now.
Here, the ‘expectation’ part is more like what is expected of something or someone. The expectation is somewhat fixed in that it’s usual for that subject to behave in a certain way. Now if Inuyasha were in fact to not show up when he’s expected to be here, you would say 犬夜叉が来ないようです “looks like Inuyasha won’t be coming.” This is a guess based on the information you have, but not necessarily what was expected to happen. ようだ or ようです is something you need to pay extra attention to in a sentence because it’s easy to miss or mix up with other よう patterns, particularly when you’re reading fast during JLPT.
かもしれない (kamoshirenai) - This is used mainly to sound ambivalent or uncertain (when one may or may not actually be so)
Kamoshirenai should be easy to distinguish from the other two as the usage is often more to seem uncertain, than when one actually is uncertain. (We can think of it as adding ‘idk’ to a sentence.）Sometimes you really don’t know, sometimes you just don’t want to sound too aggressively certain.
Now if you’re Sesshoumaru who has kidnapped Inuyasha and therefore know he won’t be here, or if you strongly suspect Sesshoumaru has kidnapped Inuyasha and want to break it gently to Kagome that he probably won’t be here right now, you can say 犬夜叉は来ないかもしれない。。 “Inuyasha may not come” The ‘idk’ is unspoken, do NOT write that in your exam, you probably won’t get any marks for that.
I hope that helped! If anyone spots any errors anywhere pls do let me know.