N2 Grammar: ~に過ぎない (Quote 3)
にすぎない - nothing more than, merely
Quick reminder of lower leven grammar structures with this word:
N5: ~すぎる - too much of something This construction can be used with adjectives and verbs to express that something is or was done too much. For example: 高すぎる (たかすぎる) - something is too expensive 使いすぎる (つかいすぎる) - something is used too much
N4: 過ぎる - to pass/ to go past This a simple noun and is etremely often used with the passing of time. For example: 時間が早く過ぎた。(じかんがはやくすぎた) - Time has quickly passed. But it can also be added to other nouns that indicate movement to express that something or someone has gone past something. For example: 走り過ぎる (はしりすぎる) - to run past
So, now that we have this out of the way let’s look at the phrase in the last quote I posted (quote 3, you can look up the entire quote on my blog by simply looking “quote 3″ in the search bar). Here the sentence is: 人間はその中の一本の繊維にすぎない
First of all 繊維 is read as せんい and means fiber (I thought of it as a useless word when I first encoutered it at University but it comes up more often than I thought).
Now, if you have understood the previous N4 contrsuction this is a seriously easy N2 piece of grammar to learn as you would use it exactly the way you would in English. Literally translated it means: “A human being does not go beyond (being) a single fiber withing this (this = life)”. To translate it more neatly the translation “A human being is nothing more than a single fiber within this”
So how do you use it? Super simple:
Noun + に過ぎない
Verb (plain form, past or present) + に過ぎない
Let’s add a quick example sentence wor the construction with the verb 日本語を勉強したが、自己紹介できるにすぎない。(I have studied Japanese but I can do nothing more than a self-introduction)
Japanese people also love to use に過ぎない with percentages just like in the following example: 日本語を勉強した割合は６％にすぎない。(The percentage of people that have studied Japanese is not more than 6%.
You can also use it with adjectives but I have never actually heard it this way and resources say that it’s rarely used as well.
If you want to add emphasis, it is possible to add だけ before に過ぎない, which would translate somewhere along the lines of “nothing more than merely”. But I don’t think that the だけ has to be translated unless you have a super picky teacher.
