UI S03L11 - ga akerarenai

[andycarmenjapanese8100]

ひなこ: 上原さん、おはようございます。 あのぉ、添付ファイルが開けられないんですが、見ていただけますか。
HINAKO: Uehara-san, ohayō gozaimasu. Anō, tenpu fairu ga akerarenai n desu ga, mite itadakemasu ka.
HINAKO : Good morning, Mr. Uehara. Umm, I can’t seem to open an attachment I got. Would you mind taking a look at it for me?

[Akeru]'s potential form is [akerareru] but it's a transitive verb, it takes the particle "wo". The problem sentence uses the particle "ga".

Also, this word can't be [aku] because the potential form of that word is [akeru] not [akerareru].

So, why is "ga" used here?

[mmmason8967]

It's not the potential form but the passive form. Well, the passive and potential are exactly the same for this verb, so it's the context that tells you the difference.

ファイルが開けられる would translate as something like "the file will be opened". The negative version, ファイルが開けられない, sounds a bit clumsy if you try to keep the passive when you translate into Engllish: it comes out awkwardly as something like "the file will not be opened". More natural translations would be "the file won't open" or "I can't open the file", neither of which are passive. But the Japanese is passive, and that's why it uses が.

マイケル