khiemtran | On the causative passive...

One of the fun things about Japanese is the way you can build simple verbs into real tongue twisters. For example, taberu is a verb meaning "to eat" and one of the first any beginner learns. But if you put it into the causative form "to make or let someone eat", it follows a simple transformation to become tabesaseru (-eru at the end gets replaced by -esaseru). And if you put it into the potential ("to be able to eat") or the passive ("to be eaten" or "to be affected by someone else eating" (i.e. "I had people eating crisps all around me during the movie")), it becomes taberareru (-eru gets replaced by -erareru). Try saying both of those quickly, using a Japanese "r" (halfway between an "r" and an "l").

But the real fun comes when you combine both the passive and the causative ("to be made to eat against your will"). Can you guess what it is? Tabesaserareru! (Which is completely logical, of course, since you just apply one rule after the other.