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I've read that potential form of the ru-verb is formed by replacing る with
られる, which is exactly the same for the passive form of ru-verbs. How can we
tell the passive form and potential apart in this case?
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2012-08-27T14:03:58.710
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question
verbs conjugations suffixes potential-form passive-voice
How to distinguish between passive and potential forms of the verb?
Context is important. With passive verbs you should look for a に before the
verb that will mark the person or thing that performs the verb. This is not
the same as the subject of the verb.

For example, if you see the short phrase: お兄さんに食べられた。 You can figure out
pretty quickly from the に that this is not the potential. The subject of the
sentence is an invisible first person pronoun (pick your poison: 私, 僕, 俺). The
object is also invisible - let's make it an おにぎり. So the actual sentence looks
like this （私が）お兄さんに（おにぎりを）食べられた。In other words: I suffered my older brother
eating an onigiri. The に marks the person who performs the actual action, the
が marks the subject who suffers, and the を marks the object. Put that into
normal English and you get: My brother ate my damn onigiri.

I wrote a basic introduction to the passive form here:
<http://howtojaponese.com/2008/02/04/embracing-japanese-expression-get-used-
to-it-2/>

And then expanded on it in a Japan Times article which I link to here:
<http://howtojaponese.com/2011/04/27/cool-passive-phrase-yarareta/>

And never forget that there's no such thing as passive "tense." That's what I
used to call it until someone pointed out that tense always means time-
related...past, present, future.
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Yes, ditto what How to Japanese said, context is king.

  * お兄さん **に** 食べられる  
[something] is eaten **by** elder brother

  * お兄さん **が** 食べられる  
elder brother is eaten [by something]  
OR elder brother _can eat_ [something]

And, as Jeemusu notes, -られる is often turned into -れる in speech and more casual
writing, precisely to help clarify this difference.

About tense, @How to Japanese, some folks even take the angle that Japanese
doesn't have tense, strictly speaking -- what Japanese uses is something
called "aspect", regarding whether the verb action is complete or not within
the timeframe of the utterance, which is why it's possible to say things like
明日あれを **した** 後で [tomorrow, after I **did** that] or 昨日 **起きる** ところで
[yesterday, just before I **wake** up]. It's a subtle distinction, but aspect
has more to do with when an action happens _within the flow of the context_ ,
whereas tense has more to do with when an action happens _in relation to now_.
More at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect> and
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense>.
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