I was reading a manga and encountered 聞かせる in the speech of one character. I'm
still not good when it comes to translate sentences with passive and causative
forms...It helps a bit when I can see the structure like in this basic
example, which I hope it sounds alright:  
私は子供にマンガを読ませます.  
It can translate as "I make the children read manga" or "I let them read
manga", doesn't it?  
I know that causative has this nuance of "make" or "let", depending on
context, while with  
させられる the causative-passive form, it has more of the nuance of "to force"
someone to do something.  
I have the following sentence which I cannot understand at all because like I
mentioned above, I'm used with structures, such as the example I provided.  
(As a bit of context for this one, there are two men, one is talking while the
other listens to his speech)

> 納得できない「理由」を **聞かせる** くらいなら理由などないと言ってくれ。

I am also a bit unsure just what is the meaning of 聞く here, but I'm going with
"to ask".  

Even just looking at this part 理由を聞かせる I cannot understand how can it be
translated with the nuance of causative with either "make/let".  
  
Please, I hope someone can help me out with this. Thank you in advance!
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2017-05-20T18:07:56.177
47612
2017-05-20T19:54:10.757
2017-05-20T19:54:10.757
22175
22175
question
causation
Difficulty of understanding because of the causative form
聞かせる is the causative of 聞く "hear", meaning "cause [someone] to hear
[something]", that is "tell [someone something]". It's common enough to have
established itself as a separate verb with its own dictionary entry. This is a
bit speculative without a context, but it looks to me as though your sentence
means, in a more-or-less literal version, "If it comes to about as much as [i
e no more than] telling me 'reasons' I can't accept, do me the favour of
saying there isn't a reason or anything". More idiomatically: "If you aren't
going to do any more than give me 'reasons' that are unacceptable, for
heaven's sake just say you haven't got any reasons".
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-20T19:39:49.483
47615
2017-05-20T19:39:49.483
20069
47612
answer