そう with verbs in different forms as well as the differences with みたい


Here are a couple of sentences:

  1. 雨が降るそうです

  2. 雨が降りそうです

Does 1 mean `I hear it will rain`, while 2 means `It seems it will rain?`?

And then, what about tenses?:

  1. 雨が降ったそうです

  2. ?

1 meaning `I heard it will rain`? There is no past masu stem so how would you
create 2? Would 2 then just mean `It looked like it would rain`?

To add to my confusion, there is `みたい`. What is the difference between `verb
masu stem + そう` and `plain verb + みたい`?




when following what could be called 'sentence form', そうだ means I heard/people
say that.

雨が降るそうだ - I heard it will rain

when following a verb's masu-stem or an adjective's stem (remove い or な as
appropriate), そうだ means it looks like/seems

雨が降りそうだ - It looks like it will rain

Next you have みたい

みたい（だ） is a more casual version of よう（だ） and both work basically the same way:

It expresses

a) a likelihood of something (looks like/appears to be the case) e.g.
木村さんは昨日お酒はを飲んだようだ・木村さんは昨日お酒を飲んだみたいだ It seems that Mr Kimura dran sake
yesterday

b) I likeness/similarity between one thing and another e.g.
この酒は水のようだ・この酒は水みたいだ this sake i like water

The difference between みたい・よう and そう (meaning looks like) is that：

そう is based on what the speaker sees or feels and there i less certainty than
with よう which is also based on what the speaker sees/saw, but involves further
reasoning on the part of the speaker to interpret the situation. There may be
more reliable information involved here.

Basically, そう is a simple 'it looks like', where as よう is 'it seems to me,
that...'

You may also find the expressions だろう/でしょう or らしい which can express similar
ideas to the above.

