Making sense of "心配させる" (causative verbs)


I'm trying to understand the phrase 「 **Ａを心配させるな** 」 by "sounding it out" in
English.

I can understand 「 **Ａを心配かけるな** 」as meaning " _Do NOT associate/connect any
worries with Ａ!!!_ ". In my thinking, that makes sense.

But, I can't think of how to "sound-out" the phrase 「 **Ａを心配させるな** 」 into
English. As 「 **させる** 」 is causative, the command would seem to have to be
directed at the person who is causing someone else to worry: 「
**田中さん、Ａについて、Bobを心配させるな。** 」 " _Tanaka-san, do not cause Bob to worry about
A._ " And, "Bob" is the one who is worried, and "Tanaka-san" is to whom I am
giving a command.

Yet, [this
discussion](http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11115969151)
asserts that 「 **Ａを心配かける** 」and 「 **Ａを心配させる** 」 have the same basic meaning,
at least in some situations.

* * *

So, how can a speaker of English sound-out " **Ａを心配させるな** " in English?

Perhaps:

  1. "Do not cause yourself to be worried about A." 

OR

  2. "Do not allow yourself to be worried about A (by some unspoken factor)." // but this is passive voice, not causative. Most certainly I don't even understand causative/passive to begin with.




Let us get the phrases straight if we want to discuss them.

You wrote 「Aを[心配]{しんぱい}かける」 twice, so I do not think it was a typo. The only
correct particle to use in that expression is 「に」. 「を」 is not possible.

If you or anyone is unfamiliar with this usage of 「に」, I just happened to talk
about it in another thread a few days ago. [君に話しがある How does this
work?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/14603/%e5%90%9b%e3%81%ab%e8%a9%b1%e3%81%97%e3%81%8c%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b-how-
does-this-work)

So, the two expressions in question are:

> Ａ[を]心配[させる]な。（Both 「を」and「に」are possible.）
>
> Ａ[に]心配[かける]な。（Only「に」 is possible.）

These two basically mean the same thing even though they are structured
differently. They both mean:

"Do not make A feel uneasy.", "Do not give A anxiety.", etc.

Since I am a Japanese-speaker, I shall let you and others form your own
English translations that satisfy your needs. The phrases do not mean anything
far from what I said above, though.




Let us get the phrases straight if we want to discuss them.

You wrote 「Aを[心配]{しんぱい}かける」 twice, so I do not think it was a typo. The only
correct particle to use in that expression is 「に」. 「を」 is not possible.

If you or anyone is unfamiliar with this usage of 「に」, I just happened to talk
about it in another thread a few days ago. [君に話しがある How does this
work?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/14603/%e5%90%9b%e3%81%ab%e8%a9%b1%e3%81%97%e3%81%8c%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b-how-
does-this-work)

So, the two expressions in question are:

> Ａ[を]心配[させる]な。（Both 「を」and「に」are possible.）
>
> Ａ[に]心配[かける]な。（Only「に」 is possible.）

These two basically mean the same thing even though they are structured
differently. They both mean:

"Do not make A feel uneasy.", "Do not give A anxiety.", etc.

Since I am a Japanese-speaker, I shall let you and others form your own
English translations that satisfy your needs. The phrases do not mean anything
far from what I said above, though.

