Any pattern tips?

[iraldir]

I can think of at least two patterns that can help:

• It “feels like” (from the height of my level 6) transitive and intransitive verbs have different terminaisons, in aru vs eru for instance, but not only.
• I did read somewhere but cannot find it anymore that a lot of kanji that are split between two radicals, one of the left and one on the right, take their pronunciation from the right one. For instance, “姉” onyomi is “shi” much like the city kanji that is the right radical. Is there a list or script or something that help draw attention to this?

and more generally, any pattern that can help differenciate similarish words, especially vocabulary with kanas attached would be helpful.

[downtimes]

The first one has rough guidelines for some verb endings, as you correctly observed. There are some pairs that are even a rule. I don’t think it adds much value to learn these rules, though. Can be interesting to read up on, but I wouldn’t necessarily learn them.
A good resource for these transitive/intransitive pairs is A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar (DOBJ) page 585ff.

For the second one, it’s called Keisei composition, and you can find support for Wanikani in this thread: [Userscript] Keisei 形声 Semantic-Phonetic Composition
It doesn’t work with every Kanji, but it can be helpful.

I can’t think about any other tips that might be helpful currently. I found that after you expose yourself long enough to the language, you will pick up on that stuff even if you haven’t “learned” it. And generally it sticks way better that way, instead of having to memorize a rule.
There was this thread recently about godan/ichidan verbs. And sure you can learn wich ending is which and go to your conjugation tables and build sentences at a glacial pace, or you can just expose yourself to the language until it all starts to feel natural ^^. It’s the same for these tips in my mind.

[ekg]

@patternfinder sounds like you’ve got another case!

[sudgy]

When the pair is aru/eru, it is often intransitive/transitive, but there are many exceptions when only one verb is like this. There are a lot of pairs that end in su/eru, and in those cases case eru is the intransitive one.

One useful set of patterns to learn are the ones for rendaku. Tofugu has an article on it somewhere.

[iraldir]

Thanks for the Keisei script, definitely the sort of stuff I was looking for. I don’t have DOBJ unfortunately but it does look like a nice resource, I might acquire that soon. I do have a dedicated grammar book so I’ll check there first in the mean time for transitive / intransitive tips.

su/eru, and in those cases case eru is the intransitive one.

Oh I guess like “To be photographed” and “To copy” right? (写る、写す). Although as I write it down I notice it’s just ru not eru, so maybe not?

One useful set of patterns to learn are the ones for rendaku

Yeah did not think of that but that’s another good one. I had read probably that article you mention and it did make it much more predictable.

and build sentences at a glacial pace, or you can just expose yourself to the language until it all starts to feel natural

In my mind, learning to speak a language is putting together many different brain pathways, sure, when speaking you want to be able to recall instantly vocabulary and grammar structure without thinking about it, but that’s limited to a very small subset of the grammar and vocabulary that you’ve been exposed to, because you’ve not mastered it all.

When listening, it’s all about using the tone, piece of vocabulary that you know etc. to guess the structure, all the while inconsciously storing info about sentence stucture, intonnation, expressions etc.

But when reading, that sort of clue, such as transitive vs intransitive can help making sense of vocabulary that you don’t know yet and save you a trip to the dictionnary, the more trip saved the more you can immerse yourself in the language and correct your understanding over time. And sure you’re not going to use that when speaking, but the verb you pick whilst reading using this trick will ultimately end up in your core vocabulary.