The description for this verb says it’s intransitive, but I can’t figure out how the English analogue “to meet” wouldn’t be transitive.
Can someone explain the literal meaning and grammatical construction of the Japanese translation of “I met someone”?
Earlier, WK told me that it’s better to think of 分かる as “to be understandable” vs. “to understand”. Is this the same sort of thing?
Thanks for any help.
To meet is not always transitive in English either. “I met Lucy yesterday” is transitive, “Lucy and I met yesterday” isn’t.
If you look at the first WaniKani example:
牛肉には赤ワインが合います。
Red wine goes well with beef
Literally it’s something like “with beef red wine meets”, there’s no を.
Whether a Japanese verb is transitive or not is a property of that verb, not of its meaning, so the Japanese verb may be transitive when the English equivalent is not. (Often they’re the same, but they don’t have to be.) Consider an alternative English where “I met Tom” was not grammatical and we always said “I met with Tom” – in that world “to meet” would be intransitive. It happens that in Japanese 会う doesn’t use を to mark the person we meet – it’s Xと会う or Xに会う – so it’s not a transitive verb.