Hi,
I was doing a genki practice and is saying option A is the correct answer:
Why is を instead of に?
And why に is correct in this example below?:
(not sure if this is the correct way to consult this here)
Thanks in advance,
1 Like
In this case, it’s simply because 待つ is a transitive verb (it takes a direct object) and direct objects are marked by を. To “wait for (something)” you mark the something with を.
*待つ also has uses where something could be marked with に, but they’re less common and you don’t need to worry about it as a beginner
会う is an intransitive verb (it doesn’t take a direct object) and the indirect object here gets marked with に. Typically, を cannot be used with an intransitive verb (unless it’s a verb of motion and を marks the place where the movement passes through, which is not the case here.)
You can check if a verb is transitive or intransitive in most dictionaries.
These can often be different from the intuition of other languages, so you just need to confirm what kind of verb it is in Japanese.
14 Likes
I found a reference for the 2nd question:
に会います / と会います
5 Likes
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation 
1 Like
The way I think about this is that verbs have particular particles that they go together with, so for a given verb one is just right and another wrong. The particles do have meaning, so it’s not purely random, but sometimes there are situations where more than one might in theory have been plausible but the language uses one, not the other. It’s the verb that determines which particles you can connect up to it (and not just the meaning of the verb, but the specific word).
It’s a bit like English prepositions – you “wait for somebody”, you don’t “wait at them”. But in some dialects you might “wait on somebody”, and in an alternate universe where “to wait” was transitive you would be able to “wait somebody”. You just have to learn that “for” is what it is.
One common suggestion for this is to try to learn verbs not as single verbs on their own but with little sentence patterns that include the particles that go with the verb.
7 Likes
Yeah, english is definitely no better (and maybe worse actually) but you really just have to memorize them being used with particles. This goes for の な adjectives as well. The good news is that once you’ve memorized them and used them for a bit, anything other than the correct particle just sounds weird to you because you’ll literally have never heard it said that way.
8 Likes
You can wait someone out. 
2 Likes