Freaking out about transitive/intransitive 日本語 is everyone’s favorite pastime and simultaneously like, soooo passé, right?
Can we do a thread where we keep posting a bunch of simple sentence examples of transitive/intransitive pairs and their accompanying English translations so we can see the nuances and differences? Has this already been done on the forums before? (I tried searching ) I feel like I need this to hammer the understanding of transitive/intransitive into me… and to better remember which verb is which.
I’ll start, and I might be wrong/off with these sentences and translations, so I need all the glorious gurus out there to correct me probably:
始める ・ 始まる
あ、始めた。“Ah, they started it.” (transitive)
あ、始まった。 “Ah, it started.” (intransitive)
直す ・ 直る
これを直してください。“Please fix this.” (transitive)
これが直っているよ。“This is being fixed” or maybe “This is fixing itself” (??) (intransitive)
^Did I just open a whole can of wrong grammar worms? Are these even things people would say?
(Also, why does the fix kanji 直 appear to be missing the lion radical when I type it here?? Some font idiosyncrasy, perhaps?)
直る is a verb that expresses a change of state, not an action that can be continuous. In the ている form, this type of verb takes on the meaning of “this state change occurred previously and is still in effect.” Which is kind of awkward, but it would mean that これが直っている would mean “This is fixed.”
It is right, but I don’t think the sentence fully illustrates the difference. Adding a subject and/or object will make the difference much clearer, I think.
帰ったらドアはもう開いていた。When I came home the door was already open.
父が缶を開けてくれた。Dad opened the can for me.
Just got this one wrong in reviews, so let’s do another pair!
アップルストアの前に人が大勢並んでいます。A bunch of people are lined up in front of the Apple Store.
この店はクッキーが綺麗に並べてあります。This store has their cookies displayed prettily. (Does this sound natural?)
Oh, I thought the point was to make sentences that are basically the same except for the transitivity. So: “When I came home the door was already open.” vs. “Dad opened the door for me.” But, I also thought that maybe there were different verbs for “open” to use for opening different types of things, so I just wanted to make sure that ドアを開ける was acceptable usage.
Your examples are much clearer for illustrating the difference between 開く and 開ける, thank you
But I also like having extremely simple examples handy in my mind because I feel like it helps me understand the differences in meaning faster when reading the verbs by themselves. I think it’s useful to have both types of examples; those that clearly show the difference with transitivity pairs and also examples that are simple/similar but point out the different nuance between the two words like what I did:
Anyone have any example sentences for 伝える and 伝わる? I’ll probably try writing some out in a day or two after I catch up on my sleep…
あの人に私の気持ちを伝えた
I communicated my feelings to that person.
あの人に私の気持ちが伝わった
My feelings reached (were understood by, were transmitted to, etc.) that person.
It’s a little tricky to make English sentences that express the same idea with similar grammar without being awkward.
) I feel like I need this to hammer the understanding of transitive/intransitive into me… and to better remember which verb is which.
