One of the example sentences for 活用

Japanese Language
1

So I was doing some lessons today and I came across this example sentence for 活用 that confused me a little. I always try my best to understand the example sentences that don’t add a bunch of kanji I haven’t learned yet. The sentence is below, with I think most of the more advanced kanji filled in.

「ちょこっとあいた時間を活用して、ワニカニで日本語を勉強します。」

The thing that’s bugging me is あいた

I can’t seem to find it on Jisho.org, and Google Translate wants to correct it to 空いた (And I don’t think that’s the same? This is read すいた right?)

I was able to decipher ちょこっと and the rest of it. But this あいた is really throwing me. Help?

2

It sounds to me like a past tense dictuonary form of a verb あく。I’d guess that it’s this 開く in the meaning “to be vacant; to be available; to be free”.

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3

How would this あいた be written with that kanji? 開いた？

4

I think so.
Also it seems that 開く can be also written 空く in that meaning.

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5

Yea, that’s what it is 空いた時間 is free time. Writing it as 空く this way is pretty common.

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6

I plugged that kanji into the sentence and SUDDENLY Google knew the whole sentence.

So 空いた時間 would be read as あいたじかん？

7

Yeah, it seems so.

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8

空く can be あく or すく, but in this case there shouldn’t be any confusion, since they used the hiragana. A handful of verbs are indistinguishable in at least one form, from other verbs, unless you have more context.

Like 開く can either be あく or ひらく, depending on what kind of opening is happening. And 行った can be いく or おこなう in the past tense, but usually context and particles make it clear.

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