Something I just noticed is that, even though most Japanese verbs use kun’yomi readings, there is a small group of verbs of the form (on’yomi reading) + じる. Some examples I’ve learned so far are 感じる、報じる、信じる、存じる and maybe some others. So I’m wondering if there are more verbs in higher levels where this pattern continues. And are there any verbs which do not follow this pattern but use on’yomi readings? I’ve thought of 頑張る but I’m not sure that it counts since it’s an ateji reading. Also, I wouldn’t count words like 勉強する since it’s really a noun that is changed into a verb by する.
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The じる comes from ずる and you can use ずる instead of じる on a suffix for most of these verbs, so they actually are like する-verbs, just over time the pronunciation kind of shifted.
And yes, there’s lots of them, also with kanji that get plenty of other use, like 長ずる, or 高ずる.
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Interesting, thanks for the answer. I do wonder how the “z” sound was able to morph over time into a “j” sound…
Also would ずる verbs be conjugated exactly like する verbs but with dakuten? E.g. 感ざれる? Or would it have to be 感じられる?
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ずる verbs are conjugated like する but with dakuten, so ずる → じます (and all other conjugations are like the じる forms too).
This is probably also the reason why you can use じる instead of ずる nowadays, so maybe it’s not really a sound shift after all? But more of a „people being lazy and going from 感ずる to 感じます to 感じる“.
I also found out that the dakuten from する to ずる is somehow related to one-kanji words ending in う or ん, and for ん I can definitely see how んずる would be easier to pronounce than んする.
Also, since you asked for possible ずる/じる verbs that do not kun‘yomi: I found them.
For some adjectives, you can add んじる to the word stem, to get verbs like 重んじる, 軽んじる and 甘んじる.
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Remember, ず can often times sound like “dzu”, one step away from the “J” sound.
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