Oh boy, that’s embarrassing 
Thanks for the correction!
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I agree with this, and I appreciate your writing it out because it encourages me about what I’m trying to do for Spanish. 
I haven’t looked at the site yet (for which, thanks!) but I’m going to guess that it’s not just a Western paradigm. Every language has its differences from other languages, and once you get those down, the rest falls easily into place. For Spanish I have a list of three basic concepts that most English speakers never master, which take you a long way, plus one or maybe two concepts that fit for advanced levels. Get those down, and Spanish is easy—well, not easy exactly, but conquerable.
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Oh, thanks so much for that recommendation! I’d been wondering what had caused the patterns in the transitivity pairs—clearly there was some meaning there. This is very helpful.
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Wait, what are your Spanish concepts, if I might ask? My Spanish is pretty good at this point (and my first language is French, not English) but I’m really curious now!
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Seems very off topic! I’ll hide it under this summary button.
Summary
If your Spanish is pretty good, and if your first language is French, these might seem obvious to you, but for English speakers, here they are:
(1) The subject is indicated by the verb ending—not by word order.
(2) An object (when animate) is indicated by a pronoun or by a noun phrase with a, not by word order.
(3) Word order, since it doesn’t indicate subjects and objects, is free to indicate emphasis. Whereas in English we tend to emphasize ideas by speaking them louder (or using italics in writing), in Spanish verbal emphasis is much less used. Instead, emphasized words head to the end of the sentence, or are duplicated. (An example of duplication: Yo me llamo Ana. Since the yo is not gramatically necessary—being already indicated by the -o ending—it is an emphasis. “Me llamo Ana” is “My name is Ana.” “Yo me llamo Ana” is “My name is Ana.” “Me llamo Ana yo” is even more emphatic on the yo.
I have never seen a textbook that gives the a personal the attention that it deserves. It is one of the core concepts of Spanish, since it distinguishes subject and object, yet it is always treated very lightly. I’ve even seen it described as a way to “show respect” for a person who is an object. But it isn’t that, at all—it shows that that person isn’t the subject. It’s grammatically necessary to the sense. “Ve María” and “Ve a María” mean completely different things, and I’ve never seen a textbook go over this difference.
We spend a lot of time in my classes (which only meet once a week) going over the first two points (in hands-on, active ways). I’m learning how to get this across, but it’s really hard for them. Since French works more like Spanish (I believe!), you haven’t had that trouble.
Speaking of teaching, I have a student waiting…
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This is what I use synonyms for. If you’re aware with Japanese usage that would give you a slightly different way to remember it (i.e., capturing a transitive vs. intransitive distinction like that), simply add your preferred translation to the synonyms.
Slightly aside the topic, I agree with the OP that not grappling with more grammatical discussion is a major pitfall of Japanese instruction for English speakers. I had to learn all the nuances laid out above on my own, after formal Japanese classes, and they’ve been incredibly helpful realizations in improving my grammar and even learning new Japanese grammar, as I understand the underlying logic better. I wish someone had clarified that 見える, 分かる, 聞こえる, etc. were intransitive around the time of Genki I, or that 好き is an adjective, or that こと、はず、わけ、etc. are all not simply nominalizing, but in themselves modified nouns. So much other stuff. All these lightbulbs had to go off on their own for me at some point, and have made learning new grammar much less impenetrable.
I feel like there’s a tendency to back away from this because even English grammar can be intimidating for some, along with its vocabulary, but if you don’t have the tools to talk about the logic of a language so different from English, you’re really making things harder for yourself in the long run.
分かる practically meaning “I understand” but literally being closer to “to be understood” isn’t such a difficult concept that it should be kept a functional secret from early learners. It’s exemplary of one of the foundational differences between the two languages.
But anyway, yeah–for Wanikani, just use synonyms.
This drives me nuts too. I always have to double/triple-check before using an unfamiliar する-verb to make sure the action is going the right way.
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wait until the point where you get to know enough of the language and you start picking being able to pick it up at full speed. Sometimes, even with my limited knowledge I’ll be watching a drama or something and hear the word in japanese and laugh at the translation twice that the subtitle gives.
my favorite is いただきます which really doesn’t have an English equivalent, but boy do they try. It is almost never the same translation via subtitle.
you will learn a lot of the nuances by reading more sentences or listening to more sentences, the “englishification” will get you started, but when you hear it in context you’ll understand the differences. The defnition you see is just the starting point.
Just like when you are learning english, if you see a picture of a red piece of fruit, you say apple. They don’t expect you to know or understand that it is a washington red delicious apple right off the bat. But that doesn’t mean you won’t learn that through your studies eventually.
don’t stress about it, just keep going forward.
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I’m gonna back up for a second here, I think this definition of わかる is way over analyzing it. So I looked at my dictionary, and the definitions are very simple, the two relevant ones at least:
① 物事の意味価値などが理解できる。「意味が―る」「音楽が―らない人」
② はっきりしなかった物事が明らかになる。知れる。「真犯人が―る」「答えが―る」
So to break that down in english:
1.) To comprehend a meaning or value.
2.) Things that aren’t clear become clear. To be able to know.
So in other words: To comprehend.
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“To be broken down” is perhaps overliteralizing it, but I think the transitive/intransitive distinction is pertinent. Look at that dictionary example. Even the second definition renders 知る in its passive form. “To be understood.” “To be known.” “The unclear becoming clear.”
It’s all from the perspective of the object, rather than the person doing the understanding, as we’d render the same thought in English. And the sooner this gets reinforced for learners, the sooner a lot of common sentence constructions start to make grammatical sense. (But for some reason most English learning materials won’t make this distinction, and I think that’s kind of crappy, having learned from them myself; I get not wanting to hang anyone up on transliterations, but there’s a logic to Japanese that can get lost when this isn’t made clear.)
Edit – I’m dumb. 知る is in its potential form there. So it does make it clear that the verb does reflect on the person understanding, but the rest all makes it pretty clear it’s intransitive, which is important for grammar. Leaving the above portion up to document my shame for posterity.
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I was curious as to what dictionary you’re using, so I plugged those example sentences into google, and it told me that they’re in weblio. A bit of research* suggests that weblio trawls exclusively JE and EJ dictionaries . . . which would contain Anglicized definitions. In all fairness to these dictionaries, (I’ve pored over several JE/EJ dictionaries, and they list approximately the same meanings as #1 and #2) the second definition is basically on the money – “to become clear” is close enough to what the word really means (ie, captures its transitivity) while remaining sensible to English readers, and I think that’s a great compromise.
The problem is that almost every resource I’ve come across uses ‘to understand’ as the primary definition. To reiterate a position I’ve taken earlier in this thread, I think ‘to understand’ is a bad definition because it makes the grammar more difficult, and it’s not necessarily easy to spontaneously correct the meaning. For example, I was, until recently, bending the definition of 分かる fit its transitivity by taking it to mean something like “makes sense to me” (which satisfies the transitivity but doesn’t actually work with the grammar). I suppose this is an argument against learning words out of context, but even if it becomes clear through exposure it’s not really clear why it’s working that way.
As a result, I think the learner winds up cataloging it as one of those ‘arbitrary Japanese things’ and moving on. They can use it and recognize it, but the more the learner treats Japanese grammar as arbitrary and a language of exceptions upon exceptions, the less mastery they have of it. In this case they’ve failed to really understand the word 分かる and that it’s telling you about something that the subject did; additionally, it undermines the learner’s mastery of the が particle which is (at least at first) plenty mysterious without adding further complications.
*Our guides have moved! - Our guides have moved! - Guides at Stanford University
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Just commenting to really back this up. So many of the users on this site are using WK as their first plunge into Japanese, and so many of the popular resources we have available don’t even bother to draw these kinds of connections in the first place. Neither TK nor Genki address these things in a timely fashion – TK for example, translates sentences using 好き as if 好き were a verb rather than an adjective, and that caused me no end of confusion to the point that I’ve mostly dropped TK. Little things like this can really gum up the grammar when the grammar is actually, for the most part, super logical and sensible. Way easier to grok than the total hash that is English grammar anyway.
Anyway, I think making the distinction clear without forcing new self-learners to dig through a myriad of resources for the few relatively obscure gems that do talk about these things, would be a huge improvement on things for learners. I know understanding this stuff has been a huge boon for me.
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My research* suggests those definitions come from 大辞林.
*I looked at the webpage
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Literal != accurate.
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They trawl, but they don’t do work like translating JE resources (to JJ) 
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Here’s a more complete picture for you (see the top left); it turns out we were both right, no need to resort to snark. Your point is taken, though, that it’s from a JJ dictionary, and that’s great. That’s what I’ve been looking for. So let’s take a look at that first meaning.
Please correct me if I’m wrong – I’m looking at a bunch of unfamiliar kanji and some grammatical pieces that I’m unfamiliar with, but from what I’ve been able to make out, that first definition reads (going basically word by word) as: “Thing’s meaning, value, etc. is able to do understanding.” That, I would posit, is very different from what ‘to understand’ implies.
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Hmm, are you arguing with Google Translate now?
理解できる sounds like “to (be able to) unterstand” to me.
I never meant to imply that literal is always better or more accurate than the meanings. I just learned the word “train direction” which . . . has nothing to do with the literal reading of the word. I may have written such that that was unclear – the only horse I have in this race regards transitivity and picking out word meanings that better imply transitivity.
Houhou, actually. Definitely not perfect, but it’s what I have right now.
We were both right in the sense that… it’s from a J-J dictionary, but Weblio also only trawls for J-E dictionaries? Not following. I found the asterisk and whatnot humorous given that it says what dictionary it comes from right on the page, so that’s the reason for the snark.
I don’t know if we can have a meaningful conversation about dictionary definitions if you aren’t at a point where you can read them yet.
I meant you screenshot The “Sanseido Daijinbayashi” should be “Daijirin from publisher Sanseido”, that is the source (a major dictionary). But it’s also true that for JE they just use the same free stuff everyone uses (JMDict), which is good, but no comparison to a “real” dictionary.
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