Ah the trails and tribulations of Japanese Transitivity Pairs. Many of us have crumpled at their might or have been swayed in awe by their shear majesty. Some of us may be discovering them for the first time, confused and frightened by the fact that so many verbs look and act so similar and wondering why WaniKani makes you add “something” to your answers even when it seems entirely unnecessary. No matter who you are, I think you will find something useful in this guide.
There are quite a number of good guides on transitivity already on the internet. tofugu’s article is a good primer for the basics, Cure Dolly’s video on the topic is very intuitive and lays out many of the common patterns, and this article from wasabi is the most thorough in documenting the different patterns that I’ve seen. But from the perspective of a WaniKani user, I bring you something that none of those resources have. Data! I’ve combed through all of WK’s vocabulary items and compiled a list of all 168 transitivity pairs that WK asks you to memorize. And looking at this data, we can find out where the true patterns lie, where the exceptions are, and how much information you can actually figure out just by looking at the spelling of the verbs themselves.
The full list of WK transitivity pairs that I’ve compiled (plus false pairs and other info) can be found here: WaniKani Transitivity Pairs - Google Sheets
(In the sheet, transitive verbs will be labeled by 他 and intransitive by 自. Pair types and Configuration will be explained below along with other things)
What is Transitivity
There are many explanations of transitivity around already on the internet, so this explanation here will be fairly short. “Transitivity”, put simply, describes whether or not a verb in a language requires a grammatical “object”. That is, whether or not an action needs to be acted on another object or concept.
Take the English verb “to hang out”, you can “hang out at home” or “hang out till the bus gets here” or just “hang out” but you can’t “hang out an elephant”, it doesn’t make sense. “to hang out” cannot act on another object grammatically and so we say that it is “intransitive”
On the other hand, Take a verb like “to pick up”. Let’s look at a sentence: “George walked over into the grass and picked up”. To a native english speaker, this sentence sounds incomplete. “George picked up? picked up what?” This verb requires an object in order to be grammatical, even if we don’t know what George picked up we must say “George picked up something”. We say the verb “to pick up” is “transitive”.
Transitivity in Japanese
No matter how you feel about it, Japanese has a concept of Transitivity as well. In Japanese though, it’s fairly easy to explain the difference. In this language「を」is the particle that indicates the direct object of the sentence. If a verb is transitive then there must be an object indicated by を in order to make the sentence grammatical (although sometimes this object is assumed), but if the verb is intransitive then usually there will not be a を in the sentence and any other elements of the sentence will be indicated with either a は or が (or one of the indirect object particles に, で, へ, etc.)
In Japanese the words for transitive and intransitive are 他動詞 and 自動詞 respectively. Literally, “other verb” and “self verb”. Cure Dolly prefers to call these “self move” and “other move” verbs to make it more clear that in “self move” verbs the subject often does the action to itself and in “other move” verbs the action is done to something else. Regardless in monolingual dictionary you will often see verbs labelled as either 自 or 他 to differentiate the two.
The thing that becomes tricky about transitivity in japanese though is the concept of the transitivity pair. Lets look at the english verb “to stop”, is this verb transitive or intransitive? Well you can “stop a train” or “stop a fight” so it must be transitive. But we can also say “the train stopped” or “I stopped in my tracks” so I guess it’s intransitive. Well in english it can be both depending on the context. In japanese however, the same verb cannot be used in both contexts. If we wanted to talk about “stopping at a stop light” we would have to use the intransitive verb 止まる, but if we wanted to talk about “stopping a train” or “stopping a bull” we would need to use the transitive 止める. Two verbs, 止まる and 止める, that look and sound almost identical and would be translated the same in english, but cannot be used interchangeably. This is an example of a transitivity pair, and they are all over the japanese language.
It’s important to note that transitivity pairs are not entirely foreign to the english language. Consider the verbs “to rise” and “to raise”. “Rise” is intransitive, you cannot “rise” a flag or a hand or a statue, but you can “raise” one of those things. “rise” and “raise” are an example of a transitivity pair in english. The big difference between english and japanese is the number of pairs. English has maybe a dozen of these sorts of pairs in the language, whereas japanese has hundreds.
Another important thing to mention is that not all japanese verbs have transitivity pairs. There are some verbs which only ever make sense as one or the other. 打つ “to hit” must always take an object as you always have to be hitting “something”, there is no intransitive pair for this word. Same thing is true for intransitive 歩く"to walk", it has no transitive form since you can’t walk “something” (other than a dog I suppose). Also, there are verbs that can be both just like in english, 言う “to say” can be both intransitive or transitive depending on the context (“to say a word” vs. “to speak”). In dictionaries this is often indicated by the symbol 自他.
Transitivity Pairs in WK
WaniKani on it’s path to teach you how to read all the kanji and their associated vocabulary also does it’s best to teach you a number of transitivity pairs along the way. WaniKani has a total of 168 of these but it’s not always clear to beginners what they are looking at. It’s easy enough if the pair exists in english as well (like 入る “to enter” vs 入れる “to insert”) But creating a natural english phrase that represents the transitivity of a verb that doesn’t have a pair in english is tricky. For a verb like 切れる, This verb indicates that something is being cut on it’s own without any involvement from anything else. How do we indicate that with a natural english expression.
The solution that WK came up with is to use the passive form of the verb as the intransitive version. In this case in english we could say “the rope was cut” which removes the cutter from the sentence. So in WK, 切れる is “to be cut” and 切る is “to cut something”. The only confusing thing is that 切れる is not actually in the passive form in japanese. The passive form of 切る is 切られる (as in ロープは田中に切られる “The rope is cut by Tanaka”). 切れる is simply just the intransitive version of 切る, as “rise” is the intranstive version of “raise”.
This “to x something” “to be x” is the most typical way that transitivity pairs are presented in WK but there are plenty of times when WK will choose to go in a different route, especially when the distinction already exists in english.
Transitivity Pair Types and Patterns (with WK Statistics)
At first when you study these pairs, they may start to feel random with no pattern. Why is 付く intransitive and 付ける transitive while 売る is transitive and 売れる is intransitive? Why is 取る transitive while 直る is intransitive? But there’s more logic to this then there might seem at first glance. Over the entire corpus of WK verbs, with one exception every pair fits into one of 3 categories.
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す pairs: This is the most common type of pair in WaniKani. With this pair, one of the two verbs in the pair will end with either す, せる, or ぜる. The verb ending in this す sound will always be transitive and the other verb will always be intransitive. In some cases the other verb ends in る or れる, in other cases it might end in another う sound like く but in either case す, せる, or ぜる will always be the transitive one. Cure Dolly compares this す sound to する “to do” as the “father of all other move verbs”. The actual etymology of this is not so simple but it does help to remember the pattern.
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ある pairs: In this case, one of the verbs will end in an sound that rhymes with ある (わる, かる, まる, etc.) and the other one will end with a sound that rhymes with える (える, ける, める, etc.). Both the ある and the える sounds will be attached outside the kanji as okurigana (送り仮名). The one with the ある sound will always be intransitive and the one with the える sound will always be transtive. Curry dolly compares this ある sound with ある “to be” as “the mother of all self move verbs” which might help you to remember which is which. In rare case, the other side of the ある verb can be a う ending verb as well, (such as 繋がる and 繋ぐ) and in other cases the ある turns into あれる. The pattern still holds regardless.
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う pairs: This is the final type of pair and the one that is the most difficult to guess. In this pattern, one of the verbs will be a verb ending in an う sound (む, ぶ, く, etc.). The other verb will take the consonant sound from the end of the other verb and add an える sound to the end (む→める, ぶ→べる,く→ける). Which one is which? well it’s not consistent. In general, the える verb will be transitive and the う verb will be intransitive but there are more exceptions here than anywhere else. れる will almost always be intransitive instead and く/ける pairs are about 50/50 one way or the other. You can find the exact stats for all of the different variations down below. Often though it helps me to think about which type of transitivity feels more “natural” for a given verb. Often the う verb fits that description better. (So 解くand 解ける are “to solve” and “to be solved”. When I think about “solving” I usually think about solving “something” like a puzzle or a riddle. So transitivity is more natural here and 解く is the transitive one) This trick will only take you so far though.
Even when one of these patterns overlap, they never contradict one another. So if you can remember the pair type, you can figure out the transitivity fairly easily. The only exception in WK is 怠ける “to neglect” and 怠る “to be negligent”, these vocab items from beyond level 51 follow none of the patterns listed above but they are the only one (in WK at least).
Here are some stats about types from the complete list of WK transitivity pairs:
Number of pairs of each type
| Pair Type | Amount |
|---|---|
| う pair | 42 |
| ある pair | 47 |
| す pair | 78 |
| exceptions | 1 |
| Total | 168 |
う Pair Stat Breakdown
| Verb Ending | う verb intransitive (自) | う verb transitive (他) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| う | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| く | 10 | 8 | 18 |
| つ | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| ぶ | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| む | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| る | 1 | 9 | 10 |
| Total | 25 | 17 | 42 |
verb transitivity within transitivity pairs sorted by okurigana
| 送り仮名 | 自 | 他 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| ～す | 0 | 70 | 70 |
| う | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| く | 14 | 8 | 22 |
| ぐ | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| つ | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| ぶ | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| む | 9 | 4 | 13 |
| — | — | — | — |
| ～る | 133 | 84 | 217 |
| ～おる | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| ～いる | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| る | 24 | 10 | 34 |
| — | — | — | — |
| ～える | 53 | 74 | 127 |
| える | 8 | 10 | 18 |
| ける | 10 | 16 | 26 |
| げる | 2 | 7 | 9 |
| せる | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| ぜる | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| てる | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| ねる | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| べる | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| める | 0 | 24 | 24 |
| れる | 33 | 1 | 34 |
| — | — | — | — |
| ～ある | 45 | 0 | 45 |
| わる | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| かる | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| がる | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| さる | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| ざる | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| たる | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| なる | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| ばる | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| まる | 19 | 0 | 19 |
| らる | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Transitivity by Verb Type and Okurigana
Alright, so pair types are great and all but maybe you’re doing your daily reviews and a verb pops up you’ve seen a number of times before. You know what it means and you remember it’s has a pair but you can’t remember whether it’s transitive or intransitive and you can’t remember what it’s pair looks like at all. Can you still figure out what it’s transitivity should be, just by looking at the shape of the verb? The answer is no, well kinda. The answer is almost. Below is a chart pulled from all 908 non-する verbs that WK currently teaches, we will go through each different type of verb and see if we can find any patterns when it comes to transitivity.
| Verb Type | 自 | 他 | 自他 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 一段 (ichidan) | 112 | 184 | 6 | 302 |
| る (godan) | 140 | 70 | 6 | 216 |
| す | 5 | 120 | 4 | 129 |
| う | 28 | 42 | 3 | 73 |
| く | 36 | 32 | 5 | 73 |
| ぐ | 7 | 10 | 1 | 18 |
| つ | 7 | 6 | 2 | 15 |
| ぶ | 8 | 4 | 1 | 13 |
| む | 25 | 39 | 3 | 67 |
| ぬ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 来る | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| total | 370 | 507 | 31 | 908 |
As you can see most of these groups have a fairly heavy mix. You’re about as likely to guess a flipped coin than guess the transitivity of a く verb or a つ verb but there is one of these groups that has a really heavy skew.
す verbs
The vast, vast majority of す verbs both in WaniKani and elsewhere are transitive verbs. And even the ones that aren’t always listed as transitive often have at least one context in which they can be transitive. This presumably must have some historical linguistic reason. At some point there must have been some auxiliary verb or verb suffix that conferred a notion of transitivity. It might be related to the causative, させる, or have to do with する (which historically would have been the nidan verb す) or maybe it’s unrelated to both. My research didn’t lead me to any conclusions here. Still it’s convenient, even considering a few exceptions:
- 差す, 増す, 超す, and 尽くすare all listed by WK as intransitive. Even though all three of these have contexts in which they are transitive
- Several compound verbs are intransitive even when their base verbs are not. Including 引っ越す, 繰り返す, and several 出す compounds
Ichidan verbs
Ichidan (一段) verbs sometimes know as る-verbs don’t follow any large pattern as a whole but if we break things down based on their okurigana, we can see some patterns emerge.
| Verb Type | 自 | 他 | 自他 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ~いる | 18 | 11 | 2 | 31 |
| える | 16 | 37 | 3 | 56 |
| ける | 15 | 26 | 0 | 41 |
| げる | 2 | 14 | 0 | 16 |
| せる | 1 | 12 | 0 | 13 |
| ぜる | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| てる | 2 | 8 | 0 | 10 |
| ねる | 1 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| べる | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| める | 1 | 50 | 0 | 51 |
| れる | 51 | 8 | 1 | 60 |
| る | 5 | 7 | 0 | 12 |
| total | 112 | 184 | 6 | 302 |
As we can see some ichidan endings are more consistent than others. verbs ending in いる sounds can go either way although most of the intransitive いる verbs are じる verbs, which are essentially another form of する verbs. える and ける verbs are totally inconsistent but most other 一段 verbs are transitive. Especially める, with an astounding 50 to 1 record (The one exception here is 目覚める). The big exception though is れる which somehow flips the other direction.
れる verbs
れる just so happens to be part of two transitivity pair patterns at once. There are quite a number of す vs れる pairs, in which れる would be intranstive. And there are a lot of る vs れる pairs, in which for most れる is intransitive. It just so happens that both of these patterns agree with each other and れる verbs are almost always intransitive. Perhaps this at some point came from the passive られる, I haven’t dived deep enough to find the answers here. The big exception is 入れる which also has a somewhat exceptional relationship with it’s pair 入る. The other exceptions include compounds including 入れる and verbs like 忘れる, 触れる, and 訪れる which have no pair.
ある and おる verbs
Godan (五段) る verbs (a.k.a. う-verbs ending in る) are also a mixed bag transitivity wise. Although there is a skew towards intransitivity. When these verbs have okurigana though, they become much easier to sort. No 五段 る verbs have okurigana containing an える or いる sound, and there are very few with おる or うる sounds. Most often, if such a verb has okurigana at all, it will be an ある sound. Here’s what the spread of those looks like.
| Verb Type | 自 | 他 | 自他 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| わる | 10 | 1 | 0 | 11 |
| かる | 6 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| がる | 14 | 1 | 0 | 15 |
| さる | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| ざる | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| たる | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| なる | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| ばる | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| まる | 20 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| らる | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ~おる | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| ~うる | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| total | 60 | 4 | 0 | 64 |
As we might expect from knowing our pair types by now, ある verbs are almost always intransitive. The exceptions are 教わる, 預かる, and 召し上がる. None of these are a part of a transitivity pair. We can also see that おる verbs also follow this pattern although there are much less of them. The one うる verb in WK’s list 揺さぶる is transitive however.
する verbs
する verbs never come with transitivity pairs although they do have transitivity. Since my focus was on dissecting pairs specifically, I have not spent a lot of time researching する verbs although they do seem to skew transitive.
False Pairs
There some sets of verbs that WaniKani teachs you that look like they might be transitivity pairs but aren’t. Some of them follow transitivity pair patterns and some of them don’t. I’ve compiled a quick list of some major ones. The full list is in the spreadsheet.
| Verb | Trans/Intrans | Meaning | Verb | Trans/Intrans | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 任せる | 他 | To Entrust Something | 任す | 他 | To Entrust Something |
| 触る | 自他 | To Touch | 触れる | 自他 | To Feel |
| 群れる | 自 | To Flock | 群がる | 自 | To Flock |
| 膨れる | 自 | To Swell | 膨らむ | 自 | To Expand |
| 苛める | 他 | To Bully | 苛む | 他 | To Torment |
| 教える | 他 | To Teach | 教わる | 他 | To Learn Something From Someone |
| 預ける | 他 | To Deposit | 預かる | 他 | To Look After |
| 越える | 他 | To Go Beyond | 越す | 他 | To Go Beyond |
Perhaps some of these were transitivity pairs at one point and their meanings happened to shift. Perhaps some of these are just simply unrelated, it’s hard to know.
Summary
Once you get the hang of working with transitivity pairs, you can actually start identifying them without a whole lot of trouble. Here’s a little cheat sheet for the major ways to identify verbs at a glance from one another.
Transitive verb endings: す, せる, ぜる, める
Intransitive verb endings: ~ある, ~おる, れる
Often transitive: げる, てる, ねる, べる
Complete Guessing Game: ける, える, any other う ending
Pair Types
- す pair: verb ending in す, せる, or ぜる is transitive. Other verb is intransitive.
- ある pair: verb ending in an ある or あれる sound is intransitive. Other verb is transitive.
- う pair: verb ending in える sound is usually transitive. Verbs ending in れる are intransitive. Verbs ending in ける can go either way.
That’s all the information I’ve compiled for now but there’s certainly more research here. I tried to look a bit more into the linguistic origins of transitivity but my research kind of hit a brick wall. That’s something I would like to expand in the future if I have the time, but I might have to find my way past some academic pay walls. No explanation I have found so far can explain the ある/える pairs. I’ve also seen some demand for a userscript focused on transitivity pairs. The information is all compiled at this point so it shouldn’t be that hard to make. But I personally don’t have much experience making userscripts. Perhaps this is something I might try my hand at in the future.
Happy Studying and Good Luck! 頑張って～
I guess that just means I need more repetition of native speakers and just accept it as gospel!