The situation that prompted my question was watching an anime with Japanese subtitles where the character said さわれる, and the subtitles put 触れる without any furigana. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t furigana since the reading (and therefore meaning) is ambiguous. Maybe to a native speaker, the grammatical and contextual usage is so obvious that it’s not a problem.
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I tried googling around, and I believe it’s a quote from a poem!
From a very long time ago, which is why it’s so confusing to read with modern eyes…
It looks like it’s from one of the poems in the 百人一首 - a famous anthology that I believe has a whole card game and pastime built around memorizing and playing with the quotes from it (I think there was a thread about it on this forum at some point, so others may know more if curious).
【まつとし聞かば】
「まつ」は「松」と「待つ」の掛詞。「し」は強調の副助詞、「聞かば」は仮定を表します。全体では「待っていると聞いたならば」の意味となります。
【今帰り来む】
「今」は「すぐに」を意味しており、「む」は意志の助動詞。「すぐに帰ってくるよ」という意味です。
So it’s also originally a pun (on 待つ/松)! For extra confusing points.
I also found a fun post about someone being impressed at the English translation in the song - they used “pine”/“pine for me” to keep the pun!
If I hear that you pine for me, I shall return to you at once.
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Just a more detailed grammatical breakdown, even though @rodan’s answer has all the details needed for understanding. This entire line is in Classical Japanese, right down to the spelling, which is why it doesn’t make immediate sense:
聞か=未然形 (irrealis i.e. not yet realised/yet to occur form) of 聞く. In Classical Japanese, this was combined with ば to mean ‘if’ for hypothetical situations. It couldn’t be used to discuss something that had actually happened. In modern Japanese, this usage has been replaced by stuff like 聞けば, which you might call the 仮定形＋ば. In Classical Japanese though, that was used for things that had already happened/would definitely happen, ‘when [someone/something] hears/heard’.
かへり – a lot of spellings that use pure vowels now used to be spelt with H row kana. Another common example is verb endings that are now spelt as う: many of them used to be ふ.
む – this helper verb is basically the classical equivalent of 〜おう・よう in modern Japanese.
This is brilliant! Hahaha. The translator did a great job on that line. 
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How would one say “to accept” in Japanese in the context of like someone being different from society’s expectations and often being bullied and such for it and someone saying to the person they accept them?
Thats a tough one. The first one that comes to mind is 受け入れる, but like a lot of things there’s a lot of different ways to say it and they all come with different nuance and situations.
With an idea as sentimental and abstract as this, there’s a lot of ways to express it, but if you’re looking for a single verb then I think 受け入れる is what you’re looking for. I’ll see if I can come up with any others though
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Just gonna make a stab at it before I open the dictionary: I think the answer is 認める（みとめる）, which (interestingly) probably translates most literally as ‘to recognise’ rather than ‘to accept’. Why? Because there’s a need to imply validation alongside the acceptance: ‘I give recognition to the way you are. I accept that you are just as worthy of respect as everyone else.’ Simply ‘accepting’ in a passive manner isn’t enough, so this is the word I would use.
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This was one I kinda ruled out. Its a synonym for 受け入れる so on the surface it seems like it means the same thing, but I don’t know if I would use it for this context. 認める doesn’t feel as accepting of something from the outside and would be more like acceptance of something from within like your own mistake or if you were accepting YOURSELF for being someone who was outside of societies expectations.
受け入れる works a lot better for external things and is a lot more natural when it comes to ～のありのままをー and stuff.
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I understand where you’re coming from, but my experience doesn’t seem to line up with what you’ve said.
What came to mind for me at first was also a bunch of 受け〜 verbs, including 受け取る and 受け止める, but I feel as though most of these verbs usually apply to objects, and when they apply to people, they seem to involve ideas like ‘adopting’ and ‘taking in’. There’s a sort of ‘taking over’ and ‘ownership’ or ‘induction’ involved (e.g. when a school ‘accepts’ students who meet a certain set of criteria). That’s the reason I ruled them out, just as you ruled out 認める. I agree that 受け入れる feels like a better fit for 〜のありままを, but that’s because it’s a thing, not a person.
I’m very certain that I’ve heard「お前を認める」in anime, or at the very least,「あなたのやり方が認められない」. (It appears in Oregairu, probably in Season 2, around Episode 7 if my memory serves me.) I’ve seen other examples of 認める being used for external things as well.
That aside, while I could be wrong, I don’t think that 受け入れる is limited to/more appropriate for external things, and in fact, if you asked me to pick one of the two verbs (or types of verbs) for an internal matter, I would choose one from the set of 受け〜 verbs. ‘To recognise’ might fit well in English for the ‘internal’ examples you raised, but I don’t think 認める works as well in the same contexts. For example, while this isn’t clearly an ‘internal’ or ‘external’ thing, there’s a line in the song Lemon that goes like this:
受け止め切れないものと出会う度、
溢れて止まないのは涙だけ
Every time I run into something that I can’t fully accept,
What overflows endlessly is nothing but tears
That definitely sounds like it would apply equally well to internal and external matters, especially because Lemon is about a breakup, and the persona is addressing the woman he loved throughout the song.
(Give me a moment to switch over to my computer so I can bring up some more example sentences more easily. Thanks.)
Nah thats straight up incorrect, you can use it for people and we very often do.
君を受け入れる
相手のありのままを受け入れる
他人を受け入れる
You absolutely have, because thats also something we say, but it means something different.
So like お前を認める doesn’t mean to accept someone, but rather to give them your acknowledgement. In あなたのやり方が認められない I don’t know the context but its much more likely the meaning of approval rather than acceptance. In that case 認められない is a lot closer to 正しいと思えない.
The acceptance definition of 認める we are talking about is 100% limited to internal. You are bringing up valid alternative uses of 認める, but the way we use 認める for one of its meanings doesn’t necessarily apply to all meanings. In the specific context that the original question was asked about, it just doesn’t really feel like a natural choice.
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Based on what I can see in a monolingual dictionary (大辞林):
うけい・れる【受け入れる・受け容れる】（動ラ下一）《文ラ下二 うけい・る》
① 人の言うことや要求などを聞き入れる。「反対意見を―・れる」
② 引き取って，世話をする。「難民を―・れる」
③ 受け取って収める。また，他からもたらされたものを取り入れる。「納入品を―・れる」「仏教の風習を―・れる」
- Listen to and take in things like what people say and their requests
- To adopt/take in and take care of (the example sentence here involves people)
- To take, accept and put away, or to take in what was brought over/forth by other people
みと・める【認める】（動マ下一）《文マ下二 みと・む》〔見て，目にとめる意〕
① 目にする。見てその物の存在を確認する。「暗やみに人影を―・める」「異状は―・められない」
② 見て判断する。「確かに私の本です，と―・めた」
③ 申し出・意見などについて，それを適正・妥当であるとする。「異議を―・める」「休暇を―・める」
④ 確かにそうだとして受け入れる。「負けを―・める」「手落ちを―・める」
⑤ その物事がそれだけの価値をもつと判断する。評価する。「才能を―・める」「世に―・められる」
⑥ よく気をつけて見る。「惣じて五百の仏を心静かに―・めしに」〈浮世草子・好色一代女•6〉
- To take in with one’s eyes. To look and confirm the existence of said thing.
- To look and evaluate/judge/assess
- With regard to a proposal, opinion or something similar, to consider it as right or appropriate.
- To accept that something is indeed the case
- To deem that something has such value; to evaluate
- To look attentively
I guess that this doesn’t clearly establish that 認める is appropriate for use with people either though, so I guess I’ll have to dig deeper. I just found an example of 受け入れる being used for ‘accept into the local community’ in another dictionary, so I guess it does work fine with people.
The reason I don’t feel like 受け入れる is very natural either is that I don’t feel as though it’s something one would say in order to respond to someone who’s been bullied for being different. It doesn’t sound empathetic or reassuring enough. That’s why I went with 認める. To me, the implications of 認める are more positive and suitable for expressing the acceptance of someone who has been treated as an outcast, whereas I don’t really know what 受け入れる implies, though my impression was that it’s rather passive. However, like I said, I answered before I checked any reference sources, so I’m not sure if I’m right either.
I guess this is a question of nuance and how each of us interprets the meaning of the word ‘accept’. Your interpretation certainly works in context. (The statement was a response to the way that someone had chosen to solve a problem.) However, in English, ‘acceptance’ can also include ‘approval’. To put it another way, being unable to ‘accept’ something can also be a result of being unable to ‘approve’ of it. ‘To accept’ is listed under the same definition (the first set of translations) as ‘to recognise’ in the Wisdom EN-JP Dictionary, albeit under a slightly different nuance, which indicates that they may not be as clearly separated as one might initially expect.
None of the definitions under 認める that I quoted above are exclusively internal. I’d say that the ‘internal’ definition is just one side of definition #4. You could probably use it for the collapse of a company, for example. However, yes, it does feel like anything ‘accepted’ or ‘recognised’ as the truth for definition #4 would have to be something that the person doing the action feels affected by personally.
In any case, I’ll be digging a little deeper – notably via example sentences – in order to see what each word means in this context, since none of the definitions I’ve found in 大辞林 clearly show how either word applies to people (or so I feel). I don’t intend to disregard what you’ve said, and I thank you for your explanations, but it’s just that these examples
even if I’m very inclined to believe they are normal and valid, don’t allow me to gauge what 受け入れる implies and whether or not it’s appropriate here, even if it certainly seems like a possibility.
EDIT: Just as a brief clarification – all the other examples of 「[person]を受け入れる」 I’ve seen so far seem to imply a sort of power dynamic between the acceptor and the acceptee: a school accepting students, a community accepting a person, some unmentioned person or entity accepting refugees. @DawnTheFawn’s question involves a person-to-person exchange that ideally allows the socially excluded party to see himself/herself as the acceptor’s equal. That’s why I’m not comfortable with what 受け入れる seems to involve and I’m looking for more examples.
Also, in my opinion, 認める encapsulates everything that bullies don’t do, because bullying is not passive non-acceptance, but rather active rejection. That’s why I felt a verb that implied active acceptance rather than passive acceptance would be more suitable for such an exchange.
For what it’s worth, 認める is what came to my mind first, mostly because I’m familiar with characters constantly opining 認めてくれない？ or 認められたい to themselves.
But, on reflection, I think in most of these cases they’re more looking for acknowledgement of their efforts or value than of their general existence.
Yeah but thats irrelevant to the idea that OP mentioned.
This seems like an excessive amount of text for semantics when we all know what OP means by his request since he gave the specific context.
I don’t doubt there are more empathetic or reassuring verbs to use here. I personally wouldn’t even just use a single verb if I wanted to actually be empathetic. But regardless, 認める still just isn’t correct here.
Not trying to be pedantic here, but I quote from Oxford:
1 consent to receive or undertake (something offered): he accepted a pen as a present | she accepted a temporary post as a clerk.
other definitions
• give an affirmative answer to (an offer or proposal); say yes to: he would accept their offer and see what happened | [no object] : Tim offered Brian a lift home and he accepted.
• dated say yes to a proposal of marriage from (a man): what if Elizabeth accepted Darcy the first time?
• receive as adequate, valid, or suitable: the college accepted her as a student | credit cards are widely accepted.
• regard favourably or with approval; welcome: the Irish never accepted him as one of them.
other definitions
• (of a thing) be designed to allow (something) to be inserted or applied: vending machines that accepted 100-yen coins for cans of beer.
2 believe or come to recognize (a proposition) as valid or correct: this tentative explanation came to be accepted by the men | [with clause] : it is accepted that ageing is a continuous process.
• take upon oneself (a responsibility or liability); acknowledge: Jenkins is willing to accept his responsibility | [with clause] : he accepts that he made a mistake.
• tolerate or submit to (something unpleasant or undesired): they accepted the need to cut overheads.
I think both of the definitions I’ve highlighted in bold here are fully relevant and possible in the context that OP mentioned. I’m not doing this for the sake of quibbling: there are two possible nuances here, and I’m not sure which verb covers what. OP’s context is not as clear cut as you say, in my opinion, precisely because there are two possibilities.
Even if we say that ‘regard favourably or with approval; welcome’ is the more relevant definition (and I think we can agree on that), from what I’ve just seen while reading example sentences, ‘regard favourably’ and ‘approval’ are covered by 認める, whereas ‘welcome’ is covered by 受け入れる.
Based on the example sentences I’ve just seen for 受け入れる, which include various neutral statements that don’t involve power dynamics and even a translation of a Bible passage, I now fully accept that 受け入れる is correct here.
However, I still don’t see why 認める is wrong. I’m searching for reasons, and I’m prepared to accept that I’m wrong – as things stand, ejje.weblio.jp doesn’t give me any results for generic phrases like「彼を認める」, whereas I’ve seen such examples for 受け入れる, so perhaps it’s less natural – but for the moment, the biggest argument I see against 認める is a definition of ‘accepting’ that doesn’t include ‘approval’, which I don’t think is imposed by the context OP chose.
After some thought…
Definition #4 is the one that has to do with acceptance. I still contest that it has to be internal, but perhaps I’m confusing it with definition #2, which can be both external and internal. (Goo’s thesaurus says that applying 認める ‘to oneself’ is a common distinguishing feature in certain contexts anyway.) Definition #5 is the one that has to do with recognition, approval and validation. If we’re talking about applying 認める to a person, #5, #4 and #2 might mix syntactically if we apply it to a noun phrase like あなたがあなたであること (because they can all appear in a sentence like that), but not semantically: it’s impossible for all three to be valid at once. I think #4 would apply in that case, but it’s not the same as ‘accepting someone for who that person is’: it’s just acknowledging that as a fact. (#2 might be possible as well, but it makes little sense.) If the object of 認める is a person, then #5 applies, and while approval can be a part of acceptance, it’s not the main point of acceptance. In other words, acceptance alone doesn’t imply the level of approval involved in 認める, which is closer to ‘recognition’ or, as you said, ‘acknowledgement’.
As such, if we’re talking about simple acceptance, which only requires a basic level of approval, then 認める is too strong and places emphasis on the wrong thing: acknowledgement, not receiving/welcoming someone. Therefore, in the context of @DawnTheFawn’s question, while 認めるcan be used, it doesn’t translate ‘to accept’. In conclusion, it’s wrong, and I finally know why. 受け入れる is definitely more accurate.
Thank you for your thought-provoking explanations and your patience. I now know more about both 認める and 受け入れる, which is a verb I didn’t see very often before today. Have a pleasant day (or afternoon/evening, if that applies).
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There was. In fact, I happened to research this specific poem myself. 
Just noticed I numbered it 17 instead of 16. Whoops.
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おこる vs いかる for 怒る?
So far, I can tell that おこる is when you’re telling someone off and anger is いかり, but are both valid for the verb version or is it usually おこる?
Perhaps that was a bad assumption on my part. I imagined something like someone who was LGBT or had some condition and faced discrimination for it, but you think they are fine as themselves.
Lmao I think that you found more thought provoking explanations than I provided because it seems like you found the answer while I was playing league. Quite frankly, a lot of that is actually beyond my knowledge. But yeah, like you said, 認めるing a person is pretty common, but its a bit of a different usage of the verb. I tried to look and see if there was a good explanation for the difference between 受け入れる and 認める when it comes to acceptance but just found this which isn’t really any new information
受け入れる 相手側の要望や状況について用います。了解、承知するニュアンスが強いです。
認める は自分側の行為や事実について用います。
Overall though, keep in mind that I still don’t doubt there are more empathetic options out there. Again, I wouldn’t use a single verb at all anyways, but I don’t doubt that theres a better one.
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I was imagining something similar, but perhaps involving social norms/looking very different from everyone else. Still, in either situation, I guess the ‘acceptance as receiving’ nuance is stronger than the ‘accepting as acknowledging’ nuance.
I think this particular bit is somewhat helpful in differentiating the two here though. Not particularly new information, but still helpful.
Yup. There’s probably something else that one can say. 認める is something that seems to come up quite a bit in anime when someone is being excluded, which is probably why I chose it – such characters usually want to be recognised or accepted as having value – but I’m sure that and 受け入れる aren’t the only things one can say. I haven’t seen enough stories involving exclusion and empathy yet though – I think The Rising of the Shield Hero contains that as a major theme, but that’s still just one story – so my vocabulary is lacking in this department. Hopefully something else comes to mind, or I come across another useful word in the near future. 
As far as I know, 怒る is generally read おこる and 怒り is generally read いかり.
(There is a dictionary entry for 怒る as いかる, but I’ve never seen furigana in a book saying to read it that way, for what that’s worth.)
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Now that I think about it…
Last book on my bookmeter was about a lesbian who was rejected by her family. Second to last book was about someone with a particular sickness who was an outcast at school. Third to last had one of the main characters be a trans girl who was rejected by her family.
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