I just had reviews for 見分ける and 見直す.
When trying to remember the meaning of 見分ける, my intuition was: how do you separate something by looking at it? Separating by looking is called discerning, but more simply - distinguishing.
But this didn’t work with 見直す (and I got it wrong), because to reevaluate isn’t exactly to fix something by looking at it. It’s rather to look at something in order to maybe fix it.
And when I think about it this way, then 見分ける is indeed to look at something in order to maybe separate it.
But for 見つける my intuition is again different. I think about it as attaching my eye to a thing, thus finding it.
Is there some consistent truth here in terms of etymology? What does the 見 prefix really mean? Even if some of the verbs have shifted meanings over the years, I usually find the true etymology the best mnemonic, and in this case I’m not sure what it is.
All sort of make sense to me? If you distinguish things then you can see they’re separate. If you redo seeing something, you can reevaluate. Find might be the longest leap, but mentally I used to picture like a old point and click game on the DS or console where the cursor would snap and attach itself to something when you found it.
It’s probably worth mentioning that kanji “meanings” are more guidelines. Words have meanings, kanji don’t. When people assign meaning to kanji, it’s more sort of a theme of words that use it, and since that’s not a sharp definition, it’s often going to be flexible enough to not distinguish between things like “look” and “see”.
This kind of thing is a “compound verb”, where a verb is formed by taking the masu-stem form of verb 1 and following it with verb 2. It happens that the masu stem of 見る is 見 and so the compound verb has two kanji together, but it’s the same kind of construct as 思い込む or 洗い流す.
There is no single principle behind the meaning of a compound verb, but there are several common patterns. (This classification is from the Handbook of Japanese Compound Verbs, which lists 200 of them with example sentences.)
means + goal – V1 describes how the action V2 is carried out, eg 送り出す 打ち付ける 殴り殺す
activity involved in doing V2 – V1 doesn’t accomplish V2 but is involved in doing it, eg 居並ぶ 飼いならす 売り広める
manner + action – V1 represents a particular manner by which V2 is done, eg 這い登る 転がり込む
activity + direction – V2 gives the direction of the motion involved in V1, eg 見上げる 見渡す 振り回す
activity + intensity – V2 indicates the intensity with which V1 is performed, eg 座り込む 読み上げる
two similar activities – V1 and V2 are two separate but similar activities performed in reaction to an event, eg 泣き叫ぶ
And then there is the “fused words and idioms” category, where a compound verb has a meaning that isn’t readily separable into its components, or which can’t be deduced from the component verbs, eg 落ち着く 思い上がる 見つける 落ち合う 立て替える
For the specific examples you give, the book says:
見分ける is “means + goal” : distinguish two things by looking at them
What makes this make sense for me is that 見 can mean simply “to see” but it also has a more abstract meaning of something like “to evaluate”. Consider words like 意見 (opinion) for instance.
In these words I interpret the 見 part less like simple observation and more about “consideration” or “taking something into account”. It’s a mental process.
It’s actually a definition of 見(けん) in Japanese:
seeing, looking
a view, perspective, thought, or opinion about something
As such you can think of 見直す as “fixing your view/perspective/opinion”, whence “to reconsider”.
Actually this definition makes me realize that “a view” as the same double meaning in English. It can be about literally viewing something, or it can be about one’s opinion about something. And then you have the word “review” which is fairly similar in both meaning and construction to 見直す.
BTW I don’t know if you’re aware of this but なおす can be used with all sorts of verbs to mean “redo”. しなおす (from する) means “to redo”. 塗りなおす is “to repaint”. As such 見なおす can be literally translated as “to review” or “to look again”.
Before I went into WK vacation mode, I too had difficulty remembering items such as 見分ける and 見直す - however for 見つける I previously was familiar with the word (through listening to/watching anime, and also having seen it in hiragana in textbook dialogs), so although seeing it written in kanji was novel, just pronouncing it in my head was sufficient for me to understand it.
My tentative plan for once I turn off vacation mode and tackle my reviews is to take written notes for any of the items for which I may need to help my memory - thinking that the process of writing things down rather than simply trying to memorize them by sight may help to cement the WK ‘meaning’ into my memory.
In my past WK studying I relied entirely on memory, which has been a bit of a problem for me inasmuch as my short-term memory retention is somewhere between abominable and nonexistent.
Writing things down should also give me an opportunity to practice stroke orders, which is something that I’ve wanted to practice but have avoided so far.
Oh, interesting, so 見X can be conceptualised as “to X your view”. It’s not bad overall:
見当たる - to hit someone’s view - to be found
見分ける - to separate your view - to distinguish
見付ける - to attach to your view - to find
見返る - to return your view - to look back
Ooh, this is even better! It makes perfect sense this way! Does any of the other verbs also have a secondary meaning when attached to the end of verbs?
As for this categorization, well, it is nice on a theoretical level, but I really wish there was a better way to remember the meanings than just thinking “this is an idiom, live with it”
This one is probably the trickiest for me to rationalize, but that’s less because of the 見 part and more because あたる has a brazillion somewhat-overlapping idiomatic meanings. Terrible vocab. 2/10.
Well, that’s basically all of Japanese grammar, isn’t it? You could argue that outside of simple conjugations it’s all about mashing verbs and adverbs together.
There’s also 行く and 来る of course, which can mean that an action is “coming” or “going” in various more or less literal ways. しまう and やる are also used in all sorts of idioms and more-or-less regular constructions. Then you have 続く (action is ongoing), 切る (action is terminated), かける (action is interrupted), 終わる (action is finished), 得る (action is possible, “fancy” potential form) and many many more.
It’s unfortunate for us as language learners, but human languages are absolutely full of words and constructions whose meaning doesn’t naturally fall out from the component parts. So mostly you do, yes, just have to live with it. As with kanji “meanings”, the meanings of the two halves of a compound word can often act as a reminder for what the overall meaning is, but that’s about as good as it gets. That’s why they’re compound verbs and not auxiliary verbs (which is where tacking a verb on the end can be done to most verbs and has the same result in terms of meaning for all of them, eg Vmasuはじめる to start to V).
Feel free to look for useful mnemonics and patterns that work for you to help in remembering them, but keep in mind that they are only mnemonics.
I’m starting to think of Japanese verbs as concepts in space and time that never translate smoothly into any other language I know. So a dictionary will always give dozens of meanings, but when you think of it as movements in space and time, it’s easier to imagine things than to translate them. So あげる is about moving something upward, かける is about putting something up and leaving it there, あたる is about achieving contact with the surface of something, and so on. But these are just musings of an absolute beginner, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I’m just feeling that there seem to be meaningful common threads beyond the dictionary meanings and I love it.
Yeah absolutely, I think the same way. I do think that sometimes it’s too far fetched to be really useful (見当たる is in this category for me) but very often breaking down into these elementary parts really helps me with memorization.
I definitely think of 見直す as “fixing your view”.
The only drawback is that sometimes it leads to slightly erroneous translations because the nuance is a bit different. I actually made this mistake yesterday when reading a sentence, I wish I remembered what it was. Basically my interpretation was a bit off because too literal.
At other times it does give you additional insights though. I’ve seen cases where the Japanese choice of word or grammatical construction carried a subtle nuance that was lost when translated into English because there wasn’t a perfect equivalent. This is especially true with words like しまう that are often dropped completely from English because there’s no good equivalent.
This is my favourite verb. I wish I had a verb like this in my language to give a slighly sad undertone to sentences.
仕事に遅れてしまったので、コーヒーを飲まなくてしまった。
Or to be passive aggressive.
８時に来なくてしまった。
Just a little note, but for 見直す、見分ける and 見返る even the japanese dictionaries define them using 見る (the verb) in the definition. So I’m not sure if “to X your view” is really how Japanese people think of those three.
見直す：もう一度改めて見る。また、その結果気づいた欠点を是正する。Take another look. Also, as a result, correct the flaws one have noticed.
見分ける： 見て[区別する。Tell apart/differentiate by looking
見返る： 振り向いて後ろを見る。Turn around and look behind.
Edit: That said, it’s true that for 見直す there is also a second definition それまでの認識を改める which is more passive and correspond more to the idea that the views of someone changed, without volition
So clearly the verb 見る itself does have a meaning of “having a view/opinion” about something too. So in other words whether you thing of it in terms of 見 or 見る doesn’t really change the underlying idea IMO.
After all you can consider 見(み) as just the regular nominalization of the ichidan verb 見る, so it’s hard to draw a line between them (“a view” and “to view”) in a meaningful way I think. I’d argue it’s similar in English.
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