Transitive and Intransitive Verbs in Japanese

One aspect of Japanese that confuses beginning students is the plethora of verb pairs. They seem to be everywhere, but unlike English, where you usually have one word that works for both transitive and intransitive verbs (ie change, return, run, etc.), or else two completely different words (send return/return). ; beat/win; increase/grow, etc.), Japanese has pairs that sound almost exactly the same (modosu/modoru; kaesu/kaeru; mawasu/mawaru, etc.). Also, these pairs use the same base kanji, with only the word ending changing.

However, before we get into how to distinguish between the two, let’s make sure we all understand what “transitive” and “intransitive” really mean. Basically, a verb is transitive if it has a direct object. Verbs like throw, place, and repair are all transitive, since they all take direct objects. It would be strange to just say “I shot”, “She fixed” or “He fixed”. All of these verbs require something else to make them sound complete in English. So: I threw the ball. Set up the computer. He repaired the car. etc.

Other verbs cannot take direct objects (or sometimes any object). These are intransitive verbs. Crying, sleeping, and sulking are examples. “I slept” is a perfectly good sentence in English, and even if you add something after it (a place, time, etc.), whatever you add won’t be a direct object.

I sleep in my bed.

I slept ten hours.

I sleep with my teddy bear.

You’ll notice that in the examples immediately above, a preposition (on, for, with, etc.) stands between the verb and the object, which is how you know it’s an indirect object rather than an object. straight. .

If you don’t like grammatical explanations, another way to think about it is this: transitive verbs directly affect the object of the sentence. Throwing a ball affects the ball in a very direct way; change the location of the ball. On the other hand, sleeping doesn’t really change the bed, the ten hours, or the teddy bear. If the action directly affects the object, you can be sure that the verb is transitive.

So now that we’ve cleared that up, what about those Japanese verb pairs? The first and easiest way to tell which one is transitive is to look for a “su” in Japanese. If the verb has a “his”, it’s a good bet (actually a sure thing) that it will be the transitive member of the pair. And the verb without the “su” will be the intransitive. This is one of the most consistent rules in Nihongo, so it’s worth learning.

Here is a basic list of some of the most common verb pairs you are likely to come across. In each pair, the first is transitive, the second intransitive.

modosu/modoru

Kaesu/kaeru (to give something back, to give back [oneself])

okosu/okiru

dasu/deru

okosu/okoru

ugokasu/ugoku

otosu/ochiru

Etc.

The above rule is the easiest to apply for T/I verb pairs, an should be applied first, since whenever one of the verbs in the pair has “its”, that verb will be transitive 100% of the time. However, there are some other pairs where neither of the verbs has “su”. In this case, as a secondary rule, the best idea is to find out which of the verbs has an “e”, and that verb will usually be the transitive member of the pair. Some examples:

tateru/tatsu (Note that this pair does not fall under the first rule, since what looks like “su” in Roman letters is actually “tsu” when written in Japanese.)

yaburu/yaburu

ateru/ataru

tomeru/tomaru

kaeru/kawaru (to change something/to be changed)

tsutaeru/tsutawaru

Although this second rule is not as general and all-encompassing as the first, it will still help you in the vast majority of cases.

So there you have it. Two rules that, when used in the correct order, will eliminate approximately 99% of the headaches you encounter regarding Japanese T/I verb pairs. The best thing about mastering this lesson is that once you get past the confusion, you can learn many Japanese verbs at twice the normal rate because you can get both verbs in the same pair at the same time. This is much easier than trying to memorize random pairs of verbs, or memorizing them one at a time.