Let’s Try It
“Clarity precedes success.” – Robin Sharma
The best way to do things, though, is to try them. Make sure you’re still studying the list on Anki, though – that’ll help a lot too ;)
Let’s start slowly and gently, at first.
私 は ラジオ を こわした。
I broke the radio.
ラジオ が こわれた。
The radio was broken.
These sentences use the same verb, but they’re the transitive and intransitive forms. こわした means “broke” and this is transitive. I did something to the radio (I broke it). In the other sentence, the radio was broken. It’s still the “broken” verb, but now I had nothing to do with it. It just happened. It just is. It was broken (and I didn’t do anything directly to it).
あたま を なおす。
I will fix (his/her/the) head.
あたま が なおる。
The head will fix (itself / on its own).
なおす means “to fix.” なおる means to be fixed/repaired. In the first sentence, I am doing something to fix the head. Maybe I’m doing surgery on it, I don’t know. That’s not the important part. The important thing is that I’m directly doing something to the object, which is why it’s transitive. In the second example, the head is also being fixed, but it’s just doing it on its own. Nobody’s doing the fixing, it just happened. Maybe the doctor is like “there’s nothing I can do, but the head will fix itself.” It has that sort of feeling.
自分の手を汚す。
Make my own hands dirty.
手が汚れた。
My hands became dirty.
In the first one, I’m doing the dirtying to my own hands. In the second one, my hands (or someone’s hands) just become dirty, kind of on their own. Maybe I’m working in the fields or something, and they just become dirty. I’m not actively making them dirty, it just sort of happens.
Hopefully this will help you to see the differences between transitive and intransitive. I’m going to continue to point them out as they come up in future chapters, and over time you’ll slowly learn the intricacies of Transitive and Intransitive verbs until they become second nature.