Lesson 20 of 40
Vocabulary Sprint w02 — what broke, and who broke it
about 12 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Choose between the verb that takes を and the one that takes が.
- Tell 直る from 治る, and 亡くなる from 無くなる.
Words this lesson teaches
- 壊す
- breaks something — you did it, so it takes を
- 壊れる
- breaks, is broken — it happened, so it takes が
- 割れる
- cracks, splits — of glass and plates
- 折れる
- snaps, is folded — of long thin things
- 直す
- fixes something, corrects it
- 直る
- is fixed — of a thing; never of a person
- 治る
- gets better — of a person or an illness; same sound as 直る
- 故障
- a breakdown — of a machine; 故障します
- 取り替える
- replaces one thing with another
- 汚れる
- gets dirty
- 落ちる
- falls, drops, comes off
- 倒れる
- falls over, collapses — of a standing thing or a person
- 退院
- leaving hospital — 退院します; 院 came in kanji unit 21
- けが
- an injury — けがをします, using を
- 間違える
- gets something wrong — you did it, so it takes を
- 失敗
- a failure — 失敗します
- 忘れ物
- something left behind — the sign on every station counter
- 泥棒
- a thief
- 盗む
- steals
- 亡くなる
- passes away — of a person only; 無くなる, same sound, is for lost things
What it explains
す does it, れる has it done
壊す/壊れる, 直す/直る, 汚す/汚れる, 出す/出る, 落とす/落ちる. The endings are not perfectly regular — す against れる, す against る, とす against ちる — but the direction always is: the shorter, harder ending is the one with somebody behind it. Learn the pair as one item with two halves and the whole family stops being two hundred separate verbs.
泥棒に入られました
The natural way to say you were burgled uses the passive from N4.14: 「泥棒に 入られました」, literally I was entered by a thief. So does the theft itself — 「かばんを 盗まれました」, I had my bag stolen. Japanese puts the victim in the subject and the loss in を, which is the suffering passive the module taught, and this is where a learner meets it for real rather than in a newspaper.
けが takes を, and that is strange
You do not get injured in Japanese; you do an injury to yourself. 「けがを しました」. The same shape carries 失敗 and 故障 — 「失敗しました」, 「エアコンが 故障しました」 — where the noun plus する is doing the work of a verb English has one word for. Note which one takes が: the air conditioner breaks down by itself, and you fail by yourself, and neither takes an object.
The scene itself is in the app.
Lesson one of this track is free to read in full. From lesson two on, the story, the audio and the review are part of a free account.