nihongo wo benkyou shitai

It's always the little words which cause problems. Take the verb 'to open' as an example. In good old English it's pretty easy to use this.

1. The door opened.
2. Because it was hot, I opened the window.
3. Please open this beer.

Now I've been speaking English since I was born (so that's 27-ish years :-), so I reckon I have a pretty good grasp of it. But it was a bit of a surprise to learn that sentences (1) and (2) above are different. In (1), we are using 'open' intransitively and in (2) and also (3), we use it transitively. Apparently verbs can do this. Now I understand why when learning Japanese verbs, a lot of them had two readings 始める、始まる etc... The rule of thumb is that if a verb has a person 'doing' the verb then it's transitive, if no person is necessary, then it's intransitive. So, (1) above is intransitive and (2) and (3) are transitive (unless they invent a self-opening can of beer).

So does this make Japanese easier? Yeah, dream on... You now have to remember two different verbs in some instances for the equivalent in English. Let's look at the above....bear in mind that

to open:- 開ける (vt); 開く (vi); 開く

English: The door opened
Jenglish: [door][opened]
日本語： ドアが開きました
日本語： ドアが開きました

English: Because it was hot, I opened the window
Jenglish: [hot][was][because][window][opened]
日本語： 暑かったですから、まどを開けました。
日本語： 暑かったですから、まどを開きました。

I didn;t want to add to the problems, but notice how the particle changes too. が for intransitives and を for transitives. Ho-hum....

Anyone fancy telling me why I wrote the Japanese translation twice? And for even bigger prizes, can you translate (3)?

おやすみ。。。。