Lesson 15: Transitivity- the 3 facts that make it easy. Transitive/intransitive verbs unlocked

Another huge learning job? Not for you! Your Android Sensei has the problem licked! Dolly introduces the three laws that make Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs a walk in the park. On roller skates.▼Full contents of this video▼

00:00 A very good introduction on why it is not accurate to say "transitivity". A surface explanation of 動詞 and how they work
04:23 ある & する: The fathers of all 動詞 pairs. OMG the drawings are so 可愛い it's illegal.
05:30 The first rule: する family, す and せる endings are Other move verbs
06:50 ある family rule: あ-stem + る endings are self move
08:09 Switch rule: え-stem + る flip Self-move Other-move either way.
10:25 Honorary rules
Thanks to Tonatiuh Koroliovich for contributing this timeline

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[RameshKumar-mvjd]

She had such a brilliant mind, we lost someone truly special. I’m coming back for another try at learning Japanese and I’ll miss her responses to my questions. R.I.P. 先生

[NTHA]

Note for myself!

ある：be - mother of all self-move words
する：do - father of all other-move words

*BASIC LAWS OF MOVE-WORD PAIR*
1. Ends in -す/せる = other-move（負けるー負かす、落ちるー落とす）
2. Ends in あ-stem + る = self-move（上げるー上がる、包むー包まる) [*exists (ある) in that state]
3. え-stem + る（=える) ：flips self-move to other-move and vice versa (売る->売れる、従う->従える)
4. む->める/ ぶ->べる/ つ->てる = always other-move

Dolly-sensei’s lesson really is one of a kind, i feel both humbled and empowered after watching 😭😭 genuinely so mind-blowing how she can clear up all my confusion in the most logical and comprehensible way… i could never remember what the heck transitive and intransitive are, calling them self-move and other-move is so much easier to understand and actually makes so much sense! Thank you for the helpful lessons, these videos boost my motivation in studying Japanese a lot 🙇‍♂️

[PadresEnjoyer]

Dolly Sensei is a huge reason behind my motivation to continue to learn this language. RIP and i hope to make her proud one day with my japanese

[amarug]

OMG. Once again, I'm left a bit speechless. Months of battles ended in 15min.

[spidersylar]

I'm going to have to revisit this one multiple times before it all sinks in, but this is extremely helpful. I was forever getting the two versions of the words mixed up!

[organicjapanesewithcuredol]

I hope you all like this lesson. Some people might consider it a slightly "advanced" topic for this stage, but it makes a number of words fall into place that most people by this stage already know (like 出る/出す) and makes explanations of pairs like 上がる/あげる* (which I introduced last week) make much more sense. It also acts as a "peg" to hang new words on. Once you know how to recognize transitivity pairs, it is easier to remember both words, and not to get confused about what each word is saying.

* When あげる means "give (upward)" the kanji is most often not used, so I wrote it that way here.

[YukkuriAteMyBaby]

I had the hardest time trying to remember the difference between words like 起きる and 起こす, it was so bad that it was actually impacting my studies since I had started neglecting them with excuses such as "Well they both mean something to do with rising, I'm sure it doesn't matter all that much" and then this lesson comes along and makes the difference seem as clear as night and day, thank you so much!

[David-hfpf]

Revisiting these lessons, I just realized the reason why Cure Dolly's way of teaching works so much better than others is because she teaches it with higher order thinking. Instead of just telling us to memorize this, memorize that(lower order thinking), she actually shows the relationships and logic behind it(higher order thinking).

In 3:41 the reason why this doesn't work that well(if at all) is because standard textbooks are teaching it in isolation. It just gives you a list of words to memorize instead of the underlying logic. On the other hand, Cure Dolly shows us that it's actually just the same word, and that it has a self-move and other-move form.

Thank you Cure Dolly for teaching with higher order thinking!

[DANGJOS]

I thought 売れる was just the potential form of 売る. In the sense of saying "it can sell"

[ParalefikZland]

I totally agree with you with this one. They don't have anything to do with the concept of transitivity, as it only refers to the feature of a verb where it can be used with a direct object. The japanese system actually kind of resembles the "pasiva refleja" system of romance languages and has semantically an active vs passive meaning. I will totally support you if you want to remove the terms "transitive / intransitive" only from this process.

[lynellewhite]

Once again - thank you soooo much! I’ve been studying, trying to study, for two years now. Why has no one ever made this clear to me before?

You’re the best, Cure Dolly

[AS-newu]

I am once again speechless with that explanation. This is gonna boost my vocabulary a lot and help me to get an understanding on yet another topic. It's like the fog clearing from the language.

[siro]

I really like your calm voice dolly
When im watching someone else lesson, i usually tend to panic alot
And end up learning nothing

But in your lesson i don't need to worry about that so ほんとに ありがとう

[KiranasOfRizon]

This is a good lesson to revisit. I've been adding words to my Anki after reading some manga and playing some video games in Japanese, and I recently noticed I have both 倒れる (to fall) and 倒す (to knock down) in there, and I'd been mixing them up. Now that I've revisited this lesson, it should be easy to remember. The す version can't mean falling, because it must be other-move.

[ivan_]

Wow! I’ve been developing my own sense of this rule for half a year and I’ve struggled a lot but this video have just sorted everything out.

[OktaviavonSeckendorff]

Dolly-sensei, I can’t thank you enough for how much your videos and blog posts have helped me 🙇‍♀️ Certain concepts just didn’t sink in, I had to know how something really worked/its origins to understand… You’ve always explained things in a way that just made it so much clearer to me! Thank you ❤️

[milesparker]

This was a god-send! I've been doing my Anki cards and keep getting confused by the self-move and other-move version of the verbs. One of them happen to be the deru/dasu pair that you used as an example. This will definitely be useful moving forward as I learn new words.

Rest in peace Dolly-sensei.

[namename]

Learning vocabulary I noticed that verb have different forms with some different meaning, and it was always "e" involving, I was trying to search in the net, maybe it's some rule or verb so called conjugations. But now you finally gave all the info about this issue in such clear and structured way!

[robertfranken]

Very helpful. I'm not very clear on the える flipping - though I understood your example. Do you have an accompanying article with a few more examples?

[garyschwartz]

So 分かる means "sort things out within oneself" and 分ける mean "sort things out (outside oneself)." That makes so much more sense than "to understand" and "to separate/sort!"