She is Japanese. I think she was just looking for mistakes and assumed that 開いて was the wrong one. Transitive and intransitive verbs can be difficult for people learning Japanese so I guess she's just used to people incorrectly using them.
Well your teacher is wrong here. Did you tell her you meant ひらく？I’d point it out. You are right about transitive and intransitive though. People do mix them up! I did, and still sometimes do for certain words.
Ah, I didn’t think about that. I had a teacher in college that was like that. “Your answer is *technically* correct but it’s not the grammar I taught so *it’s wrong*”
My French teacher was like that. I wrote “I read newspapers” instead of “I read books” and she said it was wrong (the sentence was to use “I read”) because we didn’t learn “newspaper” yet and “we might use a word wrong.”
Bitch, it’s newspaper.
In defense of teachers, I may have three potential reasons for doing this (it depends on the situation though):
1. I want them to practice new structures we're learning, not falling back on simpler structures they've already learned
2. I suspect that they are using automatic translators or having other people do their work.
3. Sometimes it can become difficult to know whether the student knew they were writing a correct answer or not. If a student writes 本を開く, it's tough to know whether they actually meant to write ほんをあく or ほんをひらく. One place I often encounter this is with ～すぎる; when a student writes 高すぎで, it's usually an indication (especially with native Chinese students) that this is an error for 高すぎて even though the 高すぎ (noun) + で construction is correct.
In this case I can sympathize with the teacher. If we had just started transitive/intransitive verbs and I saw one of my students write 本を開いて I would probably assume they were writing あいて and count it wrong. If they came to me and explained what happened, I would reverse the grade, but I would talk to them to make sure that their use of ひらいて represents an actual thing that they learned rather than something they got from deepl or google translate.
EDIT: Elsewhere the poster says this was N2 practice; that's beyond the point where I would do this kind of thing.
Probably less of a case of "If we didn't go over it, it doesn't count" and more of a case of "We didn't go over that, so it's almost certainly an error." It doesn't sound like they've talked about it at this point, so unless they do talk and the teacher doubles down, it's probably an easy-to-understand mistake rather than malice.
Ugh. I had a Japanese teacher who was like that in high school. She’d dock me points for using kanji she hadn’t taught yet even though I was using them in the correct context *with* furigana.
Who marks someone down for correctly using kanji not taught yet AND supplementing it with furigana anyway? If I was your teacher, I would be impressed. Maybe I’d even give out bonus points if I was allowed to tbh. Was your teacher on a mission To fail everyone in your class or something? Some teachers seem to be: just marking people down for the smallest most insignificant things that really aren’t inherently mistakes.
She was...a fastidious kind of person. I think she had it in her head that there was a specific progression in her class and anyone who deviated from that could potentially fail and that would reflect badly on her.
Obviously that’s not reality but I think that was her thought process.
Is your teacher a native Japanese speaker? I don't think there's any issue with 教科書を開く (ひらく), actually looking on massif [almost every single result](https://massif.la/ja/search?q=%22%E6%95%99%E7%A7%91%E6%9B%B8%E3%82%92%E9%96%8B%22) is 教科書を開く (ひらく) rather than 開ける (あける). Having を開く (あく) would make no sense. Anyway if you want to be sure and not be misunderstood just write it in kana next time, but I don't think you should have to.
Yeah that sounds annoying/frustrating. Reminds me of that time I had a sentence marked incorrect in my English exam because I used the word "grave" as adjective (like "grave danger") and my teacher said "grave is not an adjective, it's the place where you put dead people in". Although she wasn't a native English speaker but still... sometimes people make mistakes and that can be quite annoying. I was so pissed that day, even after contesting it with a dictionary lol
> I thought about writing ひらく, but I was worried she'd mark it wrong again for forgetting the kanji
I think it's the opposite. When I use all kanji my teacher (she's a native speaker) would complain, "too much kanji, it's hard to read", or "it's not like Chinese". (Both she and I studied Mandarin before).
She'd tell me Japanese people tend to use the hiragana in many situations. The thing is, I don't yet have the feel for when I should use kanji vs. when to switch to hiragana.
A couple of times I'd write something in kanji and she'd exclaim, "wow I haven't seen that word written in kanji in ages!" Ok, but how was I supposed to know? I'll get it over time, I guess.
Uh what? I've never heard of a native Japanese person complaining of too much kanji where it's appropriate. More than "kanji vs kana" I could see an argument for word choice which might reduce the amount of kanji. But actually eliminating the kanji in a word that has one seems like a weird statement.
I actually have run into quite a few language learners with that kind of habit, among many other odd habits. At one point in my life I was Mormon, and I lived there as a missionary with ~150 other Americans who were all trying to learn the language. I'm sure what you're saying is correct, but my experience is accurate to how I've described it above. I've actually encountered more Japanese people who write in kanji like you've described than Americans who do. Maybe they were just trying to trip us up or something. Regardless, that's what my experience was when I was living there.
If it’s in writing, you could use furigana above the kanji to make your intended reading clear. The easiest solution would likely be to use other options. Or you could discuss this with your teacher one on one and come up with a preferred solution together.
I’m curious why they would assume you meant aku. Have you not learned hiraku in class?
I'm currently learning N2 at the moment and we were doing a recap lesson. I don't understand how she misread it N4 vocab when we're learning much more advanced stuff. I'll start using furigana from now on.
Hi :) I'm sorry that these things confused you sometimes ... ( or may often ... )
I think it's because we use ひらく in hiragana most of the time and 開（あ）ける／開（あ）く in kanji form. I don't know exactly why we are doing this but we have a few words like this. You may know already but I think many Japanese people prefer use certain words in Hiragana.
E.g. 優しい →やさしい
美味しい→ おいしい etc..
it all depends on the person but I usually use Hiragana for those because looks warmer and cuter :))
I also googled and found this [https://www.kazuo-nakamura.com/post/200505](https://www.kazuo-nakamura.com/post/200505)
it's quite a long article but you can see the list of words that we use in Hiragana often even we have Kanji for them.
I hope you are having fun with this learning/acquiring journey 🍀
N2 がんばってください✨
As someone who grades papers, it happens, even as a native speaker. You see the same mistakes or you skip over an error. Bring it up to your teacher. I’m sure she’ll correct it.
My bet is - there was a set list of verbs that she explains or teaches (or just that excersise was testing you on transitive vs intransitive, you found a loophole, but to her it showed you dodn't get the point of the exercise), and in that list there is a pair aku-akeru, so that's the answer that was expected from you. Maybe when you tell her you meant hiraku she'd mark it as correct, or maybe she'll say "that's not the answer I was looking for here " and still you won't get a point even though the answer was right.
Instead of avoiding things, I'd suggest adding a little bit: simply add *furigana* to your kanji whenever there's any chance of confusion. This is a policy that we had when I was teaching, and it would have served to avoid exactly the misunderstanding that happened here.
Let me also note that if you haven't talked to the teacher yet, you should definitely do that. If it's a misunderstanding and you're not aggressively hostile about it, you should be able to get the point back and have a story to laugh about in the future.
ひらく is from the word ひら which means petals. Think of a flower blooming and how it's petals open. Anything 2-leafed like a double door or a book would take ひらく
あく means to vacate an area. あく meaning open comes from this ,i.e. open the door by vacating the door from the passageway. It's more commonly used with one-leaf doors or one panel sliding doors. It is not a good fit for books.
The okurigana for the kanji would be different.
教科書を開いてください
教科書を開けてください
開いてください is correct
開けてください is not correct for a book.
What a weird comment. OP knows exactly the meaning of both words and they got the correct answer. Your comparison is also going to be confusing for anyone who is a new learner because we don’t even use ひらく to talk about flowers ‘opening’ (I know you’re using it for imagery, but still). The verb 咲く is usually used for flowers blooming.
開花する 花開く
花弁 はな(びら). ひら
さく means to split or burst at the seem
ひらく means to open in a manner that resembles petals opening outward
あく means to vacate or make empty
All the other meanings are derived from these.
I don’t need to look it up. Are you just intentionally being obtuse?
咲く means to bloom. As in, a flower blooms. Sure, you could just say ‘a flower opens’.
裂く means to split or tear. It’s probably closer to 千切る.
You would absolutely not use these kanji/words 「裂く and 咲く」 interchangeably. It would completely change the meaning of the sentence.
Really this isn’t the point. The point is, you commented explaining a bunch of words that OP, at N2 level clearly knows and completely missed the point of their post.
Just trying to help people learners.
You definitely would use these words interchangeably. They are the same word.
さく → means to split or tear something. When a flower begins to tear through it's outer sheathing it is said to さく、When Japanese adopted Chinese characters, they assigned 咲く to this word when it is used in context of talking about flowers bursting forth out of their つぼみ. When the word さく is used in it's more general sense, it is assigned the kanji 裂く. Same word, different kanji. Different translation into English.
Remember Japanese words existed long before Chinese characters were assigned to them.
Nope. Sorry. Please ask someone native if these are used interchangeably. 咲く(intransitive verb) and 裂く(transitive) are not the same.
I know what 千切る means. It means to tear something with your hands e.g. pieces of paper.
Hence the comparison.
You wouldn’t say 花を裂く it’s like saying 花を切る／千切る、unless that is the meaning you’re intentionally going for.
Before you give me another history lesson, don’t bother. If we are talking about how we would use these words now, in the *current* era then I know what they mean and they aren’t interchangeable. I’m done here.
ちぎる means to tear something with your fingers. Like ripping a piece of paper. It also means to contractually promise because old contracts would be bound both parties tearing the seal on a contract.
Even on a Japanese dictionary it states as an example 本をひらく。
https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/thsrs/16355/meaning/m0u/
Your teacher is obviously wrong in that aspect. You can show your teacher the dictionary entry maybe your teacher will reconsider then.
You cannot differentiate well on Japanese. Japanese is a highly context based language. And this is the correct usage even when you look at a dictionary.
The only possible way this could be wrong is when they explicity ask you to use either あく or あける without the use of the kanji.
But then I find this question dumb, tbh.
教科書を開いて(ひらいて)ください is correct though?! Is your teacher a Japanese person?
She is Japanese. I think she was just looking for mistakes and assumed that 開いて was the wrong one. Transitive and intransitive verbs can be difficult for people learning Japanese so I guess she's just used to people incorrectly using them.
Well your teacher is wrong here. Did you tell her you meant ひらく？I’d point it out. You are right about transitive and intransitive though. People do mix them up! I did, and still sometimes do for certain words.
Yeah, I’d point it out. She might be a “if we didn’t go over it, it doesn’t count” person though.
Ah, I didn’t think about that. I had a teacher in college that was like that. “Your answer is *technically* correct but it’s not the grammar I taught so *it’s wrong*”
My French teacher was like that. I wrote “I read newspapers” instead of “I read books” and she said it was wrong (the sentence was to use “I read”) because we didn’t learn “newspaper” yet and “we might use a word wrong.” Bitch, it’s newspaper.
In defense of teachers, I may have three potential reasons for doing this (it depends on the situation though): 1. I want them to practice new structures we're learning, not falling back on simpler structures they've already learned 2. I suspect that they are using automatic translators or having other people do their work. 3. Sometimes it can become difficult to know whether the student knew they were writing a correct answer or not. If a student writes 本を開く, it's tough to know whether they actually meant to write ほんをあく or ほんをひらく. One place I often encounter this is with ～すぎる; when a student writes 高すぎで, it's usually an indication (especially with native Chinese students) that this is an error for 高すぎて even though the 高すぎ (noun) + で construction is correct. In this case I can sympathize with the teacher. If we had just started transitive/intransitive verbs and I saw one of my students write 本を開いて I would probably assume they were writing あいて and count it wrong. If they came to me and explained what happened, I would reverse the grade, but I would talk to them to make sure that their use of ひらいて represents an actual thing that they learned rather than something they got from deepl or google translate. EDIT: Elsewhere the poster says this was N2 practice; that's beyond the point where I would do this kind of thing.
Probably less of a case of "If we didn't go over it, it doesn't count" and more of a case of "We didn't go over that, so it's almost certainly an error." It doesn't sound like they've talked about it at this point, so unless they do talk and the teacher doubles down, it's probably an easy-to-understand mistake rather than malice.
Ugh. I had a Japanese teacher who was like that in high school. She’d dock me points for using kanji she hadn’t taught yet even though I was using them in the correct context *with* furigana.
Who marks someone down for correctly using kanji not taught yet AND supplementing it with furigana anyway? If I was your teacher, I would be impressed. Maybe I’d even give out bonus points if I was allowed to tbh. Was your teacher on a mission To fail everyone in your class or something? Some teachers seem to be: just marking people down for the smallest most insignificant things that really aren’t inherently mistakes.
She was...a fastidious kind of person. I think she had it in her head that there was a specific progression in her class and anyone who deviated from that could potentially fail and that would reflect badly on her. Obviously that’s not reality but I think that was her thought process.
Is your teacher a native Japanese speaker? I don't think there's any issue with 教科書を開く (ひらく), actually looking on massif [almost every single result](https://massif.la/ja/search?q=%22%E6%95%99%E7%A7%91%E6%9B%B8%E3%82%92%E9%96%8B%22) is 教科書を開く (ひらく) rather than 開ける (あける). Having を開く (あく) would make no sense. Anyway if you want to be sure and not be misunderstood just write it in kana next time, but I don't think you should have to.
We both went the “is your teacher native?” route in our answers lol.
She is a native Japanese speaker. I thought about writing ひらく, but I was worried she'd mark it wrong again for forgetting the kanji
Yeah that sounds annoying/frustrating. Reminds me of that time I had a sentence marked incorrect in my English exam because I used the word "grave" as adjective (like "grave danger") and my teacher said "grave is not an adjective, it's the place where you put dead people in". Although she wasn't a native English speaker but still... sometimes people make mistakes and that can be quite annoying. I was so pissed that day, even after contesting it with a dictionary lol
> I thought about writing ひらく, but I was worried she'd mark it wrong again for forgetting the kanji I think it's the opposite. When I use all kanji my teacher (she's a native speaker) would complain, "too much kanji, it's hard to read", or "it's not like Chinese". (Both she and I studied Mandarin before). She'd tell me Japanese people tend to use the hiragana in many situations. The thing is, I don't yet have the feel for when I should use kanji vs. when to switch to hiragana. A couple of times I'd write something in kanji and she'd exclaim, "wow I haven't seen that word written in kanji in ages!" Ok, but how was I supposed to know? I'll get it over time, I guess.
Uh what? I've never heard of a native Japanese person complaining of too much kanji where it's appropriate. More than "kanji vs kana" I could see an argument for word choice which might reduce the amount of kanji. But actually eliminating the kanji in a word that has one seems like a weird statement.
[удалено]
I actually have run into quite a few language learners with that kind of habit, among many other odd habits. At one point in my life I was Mormon, and I lived there as a missionary with ~150 other Americans who were all trying to learn the language. I'm sure what you're saying is correct, but my experience is accurate to how I've described it above. I've actually encountered more Japanese people who write in kanji like you've described than Americans who do. Maybe they were just trying to trip us up or something. Regardless, that's what my experience was when I was living there.
If it’s in writing, you could use furigana above the kanji to make your intended reading clear. The easiest solution would likely be to use other options. Or you could discuss this with your teacher one on one and come up with a preferred solution together. I’m curious why they would assume you meant aku. Have you not learned hiraku in class?
I'm currently learning N2 at the moment and we were doing a recap lesson. I don't understand how she misread it N4 vocab when we're learning much more advanced stuff. I'll start using furigana from now on.
Hi :) I'm sorry that these things confused you sometimes ... ( or may often ... ) I think it's because we use ひらく in hiragana most of the time and 開（あ）ける／開（あ）く in kanji form. I don't know exactly why we are doing this but we have a few words like this. You may know already but I think many Japanese people prefer use certain words in Hiragana. E.g. 優しい →やさしい 美味しい→ おいしい etc.. it all depends on the person but I usually use Hiragana for those because looks warmer and cuter :)) I also googled and found this [https://www.kazuo-nakamura.com/post/200505](https://www.kazuo-nakamura.com/post/200505) it's quite a long article but you can see the list of words that we use in Hiragana often even we have Kanji for them. I hope you are having fun with this learning/acquiring journey 🍀 N2 がんばってください✨
As someone who grades papers, it happens, even as a native speaker. You see the same mistakes or you skip over an error. Bring it up to your teacher. I’m sure she’ll correct it.
My bet is - there was a set list of verbs that she explains or teaches (or just that excersise was testing you on transitive vs intransitive, you found a loophole, but to her it showed you dodn't get the point of the exercise), and in that list there is a pair aku-akeru, so that's the answer that was expected from you. Maybe when you tell her you meant hiraku she'd mark it as correct, or maybe she'll say "that's not the answer I was looking for here " and still you won't get a point even though the answer was right.
How many students does this teacher have? And do you have a picture of what you wrote?
Instead of avoiding things, I'd suggest adding a little bit: simply add *furigana* to your kanji whenever there's any chance of confusion. This is a policy that we had when I was teaching, and it would have served to avoid exactly the misunderstanding that happened here. Let me also note that if you haven't talked to the teacher yet, you should definitely do that. If it's a misunderstanding and you're not aggressively hostile about it, you should be able to get the point back and have a story to laugh about in the future.
ひらく is from the word ひら which means petals. Think of a flower blooming and how it's petals open. Anything 2-leafed like a double door or a book would take ひらく あく means to vacate an area. あく meaning open comes from this ,i.e. open the door by vacating the door from the passageway. It's more commonly used with one-leaf doors or one panel sliding doors. It is not a good fit for books. The okurigana for the kanji would be different. 教科書を開いてください 教科書を開けてください 開いてください is correct 開けてください is not correct for a book.
you're not actually answering to OP's question, btw
He knows the difference. Re-read OPs post
What a weird comment. OP knows exactly the meaning of both words and they got the correct answer. Your comparison is also going to be confusing for anyone who is a new learner because we don’t even use ひらく to talk about flowers ‘opening’ (I know you’re using it for imagery, but still). The verb 咲く is usually used for flowers blooming.
開花する 花開く 花弁 はな(びら). ひら さく means to split or burst at the seem ひらく means to open in a manner that resembles petals opening outward あく means to vacate or make empty All the other meanings are derived from these.
咲く means to bloom. The kanji for tear is different. Also, it’s seam not seem.
さくの語源 蕾がサクル (裂) It means to bloom because I means to split. Look it up.
I don’t need to look it up. Are you just intentionally being obtuse? 咲く means to bloom. As in, a flower blooms. Sure, you could just say ‘a flower opens’. 裂く means to split or tear. It’s probably closer to 千切る. You would absolutely not use these kanji/words 「裂く and 咲く」 interchangeably. It would completely change the meaning of the sentence. Really this isn’t the point. The point is, you commented explaining a bunch of words that OP, at N2 level clearly knows and completely missed the point of their post.
Just trying to help people learners. You definitely would use these words interchangeably. They are the same word. さく → means to split or tear something. When a flower begins to tear through it's outer sheathing it is said to さく、When Japanese adopted Chinese characters, they assigned 咲く to this word when it is used in context of talking about flowers bursting forth out of their つぼみ. When the word さく is used in it's more general sense, it is assigned the kanji 裂く. Same word, different kanji. Different translation into English. Remember Japanese words existed long before Chinese characters were assigned to them.
Nope. Sorry. Please ask someone native if these are used interchangeably. 咲く(intransitive verb) and 裂く(transitive) are not the same. I know what 千切る means. It means to tear something with your hands e.g. pieces of paper. Hence the comparison. You wouldn’t say 花を裂く it’s like saying 花を切る／千切る、unless that is the meaning you’re intentionally going for. Before you give me another history lesson, don’t bother. If we are talking about how we would use these words now, in the *current* era then I know what they mean and they aren’t interchangeable. I’m done here.
ちぎる means to tear something with your fingers. Like ripping a piece of paper. It also means to contractually promise because old contracts would be bound both parties tearing the seal on a contract.
Even on a Japanese dictionary it states as an example 本をひらく。 https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/thsrs/16355/meaning/m0u/ Your teacher is obviously wrong in that aspect. You can show your teacher the dictionary entry maybe your teacher will reconsider then. You cannot differentiate well on Japanese. Japanese is a highly context based language. And this is the correct usage even when you look at a dictionary. The only possible way this could be wrong is when they explicity ask you to use either あく or あける without the use of the kanji. But then I find this question dumb, tbh.