あく, あける, and ひらく all mean “to open,” but they’re used in different contexts.
To understand these verbs, it’s important to disentangle the questions of what the verbs themselves mean and how they are written in kanji. Even if there were no such thing as kanji, these would still be three different verbs with different usages.
So let’s first consider them in hiragana only. Then we’ll come back and look at how to tell them apart when they are written in kanji.
Continue reading “あく vs あける vs ひらく”
The word 間 (あいだ) can be used to create sentences that mean “While Action A, Action B.” But did you know that the meaning changes in an important way depending on whether you use に after the word 間?
This grammar point came up in a discussion within Satori Reader, a Japanese language learning app. Since 間 is such an important grammar point, we wanted to clarify the difference to help you more accurately comprehend what you read in Japanese.
Continue reading “間 vs 間に: What’s The Difference?”