I was keying in some late-night sentences for later review, when a sudden "uncertainty" about the verb in one of them started to worry me. The source of my confusion, in a nutshell:


入る　＝　はいる，　intransitive, "to enter"

入れる　＝　いれる，　transitive, "to put into"


We can all agree on that much, I think. Now:



入れられる/入れれる ＝　"Can put in," or "able to put in"

But...

入れる　＝　... Wait a second. According to the rules I know, this should be the potential form conjugation of 入る， but when it's written out this way, the おくりがな　is identical to that of いれる　(a completely different thing altogether).

Is this really the case, and telling the difference between the two in written form is simply one of those myriad of things in Japanese that I'll have to rely on context to clear up? Or, rather, is there some grammatical exception that I've missed?

Even worse, am I not properly understanding the conjugational rules?

Taking into account that 入る　（はいる） is a godan verb (like e.g. 走る), its potential form should be 入られる　(indefinite base はいら　＋suffix れる）.
(入れる　(いれる）　is an ichidan verb, so potential form = indefinite base いれ　+ suffix られる.)

I hope 'indefinite base' is the right term since I translated it from German, but the potential forms should be right.

Yes, it's ambiguous and you're not missing anything. There are a good handful of cases like this. For example:

開く（ひらく）
開く（あく）

行った（いった）
行った（おこなった）

The context should make it pretty clear whether it's いれる or はいれる.

JimmySeal Wrote:Yes, it's ambiguous and you're not missing anything.

But this ambiguity is only due to the fact that the ら in the potential form is often omitted in spoken Japanese. Since dukelexon wasn't sure about the conjugational rules, I want to point out that the original full potential form of 入る　would be 入られる, 入れる　is only half the truth. Being aware of this can't hurt.

You're incorrect. 入る（はいる） is a 五段 conjugation. So はいれる is correct. はいられる would be wrong.

Please forgive me if I caused any confusion. Could you be so kind to explain my mistake?
I recently learned to build the 'Potentialis' of godan verbs by taking the indefinite base and adding れる and thought it would be okay to pass this on (you know, learning by explaining). So, what would be the meaning of はいられる and what is this form called?

The conjugation you're describing is the passive form of godan verbs. The passive is more commonly used with transitive verbs, so it's hard to describe what the meaning of はいる's passive would be, but I hope that will suffice.


Incidentally, in ichidan verbs, the potential and passive forms are conjugated exactly the same, and that's by replacing る with られる. So if はいる were an ichidan verb, its potential would indeed be はいられる.

Thank you. I was told the passive and potential forms were originally built the same way (of ichidan and godan verbs) and the potential's ら　is dropped nowadays, hence my above comment.
From now on I'd better keep my mouth shut until I know things for sure. Allow me one more question, though:
When I hover over 入られる with Rikaichan enabled, there is an entry (amongst others) displayed in the popup, saying:
'入る　はいる　(potential or passive) (v5r) to enter; ...'
How can that be explained?

Bruce_Lee Wrote:Thank you. I was told the passive and potential forms were originally built the same way (of ichidan and godan verbs) and the potential's ら　is dropped nowadays, hence my above comment.

I think that may actually be the case, but the current standard way to form the potential of godan verbs is to drop the -u and add -eru, and it has been that way for quite some time.

I cannot explain the rikaichan thing you mentioned. Perhaps it is some kind of mistake in rikaichan. I double-checked with Barron's 501 Japanese Verbs and indeed it lists "haireru" as the potential, and nothing else.

As I've said before, I like these questions - they inspire me to review grammar bits and bobs that I've forgotten.

Bruce_Lee Wrote:I was told the passive and potential forms were originally built the same way (of ichidan and godan verbs) and the potential's ら　is dropped nowadays, hence my above comment.

Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that the potential's ra was dropped in the case of godan verbs only. With ichidan (vowel) verbs, the standard is to keep the ra. However, an informal, less common variation of the ichidan potential form drops the ra. (I discovered that this variation apparently only applies if the stem is less than 3 syllables.)

Bruce_Lee Wrote:When I hover over 入られる with Rikaichan enabled, there is an entry (amongst others) displayed in the popup, saying: '入る　はいる　(potential or passive) (v5r) to enter; ...' How can that be explained?

I don't know about Rikaichan, but it may be relevant to note that a 25-year old text book I have lists a second "less common" variation of the potential form for godan verbs: using areru instead of just eru (ie. same as passive form). More recent textbooks (such as Dictionary of Basic Grammar) leave this variation out. Using this old variation: hairu would have been hairareru. Just for background - now you can forget it!

Hope that was useful.

edit: correction

Thanks for the input, I actually find this kind of information quite useful. As for Rikaichan, it seems plausible to me that the entry refers to the variation you mentioned.

Thora Wrote:Just for background - now you can forget it!

I fear I won't...

Sorry about the delay in replying -- I've barely had enough time to log in and review the last couple of days.

Thanks to JimmySeal for clearing up the confusion, and thanks to anyone who participated in the little offshoot conversation that came about ... heh heh.