Does anyone have a clever way of distinguishing these words? What's the difference between 起きる　and 起こす anyway? Is 起きる for when you wake up and 起こす for when you wake someone else up? These words are driving me crazy!

Yes, that is precisely the difference. One is transitive and one is intransitive.

私が起きる。 <--The verb takes no object in this case. There's no one causing me to wake up. It is happening on it's own just like 雨が降る。

兄を起こす。 <--The verb takes an object in this case. The speaker is the one that caused his older brother to wake up.

起こる。 <--Is unrelated to waking or getting out of bed. It means "happen." You'll hear it a lot along with 行われる in news broadcasts and news articles.

The transitive/intransitive distinction mixed with the passive/active voice stuff can be really confusing at first since their conjugations frequently overlap. You should probably drill it a bunch just to get used to it. Eventually it will become second nature.

Once you start learning different pairs of vocabulary that are transitive/intransitive you'll get a good feel for predicting which one is which even in cases where you haven't seen either word before. Different verb endings will being to sound more "transitive" and others "intransitive."

In Japanese this designation is called 自動詞 vs. 他動詞

erlog's explanation is spot on.

Rephrased very briefly:
起きる = to wake up
起こす = to wake someone up (done by something or someone)
起こる = to occur (sound and meaning almost the same as the English word)

Edited to incorporate yudantaiteki's correction. Now back to improving my own Japanese before commenting again...

mlorenz Wrote:起こす = to be woken up (by something or someone)

Actually it's better to say it means "To wake someone up"; this is not passive. 起こされる would be "to be woken up by someone".

Thanks for clearing that up. The reason I included 起こる is because it uses the same kanji. Sometimes I'll see one of the words and wonder if its one of the "wake ups" or "occur". I think just talking about it helps though. 起こる sounds like occur which is similar to happen, even if they are different words.

I made the observation (don't know if it's somehow scientifically proven) that verbs (with the same stem) on る are often intransitive, while those on す are transitive.
For example:
渡る / 渡す
帰る / 返す (written with different Kanji, but it's the same stem かえ)

aodeur Wrote:I made the observation (don't know if it's somehow scientifically proven) that verbs (with the same stem) on る are often intransitive, while those on す are transitive.
For example:
渡る / 渡す
帰る / 返す (written with different Kanji, but it's the same stem かえ)

Yes, る->す is one common intransitive/transitive pairing. Appendix 3 of the Dictionary Of Basic Japanese Grammar has a collection of these groups which you might find useful.

aodeur Wrote:I made the observation (don't know if it's somehow scientifically proven) that verbs (with the same stem) on る are often intransitive, while those on す are transitive.
For example:
渡る / 渡す
帰る / 返す (written with different Kanji, but it's the same stem かえ)

This is because the す ultimately derives from the classical verb す (to do, modern する).

Oh, I remember why I posted this now.
起きる　Wake Up
起こす　Wake other up
起きる　Occur
起こる　Happen

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is because the す ultimately derives from the classical verb す (to do, modern する).

That's really, extremely helpful and makes a boat-load of sense.

the way I understand it:

起こす- to wake someone up, to cause something to occur (but there are a lot of other slightly different uses, like to dig something up or raise a part of one's body)
風が波を起こす
土を起こす
顔を起こす

起きる- to wake up, to occur

起こる- to occur

Apparently, originally 起こる　was usually used to describe something as occuring (事件が起こる）but recently 起きる is often used instead　（事件が起きる）.

for clever way to distinisuh... DO immersion. otherwise just pure memorize (boring torture) the stuff people wrote to you above my post.
i didn't really worry about the differences b.t mitsukeru/mitsukaru etc etc except the fact that one of them is to be found and the other is found BECAUSE I knew immersion would solve the problem. and yes it did, it buried all those holes that i could've buried myself with with boring memorization

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:for clever way to distinisuh... DO immersion. otherwise just pure memorize (boring torture) the stuff people wrote to you above my post.
i didn't really worry about the differences b.t mitsukeru/mitsukaru etc etc except the fact that one of them is to be found and the other is found BECAUSE I knew immersion would solve the problem. and yes it did, it buried all those holes that i could've buried myself with with boring memorization

except that native speakers will not correct you even if you ask them to

That's just not true.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:for clever way to distinisuh... DO immersion. otherwise just pure memorize (boring torture) the stuff people wrote to you above my post.
i didn't really worry about the differences b.t mitsukeru/mitsukaru etc etc except the fact that one of them is to be found and the other is found BECAUSE I knew immersion would solve the problem. and yes it did, it buried all those holes that i could've buried myself with with boring memorization

Did you immerse through just reading? That's probably all I'd have access to at the moment.

duder Wrote:

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:for clever way to distinisuh... DO immersion. otherwise just pure memorize (boring torture) the stuff people wrote to you above my post.
i didn't really worry about the differences b.t mitsukeru/mitsukaru etc etc except the fact that one of them is to be found and the other is found BECAUSE I knew immersion would solve the problem. and yes it did, it buried all those holes that i could've buried myself with with boring memorization

except that native speakers will not correct you even if you ask them to

Really?... That's sad.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:for clever way to distinisuh... DO immersion. otherwise just pure memorize (boring torture) the stuff people wrote to you above my post.
i didn't really worry about the differences b.t mitsukeru/mitsukaru etc etc except the fact that one of them is to be found and the other is found BECAUSE I knew immersion would solve the problem. and yes it did, it buried all those holes that i could've buried myself with with boring memorization

huh? Did some mention memorizing?

boring memorization torture vs. immersion?

Luckily we're not limited to those choices. Explicit plus implicit learning is better than either alone. No big dilemma. Why don't you join us?

I do learn through immersion(to the best of my ability, I live in the whitest part of the world), but when I find things like this it perks my interest and I actually take joy in finding out the meanings and the reason behind them. I've found that every weird, quirky, irregular thing in Japanese actually has a perfectly reasonable explanation behind it. I love finding these.