I'm doing core1000 and I've come across some similar meaning words. Can someone please differentiate?

SURU AND YARU
what's the difference between する　and やる　both mean 'to do'. the core example sentence for yaru is '一緒に宿題をやろう’　(いっしょにしゅくだいをやろう）　could it not also be said with suru in place of yaru? as in another sentence in core '一緒に宿題をした’？

KURERU (be given) AND MORAU (to receive)
I'm kind of guessing but I'm assuming kureru is more like being given something first hand... versus 'receiving' it by (example) mail? both the sentences in core is about receiving a present.

OKORU (happen) and OKURU (occur, happen)
Again both sentences in core state that some incident happened.

on a side note, I noticed that 息子　（むすこ) = son. is not any of the keywords with 'son' in it in RTK. In fact I don't remember what 息　character is in heisig... (that's another problem too).

[Zgarbas]

Which okuru are you talking about?
as for the rest, it's complicated .
する　vs　やる：http://www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=40920
くれる　vs　もらう：http://www.guidetojapanese.org/favor.html

And there's even more to it than that .
Basically, lots of things will mean the same thing in English, but there will be fine differences in Japanese which are a bit hard to grasp at first. As time goes by and you add grammar, more knowledge of formality levels et co, you will get them. Tae Kim's guide is generally good for beginners, and textbooks will also cover these things. By the time you're done with the core deck you'll know about 10 different words for woman, but each will have their own use which you will have to figure out on your own (like woman, girl, lady, mistress are in English).

as for the keywords... many Heisig keywords are vague, limited or completely different from the actual usage of the Kanjis. The keywords are there to help you remember Kanjis and accustom you to their usage, they are by no means a dictionary. Just keep an open mind =). The actual kanji which has "son" as a keyword will never be used for any meaning regarding son; there will be a few more kanjis with which this will happen, though it's definitely not the norm.

I think you meant okiru, not okuru. Okoru is mostly for bad things happening.

right.. I mean okiru (起きる）(eg. there was a major incident in town)　and 起こる (A burglary occured in my neighborhood). those are the example sentences in core

about heisig keywords I find that they help me to remember how to write a vocab word if i remember the keyword sequence.. usually.. eg. hikouki is FLY, GO, MECHANISM.. what is the keyword for that character in 'son'?

So maybe I should work through a beginning text like genki..and build up, instead of burning through core 6000 with no context

[Zgarbas]

Depends on what you want to focus on, really. Focusing solely on vocab will not get you far, but focusing on grammar alone while ignoring vocab won't either. Just find a bit of balance and the rest'll work itself out .

息 is breath.

(Whenever you want to see what keyword/kanji is in Heisig, you can go to http://kanji.koohii.com/study and type it there, btw)

ooh.. I forgot about that.. I keep thinking you can only search by keyword. Thanks and thanks for the links as well..

so okiru is for things happening in general? and okoru is for bad things?

[Zgarbas]

They're actually fairly interchangeable as far as I know, with a more or less negative tone to both. There are other ways to express certain events happening. Note the kanji used for them:
起きる　and 起こる

(also note that 起きる has an even more common meaning of "waking up", so you won't get confused when you see that one )

Zgarbas Wrote:Depends on what you want to focus on, really. Focusing solely on vocab will not get you far, but focusing on grammar alone while ignoring vocab won't either. Just find a bit of balance and the rest'll work itself out .

I'm finding that if you know all the words in a sentence and have some basic grammar knowledge, you can probably figure out the sentence to some rough degree. But if you know tons of grammar but don't know the words, you are out of luck in trying to figure the sentence out. So to me, vocabulary seems to be the limiting factor. I'm not too far into my studies so my perception may be wrong.

Giving and receiving has some special rules that you should read up on to help you solidify that.

Also it sounds like you might be having trouble with transitive and intransitive verbs. じどうし／たどうし。

Intransitive verbs have things as the subject and use the particle が.
ドアがあきます。
door will be open. (like an automatic door.)

Transitive verbs have things as objects and use を。
ドアをあけます。
someone open the door. (someone acted on the object.)

Knowing the differences is difficult, and a textbook might help you here. Lots of memorization. I'm not good myself, so if this isn't what you are having trouble on, my bad.

For the Kureru and Morau stuff, I recommend a book by Jay Rubin called "Making Sense of Japanese." His explanation is the best I've read (and also talks about combining those words with the causative, etc.), and it's also just a great book in terms of readability, price, and advancing one's grasp on Japanese.

er.. well I do have a lot of learning to get done. haven't really studied the transitive and intransitive stuff yet. I guess the answer is a lot more complicated than I thought.

i have japanese the mangaway which has been excellent so far but I'm only halfway through. I did hear Making Sense of japanese was a really good one too.

lol well I guess i have my work cut out .. thanks everyone.

[Zgarbas]

Wait wait, for the record, 起きる　and 起こる are both intransitive; they're not a transitive/intransitive pair (起こす is the transitive form for both).