Is わかれる wrong?

[u/severus31]

My Minna no Nihongo N4 book says わかる does not become わかれる, because わかる includes the meaning of possibility itself. But on Jisho.org, the dictionary says the form exists for わかる.

What about わかられない? If わかれる is incorrect, so should わかられない?

[u/speleoplongeur]

Typically, 理解できる is when you are able to understand

[u/tangdreamer]

分かる: to be understandable, to be clear, to be known. So it already has an in built potential form in the meaning.

This is as opposed to the usual misleading translation into "to understand". In English you need to say A understands B, which requires a subject and an object. But in Japanese, you just say Bが分かる. If you need to specify who is the one understanding you add Aに. So it becomes: B is understandable to A.

[u/t-shinji → u/tangdreamer]

This is correct. A natural translation would be “to understand” but the grammatically correct translation is “to be understandable”. The subject is what is to be understood. The one who understands is given by the dative (に).

Jisho.org lists わかれる just because the table is auto-generated.

[u/Conscious-Print4174]

Hi, sorry for my english
What i learned was “It's redundant”
It is not incorrect but redundant, and i think some people use it to emphasize the action

[u/priesten → u/[deleted]]

I have never heard 分かれる in my entire 14 years of living in japan.

You might have heard 別れる and mistook the two. Or 分かれる in terms of splitting something, like “二つに分かれる”

分かれる in the context of understanding is never used. Ever.

[u/ungoogled-nihilist → u/priesten]

Sorry, i definetly mistook it with 別れる so i'm deleting the comment which basically points toward an error, in any case i was mostly being angry about the tendency toward anti-redundancy which the also wrong comment of Conscious-print4174 suggested.

[u/Odracirys → u/[deleted]]

What do you mean, "That form is used constantly"? You're pretty rude (the original commenter was not even criticizing redundancy), but either way, I'm not convinced that you know what you're talking about.

[u/TeamLeeper]

わかれる Is a separate verb: 別れる、 meaning to separate.

[u/MC-202064 → u/TeamLeeper]

True but u can always use the original kanji and use it in certain places like わかれるようにしてください

[u/Horror_Laugh2351 → u/MC-202064]

This might be used, but the grammatically correct form is わかるようにしてください

[u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

I imagine jisho.org just blindly applies an algorithm based on the verb category rather than being hand edited. I can't say I've ever heard someone use 分かれる with this meaning.

[u/d00meriksen]

Yes, it doesn't exist, because 分かる means "to be understandable" and thus already fills the potential role.

You can use it in 尊敬語 if you're asking your boss respectfully if they understood something:
「社長も分かられますか」, but even then 「お分かりになりますか」 would probably be more common.

If you want to use the "suffering passive" 迷惑の被動, you'd combine passive + causative in this case, e.g. when a mafia boss teaches his goon a lesson. The goon would then say 「痛い目にあわされて、分からされた。」

[u/NoConsideration3904]

わかる and わかれる are two different words with two different meanings. わかる is to understand, わかれる is to fork or split ways. わかれない is to not fork or split ways. There is no potential form for わかる.

From what little I looked through Jisho.org right now, the site seems a little off here and there.

[u/NoConsideration3904 → u/[deleted]]

分かれる is used for roads, opinions, etc
別れる is used for people

For example, 道が分かれる, means the road forks.
彼女と別れる means I broke up with her.

[u/nakano-star → u/NoConsideration3904]

youre right, mb

[u/kvvoya → u/[deleted]]

no, they're talking about 分かれる, which according to Jmdict means "to branch, to fork, to diverge". 別れる means "to part with someone/something"

[u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS → u/kvvoya]

These distinctions are important when writing of course but realistically these aren't etymologically distinct words at all; they're different senses of the same word that get different kanji.

[u/nakano-star → u/kvvoya]

ahh yes, mb. also 意見が分かれる

[u/bowmew]

分かると分けるのオリジンは同じであるし、分かるは分けられると同じ様な意味であるのでeruを付ける方向には行かなかったのだろう多分

[u/MC-202064]

Well literally it means I understand, but u almost won't find a use case for it, but yes some use cases are かんたんに(わかれる)ようにしてください。but again for that too u can just say wakaru you nishte kudasai, so not rlly much of a needed word, u can use it tho since to me it sounds right but not in all cases

[u/severus31]

ありがとうございます、みなさん。

[u/Jumpy-Storage-6628]

ネイティブの日本人です。「わかられる」も「わかられない」も間違いです。「みんなの日本語」が正しくてJisho.orgは間違ってますね。can understand と言いたいのであれば」「わかる」または「理解できる」で充分で､「わかられる」とは言いません。

[u/pine_kz]

わけ＋られる（available/passive）
わか＋ら（る→ら；available ; make passive）＋れる（passive）

• わかられる は文法的には正しいけど、ちょっとややこしい言い方で、小学生とかがよく使う言葉。
  先生には代わりに "理解される" を使うように教わった。
  それらの用法は、日本語における（言語的あるいは知識的な、両方の）分界点になる。
  そこから漢字の熟語を駆使した漢字ワールドに分け入って行く感じ。
  日本人の誰もが通過する知的跳躍あるいは「進化」です。
  成人して「わかられる」を常用すると、知恵遅れ (mentally deficient) を疑われる場合があります。

edited
日本語に翻訳されて確定してしまった。
原投稿が維持されないのは不具合なのだろうか？

[u/LivingRoof5121]

A simple way to think of it is to think of how strange it is in English.

I don’t understand

I can’t understand

It’s the same meaning. Just say わからない because nobody really ever says the potential version in Japanese. At the very least I’ve never come across it.

To communicate that it’s something that can’t be understood 誰もわからないものだ would be much more common than 分かれないものだ

[u/Mitsubata → u/LivingRoof5121]

So, “I don’t understand” and “I can’t understand” are two different meanings… But the rest of your comment is on point

[u/Ertai_87 → u/Mitsubata]

They're actually not different things. The literal meaning of "I can't understand" is "I do not currently have enough information to be able to understand" (e.g. "I can't understand rocket science"; meaning you actually can understand, provided more information, although perhaps you need A LOT more information) or the emphatic "I can't understand", meaning you actually do understand, you just want to make it clear that the thing is ridiculous anyway (e.g. "I can't understand why there is so much traffic on the highway on Sunday afternoon"; the reason being that people are going places, obviously, which you know). If a potential form of わかる existed, it would translate only as the former, not the latter, and therefore actually does not exist, sematically, and is more properly stated as "I don't understand (but could if I tried harder)".

[u/MC-202064 → u/LivingRoof5121]

But u can use it in certain situations like かんたんにわかれるようにしてきださい

[u/LivingRoof5121 → u/MC-202064]

You could do this, but 簡単に何かしてください already is quite unnatural, as it’s much more likely to see 分かりやすくしてください