Hi everyone! Just got confused with these 2 grammar points, i thought they were interchangeable but it seems there is a different nuance isn’t?
i put 書き終わる first but it was wrong
Could you explain me why it is wrong. Thanks in advance!
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The most basic reasoning for this that I can give is the difference between Transitive and Intransitive Verbs.
終わる meaning “To finish”, “To end” is an intransitive verb, implies that something has come to an end naturally. One of the BunPro example sentences using this grammar point shows this off very well:
「 学生生活は明日で終わります。」or “My student life will end tomorrow.”
This is said as though this fact is a matter of course. The speaker is not ending their student life personally, but rather their school life is ending naturally as a part of graduating from school.
On the other hand, 上げる meaning “To raise” when used after the conjunctive form of a verb (ます form without the ます) carries the nuance of finishing something “to the limit”.
上げる is also a transitive verb, meaning that the speaker is the one directly performing the action. In the example sentence you gave, the speaker is the one who finished writing the book, which is why the transitive form of 上がる is used.
If 上げる in this sentence was replaced by 終わる、it would sound strange as it would imply the speaker was not the one finishing the book, but that the writing process of the book “came to an end” naturally. This is also why 上げる is used here instead of 上がる.
Other than that, I’m not sure if/why 終える couldn’t be used to the same/similar effect, I believe the difference in nuance is simply “something finishing” as opposed to “something being done completely/entirely”.
Hope this helps, and if anyone sees anything wrong in my answer feel free to correct me!
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Adding on to what @TehFlashBang said, I want to add a few more things, since verb+終わる can actually be used as a transitive verb in some cases, and hence why you will see it being used with を at times.
From 旺文社国語辞典 第十一版
④ （他動詞的に用いて）終える。「報告を―」
⇔始める
A few examples of where this can be seen:
本を読み終わる
授業を終わる
Reading through this article we can find the difference in how 終える and 終わる are used.
「終える」は、「それまで続けてきたことをやり遂げて、自分の意思でやめること」に使われます。
and
「終わる」は、「それまで続いていたものごとが、自動的に、または流れにより完了すること」に使われます。
「終わる」は「人の意思に関係なくものごとが最後まで行ってとまること」という事実を表す言葉です。
Essentially, 終える is when you have intention in what you finish, while 終わる carries the notion that what you finished more so had to do with other factors. We can see this with 本を読み終わった meaning “I finished reading the book” - the focus here is that the book actually came to an end - the “limit” of the book is what caused me to finish it. However, if I said 本を読み終えた this implies that I forcibly read to the end – essentially, I went ahead and read to the end. Maybe better put, I had a goal to finish reading, and therefore I’m finishing the book with intention.
With that said, we can move to あげる. TehFlashBang already summed this up pretty nicely, so I’ll keep it brief since I’m basically just saying what they said. あげる is used when there is some time involved in the process of you finishing something. Due to it meaning “to raise” or “to rise” (あがる) its implying there’s time between the start and the finish. Therefore, you’ll often see あげる used when someone is emphasizing the time it took them to do something.
In your sentence, 書き上げる is used to show that the work involved into writing the book took some time, but you’ve now finished it.
Now, could you use 書き終わる? Well, I think it has to be in the right context, and I don’t think it 100% works here. It would imply more so that you didn’t intend to finish it at that time… and in this context that doesn’t really seem to make sense. However, it could make sense if you are wanting to say something along the lines of “I finished my book (I wasn’t intending to finish it quite yet, but I ran out of things to say so now I’m done)”.
On the other hand 終える probably works here, but it takes away the fact that writing the book most likely took a long time to write.
Hopefully that additional information helps!
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I think part of the difficulty here is you are comparing the transitive version of one verb to the intransitive of the other. Hopefully this little table can help elucidate that.
| Transitive (他動詞) | Intransitive (自動詞) |
|---|---|
| 終える (oeru) | 終わる (owaru) |
| 上げる (ageru) | 上がる (agaru) |
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Short answer: 上がる is to complete something (a task etc.), 終わる is to finish, end something. I always though of 上がる as doing something and getting up, as if you are done with it kinda image. I think that was the WaniKani mnemotic for this verb.
If it is more detailed than I make it out to be please correct me.
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