It seems like both of these words can be transitive and mean “to make a mistake.”
So for the example sentence:
大事な事を間違うという経験を活かして、注意深い人間になるつもりです。
How would I know which word to use? Or would either be acceptable, and maybe Bunpro should warn me instead of marking it wrong?
Thanks!
I was also curious about this a while ago. I don’t know about bunpro, but from my understanding “machigau” used to basically be intransitive only while “machigaeru” was the transitive form. However, “machigau” was increasingly used as a transitive verb. I think that technically hardcore grammar purists would say using “machigau” transitively is incorrect, but it became commonly used and accepted.
We’ve added hints to review sentences where both 間違う and 間違える can work like this. As mentioned in those hints, 間違う focuses more on deviating from how things should be, while 間違える has a nuance of mistaking one thing for another, although the two can be interchangeable in many cases. Hope this helps 