This is great reading practice. Its like my brain is doing what it does in English from reading so much in japanese but sadly I can’t help
手に入る means to get something. 取る means to take something.
取る is it’s own verb meaning ‘to take’, and should be treated as such. When you combine it in the form 手に取る, it becomes ‘to take in hand’, and often refers simply to holding an object, typically used before another verb. 鉛筆を手に取って書く → (I) take (a/the) pencil in hand and write.
The key pairing to remember here is 手に入る (te ni **hai**ru) and 手に入れる (te ni **ire**ru). The easiest one to understand is 手に入れる. It’s a transitive verb, roughly meaning ‘to obtain’, and so the implication is you made a conscious decision and effort to obtain something. 運転免許を手に入れた→(I) have obtained a drivers license.
手に入る is a weird one for English speakers, because now it’s an intransitive verb, so the direct implication of effort and decision is gone, *even if the nuance is there*. The two main uses are: things you have obtained but haven’t worked for/didn’t consciously decide to obtain. 遠い親戚の遺産が手に入った→(I) got inheritance from a distant relative (who I probably didn’t know and thus couldn’t deliberately try to obtain). or: things that are very big, like dreams or the world. This is a bit more common in fiction. そろそろ世界が我が手に入る→soon, the world will be in my hands (insert evil laughter here).
The easiest way to interpret it is that, yes, you are obtaining something, but the emphasis is only on something having been obtained, and so it’s akin to the expressions ‘X has come into my possession’ or ‘x is now/will be in my hands’.
Note that this is by no means exclusive, and that the key difference is only that with 手に入れる, the thing being obtained is the object, while in 手に入る, it is the subject. So long as that single rule is understood and obeyed, they are *more or less* interchangeable, with 手に入れる emphasising deliberation and effort.
3 comments
This is great reading practice. Its like my brain is doing what it does in English from reading so much in japanese but sadly I can’t help
手に入る means to get something. 取る means to take something.
取る is it’s own verb meaning ‘to take’, and should be treated as such. When you combine it in the form 手に取る, it becomes ‘to take in hand’, and often refers simply to holding an object, typically used before another verb. 鉛筆を手に取って書く → (I) take (a/the) pencil in hand and write.
The key pairing to remember here is 手に入る (te ni **hai**ru) and 手に入れる (te ni **ire**ru). The easiest one to understand is 手に入れる. It’s a transitive verb, roughly meaning ‘to obtain’, and so the implication is you made a conscious decision and effort to obtain something. 運転免許を手に入れた→(I) have obtained a drivers license.
手に入る is a weird one for English speakers, because now it’s an intransitive verb, so the direct implication of effort and decision is gone, *even if the nuance is there*. The two main uses are: things you have obtained but haven’t worked for/didn’t consciously decide to obtain. 遠い親戚の遺産が手に入った→(I) got inheritance from a distant relative (who I probably didn’t know and thus couldn’t deliberately try to obtain). or: things that are very big, like dreams or the world. This is a bit more common in fiction. そろそろ世界が我が手に入る→soon, the world will be in my hands (insert evil laughter here).
The easiest way to interpret it is that, yes, you are obtaining something, but the emphasis is only on something having been obtained, and so it’s akin to the expressions ‘X has come into my possession’ or ‘x is now/will be in my hands’.
Note that this is by no means exclusive, and that the key difference is only that with 手に入れる, the thing being obtained is the object, while in 手に入る, it is the subject. So long as that single rule is understood and obeyed, they are *more or less* interchangeable, with 手に入れる emphasising deliberation and effort.