Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
When using Google Translate for the verb "to close", among the many suggestions, there are five different verbs all with the same Kanji:
I can guess that the difference between 閉める and 閉まる is the transitivity: 閉める is transitive while 閉まる is intransitive.
But what are the differences of all five?
[閉]{し}まる is intransitive, [閉]{し}める, [閉]{と}ざす, [閉]{た}てる are transitive, and [閉]{と}じる can be transitive and intransitive.
[閉]{し}まる -- intransitive. Something (physically) closes.
「ドアが閉まる」 a door closes
「門が閉まる」a gate closes
「店が閉まる」 a shop closes / shuts down
[閉]{し}める -- transitive. To (physically) close something.
「ドアを閉める」 close a door
「門を閉める」 close a gate
「店を閉める」 close a shop / shut down a business
[閉]{と}じる -- transitive / intransitive.
intransitive: "for something to close" "to come to an end"
「ドアが閉じる」 a door closes
「つぼみが閉じる」 a flower bud closes
「店が閉じる」 a shop/business closes permanently
「会が閉じる」 a meeting ends
transitive: "to close something" "to bring something to an end"
「目を閉じる」 close one's eyes
「口を閉じる」 close one's mouth
「傘を閉じる」 close an umbrella
「店を閉じる」 shut down a business permanently
「歴史を閉じる」 end its history
「生涯を閉じる」 end one's lifetime -> to die
According to this dictionary, 閉じる is more used with 目, 口, 本, 傘, and 閉める with 引き出し, 門.
[閉]{と}ざす -- transitive. To block, close up, seclude, refuse, lock, bolt ([鎖]{とざ}す)
Often used figuratively.
「道を閉ざす」 block a road; close the door (to success, victory, future, career, etc.)
「門を閉ざす」 lock a gate; close the door (to the world, etc.); (for school) to refuse students
「国を閉ざす」 close the country
「口を閉ざす」 keep silent / refuse to say anything (about...)
「心を閉ざす」 close one's mind
「耳を閉ざす」 shut one's ear (to...) / refuse to listen (to...)
[閉]{た}てる -- transitive. Exclusively used for [雨戸]{あまど}(sliding shutter), [障子]{しょうじ}(sliding paper door/screen) and [襖]{ふすま}(sliding door). Sounds old-fashioned; probably almost obsolete in modern Japanese.
「雨戸を閉てる(or立てる)」 close shutters (「雨戸・障子・襖を[閉]{し}める」 is more commonly used.)
You can apply “close” to all five words of “閉じる、閉ざす、閉める、閉まる、閉てる (shimeteru or shimatteiru, I cannot read it ‘tateru’ )” you gave. The difference is the transitivity as you rightly say. The first three words are transitive and the latter two are intransitive verbs.
But there is a delicate difference of nuance and the usages of these five words. For instances, we don’t say 本を閉ざす. We say 本を閉じる. We don’t say 付き合いを閉じる、We say 付き合い(交流)を閉ざす. I cannot tell whether there are definite rules for the usages of ‘閉じる’ related words.
Here are some examples of the conjugations of the given five words all referring to “close” something.
閉じる: 目を閉じる、本を閉じる、帳簿を閉じる、窓を閉じる - close eyes (book, account book, window).
閉ざす: 口を閉ざす、耳を閉ざす、心を閉ざす、門を閉ざす、付き合いを閉ざす – close (mouth, ears, heart, gate, social association).
閉める: 戸（門）を閉める、店を閉める – close door (gate, shop).
閉まる: 戸(店)が閉まる – The door (store) closes.
閉てる: 雨戸を閉てる - close a shutter
閉めている: 店を閉めている – The shop is being closed.
I spent some time puzzling over this, or at least the last entry, the claim that たてる can be written 閉てる. No such reading is given in Daijirin, for example, at least one native speaker close to me was as baffled as I was. And this matches the puzzlement in the answer from Oishi-san. Finally I read the beginning of your question carefully: you are using Google translate as a study tool??!? You cannot do this. Google translate is not even leading edge machine translation, it has a huge (pronounced "huuuuuge") corpus of text from all over the place, from which by statistical analysis it produces any and all "text mappings", including translations, mistranslations, misprints, pure garbage, and more. Of course, if you have an email from a customer in Greek, Lithuanian, Thai, or some other language you cannot read at all, Google translate is great for guessing whether this means "Order arrived. Thank you!" or "Problem! Order not arrived." -- but this is its limit.
I suggest you please withdraw the question.
I suggest you please withdraw the question Since you don't attempt to answer it, I suggest you please withdraw the answer. =)