Quote:
Originally Posted by Miyavifan
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The link is good, but I don't like the crappy way they explain the "special" use of が with 分かる for "to understand something." It's not special. 日本語が分かる literally means "Japanese is divided." The etymology of the kanji is "divide into parts, part, separate, sever." My Japanese teacher (I think her PhD was in linguistics) told me years ago that the sense is that you've done something like understood something by placing the relevant parts into the parts of your brain where it belongs ("stored away," as it were).
When you think about it that way, it's quite easy to remember 分かる takes が and not を.