Hi, am I right to say that I cannot use "起きる" for the following phrases? If so, why? And is there any other verb choices that I can use instead?


1. オーブンの上段に棚をセットする。

2. カセットテープをプレーヤーにセットする。

3. テーブルの上にコーヒーをセットする。

4. 皿を食器洗い機にセットする。

What do you think 起きる means? You absolutely cannot use it in any of these sentences. Even if you ignore the plain meaning of 起きる (to get up, to wake up, to occur, to happen), it's an intransitive verb, and you're trying to feed it an object, which is agrammatical.

I'm honestly not sure you can even use　セット for all of those. I know 置く works perfectly fine for putting coffee on a table. You 入れる things into the dishwasher and oven. However, you can definitely セット a tape in a tape deck. But I don't see why you couldn't 入れる a tape, either.

「起きる」 only means what KyleGoetz said.

BTW, your sentences #1 and #3 make no sense to begin with.

1. 棚・・・？By 棚、you mean オーブン皿？(oven rack?)　I'd say, オーブンの上段に、「オーブン皿を」セットする/入れる。
2. カセットテープをプレーヤーに入れる would also be fine.
3. テーブルの上にコーヒーを置く/乗せる。(not セットする)
4. 皿を食器洗い機にセットする/入れる。

My mistake. I was referring to 置く instead of 起きる as "put".

Am I right to say that phrases and sentences on ALC is not always accurate? Sometimes I get confused because of the samples there.

Put it this way, what exactly is "セットする" most use for?

I have never seen a wrong example.

But remember that it is used by professional translators and made by professional translators, so the examples will often be artful translations, since literal translations are often considered bad.

It is NOT used as a verb nearly as often as you seem to believe. You could easily live the rest of your life without ever actively using it, except for one meaning "to have one's hair set".

The other meaning is "to place something in a proper manner", not just "to place something", which is why some of your sentences look weird.

セット is more often used as a noun as in 「４点セット」, 「ギフトセット」, "a set meal", etc.



マクドナルドの「ハッピーセット」


コーヒーセット

Thanks for the help, KyleGoetz and masaegu.

Let's look at the following phrases:

誰は日本語がわかりますか。
The intended translation being:
"Does anyone understand Japanese?"
(i.e. would be practical on a forum or an IRC channel).

I assume the sentence feels sloppy, what would be a proper way to structure the sentence so that it feels natural?

Also this phrase:

日本語がわかりますか。
The intended translation being:
"Do you understand Japanese?"

This feels more direct, as you're just speaking to one person, instead of any[one|body].

Would that be correct?

Thanks for any help!