By what rationale is わすれるconsidered transitive?


I continue to be puzzled by the distinction in Japanese between transitive
(“other move”) and intransitive (“self move”) verbs. My understanding is that
the primary determinant is the extent to which the grammatical object (if one
exists) is affected by the action described by the verb. That understanding is
undermined by a sentence such as:

> 本を 忘れました (I forgot the book)

Of course the act of forgetting may have consequences for the book but they
would be indirect. Can indirect consequences have a bearing on transitivity
(in Japanese)? In any case there must be plenty of instances where the act of
forgetting has no consequences (such as “I forgot the king’s name”).

Can someone please explain the rationale, or is it simply another of those
things that one must accept without satisfactory explanation?




Unfortunately, this is something you have to simply accept. While you can
usually judge the transitivity of a verb easily based on the knowledge you
already have, the transitivity of many verbs are not straightforward. In quite
a few cases, the transitivities of verbs with exactly the same meaning are
different between English and Japanese. Ultimately, you have to remember which
are tricky verbs one by one.

See this questions for examples of tricky verbs: [に vs. を in "to pass a
test"](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/72200/5010)

(By the way, after dozens of years of learning English, I still don't get why
"to see" and "to hear" are transitive but "to look" and "to listen" are
intransitive. All I could do was stop wondering and learn them by rote.)




Unfortunately, this is something you have to simply accept. While you can
usually judge the transitivity of a verb easily based on the knowledge you
already have, the transitivity of many verbs are not straightforward. In quite
a few cases, the transitivities of verbs with exactly the same meaning are
different between English and Japanese. Ultimately, you have to remember which
are tricky verbs one by one.

See this questions for examples of tricky verbs: [に vs. を in "to pass a
test"](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/72200/5010)

(By the way, after dozens of years of learning English, I still don't get why
"to see" and "to hear" are transitive but "to look" and "to listen" are
intransitive. All I could do was stop wondering and learn them by rote.)

