What is the difference between 交じる and 交わる?


人と交わって、多くのことを学びました。

I learned a lot of things by socializing with other people.

彼女は外国人に交じってダンスをしたの。

She mingled with foreigners as she danced.




I'm not a native speaker, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but the
sense I get from these words is that 交じる feels more objective and one-sided,
while 交わる feels more general and reciprocal.

The image I get from 交じる is one of a lone intruder or small amount of
something being inserted into/mixed in amongst a larger group or mass. So in
the proverbial "needle in a haystack", the needle would be 交じっている in amongst
the hay, and in your sentence about 外国人に交じって, I feel a certain emphasis on the
sense that she's the odd one out, the lone Japanese person in a sea of
foreigners.

交わる, on the other hand, feels like it puts the emphasis on the "interaction"
part of mixing rather than the "intrusion" part. If two things 交わる, I get the
sense that they are both affecting one another and becoming in some way
intertwined. In that sense, I think the word "mingle" that you've used in the
translation of the second sentence would actually be more appropriate for 交わる
than for 交じる.

Perhaps as an extension of these distinctions, I would usually expect to see
交じる used with the に particle (since it's a directional interaction of one
thing entering amongst many) whereas 交わる would more usually take と (since it
describes mutual interactions). I don't know if that's a hard-and-fast rule,
but it matches your examples and most uses that I found in a cursory search.




I'm not a native speaker, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but the
sense I get from these words is that 交じる feels more objective and one-sided,
while 交わる feels more general and reciprocal.

The image I get from 交じる is one of a lone intruder or small amount of
something being inserted into/mixed in amongst a larger group or mass. So in
the proverbial "needle in a haystack", the needle would be 交じっている in amongst
the hay, and in your sentence about 外国人に交じって, I feel a certain emphasis on the
sense that she's the odd one out, the lone Japanese person in a sea of
foreigners.

交わる, on the other hand, feels like it puts the emphasis on the "interaction"
part of mixing rather than the "intrusion" part. If two things 交わる, I get the
sense that they are both affecting one another and becoming in some way
intertwined. In that sense, I think the word "mingle" that you've used in the
translation of the second sentence would actually be more appropriate for 交わる
than for 交じる.

Perhaps as an extension of these distinctions, I would usually expect to see
交じる used with the に particle (since it's a directional interaction of one
thing entering amongst many) whereas 交わる would more usually take と (since it
describes mutual interactions). I don't know if that's a hard-and-fast rule,
but it matches your examples and most uses that I found in a cursory search.

