Kakeru: The Most Overloaded Verb in Japanese

One image behind every use

Hold this picture in your head: something leaves one point, reaches another, and stays there. A coat leaves your hand and stays on the hook. Your voice leaves your phone and reaches someone else's. Sauce leaves the bottle and settles over the rice. A bridge leaves one bank and lands on the other. Every one of those is kakeru in Japanese, and once you can see the shape you stop needing a separate English word for each use.

The second half of the image is coverage. What is placed over something tends to stay in effect: a lock over a door, a blanket over a sleeping child, insurance over a car, pressure over a person. This is why kagi o kakeru means lock rather than simply attach a key, and why mahō o kakeru means cast a spell. The spell is laid over the target and remains active until something removes it.

The practical consequence is that kakeru is learned in pairs, not alone. Japanese speakers do not choose kakeru from a list of meanings; they know that denwa goes with kakeru, that bōshi goes with kaburu, and that nekutai goes with shimeru. Store the noun and the verb as one unit and you will produce the right verb at speed instead of translating.

The sense table

Read the middle column aloud as a block. The noun and the verb travel together, and it is the noun that tells you which English word to reach for, so the collocation is the unit worth drilling rather than the verb on its own.

Hanging, covering and laying over

This is the sense closest to the core image, and the one that most often appears in kanji as 掛ける. The thing being hung takes o, and the place it hangs on takes ni. Note that Japanese sees a blanket as something laid over a person, so kakeru also covers tucking someone in, putting a cover on furniture and draping a jacket over a chair back.

Switching on, locking and applying

Machines and mechanisms take kakeru because you place an action over them and it keeps running. A phone call, an engine, the brakes, a lock and a piece of music are all things that are put into effect rather than merely touched. This group is where beginners most often reach for a literal translation and produce something odd, such as denwa o tsukurimasu, so drill the fixed pairs.

The opposite of most of this group is not a kakeru form. You unlock with kagi o akemasu, you stop music with ongaku o tomemasu, and you switch a light off with denki o keshimasu. Only the on-switch belongs to kakeru, which is another reason to store each collocation with its natural partner rather than as a rule.

Wearing, pouring and sitting down

Glasses hook over your ears, so they take kakeru while a hat takes kaburu, a tie takes shimeru and gloves take hameru. Sauces and seasonings poured over food take kakeru, which is different from tsukeru, the verb for dipping something into a small dish of sauce. Sitting is the sense that surprises people most: you lay your hips onto a seat, so a polite invitation to sit is dōzo o-kake kudasai.

Koe o kakeru deserves its own note. It means to speak to someone who is not yet in conversation with you: flagging down a member of staff, greeting a colleague in the corridor, or offering help. Koe o kakete kudasai is how you tell someone to say something if they need you, and it is far more natural than iite kudasai in that situation.

Spending time, money and effort

When you deliberately extend time or resources over a task, you kakeru them. Jikan o kakemasu means you take your time on purpose, which is why it often carries approval: a dish made slowly, a decision made carefully. Keep it apart from jikan ga kakarimasu, the intransitive form, which reports that something simply takes a long time and carries no praise at all.

Pressure, worry, spells and bets

The abstract senses follow the same coverage image. Pressure is laid over a person, worry is laid over a family, a spell is laid over a target, and trouble is laid over whoever has to deal with it. Meiwaku o kakeru is the single most useful member of this group in daily life, because the humble apology go-meiwaku o o-kake shimashita is standard whenever you have inconvenienced someone.

The three kanji, and why kana usually wins

掛ける is the general form and covers hanging, sitting, spending, telephoning, causing trouble and multiplying. 架ける is reserved for structures thrown across a gap: bridges, cables, an overhead line. 賭ける means to bet or to stake, and 懸ける appears in higher-register expressions such as staking a prize or a life on something, though many writers use 賭ける there too.

In practice, ordinary Japanese writing keeps most of these in hiragana. A sign will say 鍵をかけてください rather than 鍵を掛けてください, and a text message will say 電話かけるね. That is good news for a speaking learner: you need to recognise 掛 in menus, signs and set phrases, but you rarely have to choose a kanji yourself. Recognise all four, write kana, and let context do the rest.

Kakaru, the intransitive twin

Every transitive kakeru has an intransitive partner kakaru, which describes the resulting state or an event with no visible agent. The grammar changes with it: the noun that took o now takes ga. Watch the verb class too, because kakeru is ichidan (kakemasu, kakenai, kakete) while kakaru is godan (kakarimasu, kakaranai, kakatte).

Kakaru is the form you will hear most often as a beginner, because so much of daily conversation reports states rather than actions. A locked door, a hanging picture, a call coming in, a journey that takes two hours and a cost you did not expect are all kakaru sentences. Learn the pair together and you double your output from one memory.

The last row is worth memorising on its own. Isha ni kakaru means to be seen by a doctor, and it is what you say when you are already a patient there. It fits the image too: you place yourself under the doctor's care and stay there.

Compound verbs built on kakeru

Kakeru attaches to the stem of other verbs and adds either the sense of directing the action at someone, or the sense of an action just begun. Hanashikakeru is to speak at someone who was not already talking to you, oikakeru is to chase, and yobikakeru is to call out or appeal. With the second meaning, tabekake no pan is bread someone started eating, and iikakete yamemashita means he began to say something and stopped.

Lookalikes and mistakes to check

Several unrelated verbs are also read kakeru, and only kanji or context separates them. Kakemasu can mean can write (書ける, the potential of kaku), be chipped or lacking (欠ける), or run and gallop (駆ける). In speech, the object usually settles it: kanji ga kakemasu is about writing, osara ga kakemashita is about a chipped plate.

• Do not invent a verb for phoning: denwa o kakemasu or denwa shimasu, never denwa o tsukurimasu.
• Keep the wearing verbs apart: megane o kakeru, bōshi o kaburu, nekutai o shimeru, tebukuro o hameru.
• Pour over is kakeru; dip into a dish is tsukeru. Shōyu o kakemasu and shōyu o tsukemasu describe different actions at the same table.
• Choose by who is responsible: jikan o kakemashita means I took my time, jikan ga kakarimashita means it took a while.
• Conjugate the right class: kakemasen and kakete for kakeru, kakarimasen and kakatte for kakaru.
• Use the humble form for apologies at work: go-meiwaku o o-kake shimashita rather than meiwaku o kakemashita.
• Remember 書ける, 欠ける and 駆ける are separate verbs that only share the sound.