I break everything.

Pencils, pens, erasers, zippers, paper coasters at restaurants--pretty much anything you put in my hands.

I guess the problem is my inherent tendency to fidget with things. Then, oops, broken.

One item I broke quite recently was the corner to Rei's smartphone case.

Not the whole thing--just the corner! Still, I know how people react when you break their stuff (you should have heard my mom this one time I broke her favorite pen).

So, I decided to play it cool. I turned to Rei and casually said...

これ壊れてるよ。
これ こわれてる よ。
Hey, this is broken.
Literally: "this + is broken + よ."

You may have noticed my mad 上手（じょうず）use of the intransitive here.

By saying the intransitive 壊れてる（こわれてる）the focus is not on the action of breaking this phone case. Rather, the focus is just on the state of being broken. If we wanted to put focus on the act of breaking the phone--that is, if I were intending to tell her that I broke her phone--then the transitive would have been better:

これ壊した。
これ こわした。
I broke this.
Literally: "this + broke."

Actually, I'd probably need to add the nuance that I broke it unintentionally, which we could do by adding 〜てしまいました. Sort of casually, that becomes 〜てしまった, and in full casual language (my favorite!), it's 〜ちゃった. So...

これ壊しちゃった。
これ こわしちゃった。
I broke this (by accident).
Literally: "this + broke (oops)."

But I think we can all agree that when we break other people's stuff, we should hide it from them. I mean, they'll just overreact. And it was practically already broken anyways.

Thus, I went with 壊れてる.

Yet, alas, that Rei is a sharp one. And she said...

壊れてる？全部見てたよ。壊したんじゃん！
こわれてる？ ぜんぶ みてた よ。 こわした んじゃん！
It's broken? I was watching you the whole time. You broke it!
Literally: "is broken? + everything + was watching + よ. + (you) broke + んじゃん！"

Damn.

Apparently I'm not as smooth as I'd thought.

Uh, let's change focus. For no reason!

I think that group of sentences might seem relatively simple, but could you produce them in a conversation? Let's look at each one separately, and at different levels of formality.

Phrase: "It's broken? // Is it broken?"
Verb: 壊れる（こわれる // to break; to be broken）
Form: 現在進行形（げんざいしんこうけい // present progressive form）
Casual: 壊れてる？
Sorta Casual: 壊れている？
Formal: 壊れていますか？
Note: In the conversation, only the casual one would make sense, because she was just repeating what I said.

Phrase: "I was watching you the whole time. // I saw the whole thing."
Verb: 見る（みる // to see; to watch）
Form: 過去進行形（かこしんこうけい // past progressive form）
Casual: 全部見てたよ。
Sorta Casual: 全部見ていたよ。
Formal: 全部見ていましたよ。
Note: In case you forgot, 全部 is ぜんぶ. It is "all; every"（全）and "part"（部）.

Phrase: "You broke it!"
Verb: 壊す（こわす // to break）
Form: 過去形（かこけい // simple past form）
Casual: 壊したんじゃん！
Sorta Casual: 壊したんじゃない！
Formal: 壊したんじゃないですか！
Note: I say "formal" for that last one, but it would only be appropriate if talking with a 先輩（せんぱい）that you're pretty chill with.

Also, what's with that ん？

Please don't ask me such difficult questions. I can think up an explanation--like how ん has an explanatory nuance, so the meaning becomes an explanation that "you" broke, NOT that "it's broken."

But really, you should just pick up this stuff naturally. It takes time. A lot of time. But mastering it is one of the things you get to look forward to. ^_^

Anyways, that was a short little lesson. So maybe you don't have any excuses for not reading it?

Although I'm cool with excuses. I've got tons of them.