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What is the difference between Aが見える and Bを見る?

Is there anything tricky about this?

Can you illustrate with examples?

Troyen
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language hacker
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    You should have been asking this form of basic questions since the beginning instead of all those twitter translation requests ... +1 for turning over new leaf ;) – Lukman Jul 23 '11 at 06:30
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    This may be a silly question, but did you perhaps mean Aが見える? Otherwise this turns into a discussion of が versus を, which, based on the level of your previous questions, I think you can distinguish. – Derek Schaab Jul 23 '11 at 13:15
  • Yes, I meant Aが見える? How did you know that? – language hacker Jul 23 '11 at 18:41
  • @language hacker: Can you update your question? – phirru Jul 24 '11 at 03:16
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    @language hacker: Can you please be firm on what you want to ask? If you are unclear of the exact phrase you want explained, for example if you heard it from somewhere, you need to indicate so. Here let me show you how I'd phrase a question about phrase that I heard from anime: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1500/what-does-ra-shinai-conjugation-mean .. also, clearly indicate how much you knew from a specific sentence you quoted, so that people do not waste time explaining things you already knew. – Lukman Jul 24 '11 at 15:49
  • Knowing that difference would be helpful as well. – language hacker Jul 25 '11 at 20:34

2 Answers2

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The simplest explanation for the difference is that in Aが見る A is the subject (the one who looks) while in Bを見る B is the object (the one who is looked at).

Example with 食べた:

鳥が食べた.
The bird ate [something].

鳥を食べた.
[Something] ate the bird.

EDIT:

Updating my answer, since the question has changed in a fundamental way.

As stated in phirru's answer, 見える is an intransitive verb that means "to/can be seen". It refers to state of the noun subject as being visible. It's basically different from 見る, which is a transitive verb that means "to see/look" which refers to the act of seeing/looking. In short, 見える is a state while 見る is an act.

Like other intransitive verbs, 見える takes a が particle but not を. 見る on the other hand can take both particles depending on whether the preceding nouns are the subject or object of the "look" action, as I've shown in my original answer above.

Lukman
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Aが見る A looks.

Bを見る Look at B.

In this case I believe が is marking the agent, or who is doing the action. (Looking). Where as を is marking the object of what is being looked at.

AがBを見た A looked at B.

EDIT

From the comments it appears you meant what is the difference between

Aが見える and Bを見る

見える is an intransitive verb which means something along the lines of "to/can be seen". That is, the visual information enters your eye and you are able to perceive an object.

For example: ˚あの窓から富士山が見えるよ！” - "You can see Mt.Fuji from that window!"

見る is a transitive verb which means "to see/to watch". This is used in ways like:

"映画を見る" - "To watch a movie."

phirru
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