Marking the object with が
[This was originally a mail message, but I want to collect these kinds of things on my journal.]
On Monday Suzuki-sensei claimed that sometimes "が" is an object marker. Actually, I don't buy this. It seems to me much more natural to consider "が" as always the subject, but instead consider some of the verbs to be passive. For example, in "日本語が分かる" it might be best to consider "分かる" as meaning "to be understood" rather than "to understand". Then we can happily translate it as "Japanese is understood". The same goes for all desideratives, such as "酒が飲みたい" (sake is desired to be drunk) and potentials, such as "富士山が見える" (Mount Fuji can be seen), and so-called intransitive verbs, such as "電気が消した" (the light was extinguished).
I think one of the reasons this isn't taught is that Japanese has it's own thing called the "passive" which is not related to this. However, I find it much easier to think this way and remember which verbs are which, so perhaps it is helpful to you too.