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In today's Japanese class, my teacher said "私が始まる" instead of what I had
expected to hear which is "始める" to mean "I will be the one to start". I'm sure
of that meaning because of the obvious context.

"私が始まる" was kind of disorienting because if I'm not mistaken I know generally
(Except verbs that are like 歩く、走る、寝る、etc) that intransitive verbs in Japanese
typically take "Something" as the subject as opposed to "Someone" so it felt
like 私 was "thingified" or something like that. This could have also been just
simply an unintentional ミス from my teacher so I don't want anybody reading
this getting confused. But if it isn't, kindly go into detail as to why.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I posted a now-deleted answer paraphrasing what @aguijonazo said in the
comments since @naruto 's answer is the same as well as adds a few nice
points. Full credit goes to them for helping out.

Edit(2): @aguijonazo's response to my now-deleted answer as more clarification
for what he/she said: "I meant the speaker sees him/herself as a show or
something as in "Now the show begins."
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2023-05-15T18:06:14.933
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question
grammar transitivity
Quick Question about 始まる vs 始める
私が始まる would make perfect sense as a rhetorical sentence meaning "This is the
beginning of myself" or "My (true) life starts here". It might be called a
[metonym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy) of _life_. I used [this
lyrics search](https://www.uta-net.com/) and found 4 Japanese songs that
literally contain `私が始まる`:

[![search
results](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HXEv2m.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HXEv2.png)

But if your sentence is supposed to mean "I am the one who will start **it** "
(where "it" refers to some event such as a game, a program), you must say
私が(それを)始める using the transitive version of 始める.
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2023-05-15T23:50:34.943
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answer