Learn to Use “-te hoshii” to Make a Request in Japanese

te hoshii in JapaneseSometimes you might want someone to do something but may not necessary be doing it for you. It is a little different from kureru, morau and kudasai. In this case, for example, “Can you do this for me?”, this is a nice way of asking someone to do things for you. Now your boss, your teacher or maybe even your mother might sometimes say this to you, “I want you to do this”. Comparing the latter to the former, this sounds more obliging, isn’t it? But it is not rude. It has the same feelings in English, so you should get what I mean :) Let’s find out how to use it.

As you can see, the -te て form is involve here. So make sure you know how to change to the -te て form before proceeding. Sentence example below

あなた に のん ほしい - Want you to drink

あなた に たべ ほしい - Want you to eat

あなた に やって ほしい - Want you to do

あなた に わかって ほしい - Want you to understand

Words to learn

やる - to do

わかる - to understand

After changing a verb into a -te て form, just add the hoshii ほしい behind it. And also take note that this is only use to ask someone to do something and not necessary for you. I’ve heard some people use it wrongly. They wanted to ask someone for permission to do something by themselves, and using -te hoshii て ほしい makes no sense. In that case, they will have to use て いい instead.

And if you want to ask someone, just add the name of a person with a に particle behind. So it goes like this:

トムー に たべて ほしい - I want Tom to eat it.

かれ に のんで ほしい - I want him to drink it.

That’s all for today. Happy Learning Japanese!

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