I’ve been studying the idea of “doing favours for others” in Genki II 3e, chapter 16 and I feel like I just can’t wrap my head around it.
My understanding is that you use the different verb depending on who is involved in the favour and what direction the favour is going. Where I get confused is when I attempt to study this grammar in Bunpro with example questions, I feel like my intuition for what verb to use is often wrong and I can’t seem to find a consistent pattern. I must be missing something obvious – could someone help break down these sentences and explain why I am wrong? Bunpro sometimes does give hints if I use the wrong verb but it’s not often very detailed.
Example 1:
このタイヤもうだめです。(誰かに)タイヤ交換を_____ください。[する]. (“This tire is no longer any good. Please have it changed.”)
I thought the answer would be してあげて, as this favour is being done by “someone” for someone else. The answer was もらって. I think my misunderstanding here is that the favour being done is not for the person getting the tire changed by someone else, but rather the favour is actually for the person speaking the sentence?
Example 2: 私を_____。[愛する] (“Will you love me?” [Do me the favour of?])
I thought the answer would be 愛してもらいますか？ But the answer was 愛してくれますか？ I think the reason might be that もらう would be rude if you’re asking someone to love you, but I’m not sure. I thought since you’re getting someone to do you a favour (technically this is a favour?) もらう would still be right.
Example 3: このプレゼントをお父さんに_____。[渡す] (“Please hand over this present to your dad. [as a favor for Dad]”)
I thought the answer would be 渡してくれてください, as I believe I was watching ToKini Andy’s video on this Genki chapter (I forget if the textbook even mentions this) that you can use くれる when speaking from the perspective of very close friends or family. So in this case someone is doing a favour for the speaker’s family (spouse, by the sounds of it). The answer was actually てあげてください which I guess makes sense since it’s a favour that is from the perspective of 2 people that aren’t the speaker, but I thought the family member status might change this.
If anyone can further help break this down for me that would be great. Thank you!
6 comments
There are finer points to be had, but:
〜てあげる – to do for someone else or two others doing something for each other
XはBに日本語を教えてあげる – X teaches B Japanese.
〜てくれる – someone does something for the speaker or some one they identify closely with; it can be their unprovoked altruism
AはYに日本語を教えてくれる – A teaches Y (usually me) Japanese.
〜てもらう – to have someone do for the speaker (usually) ; often a favor – pay attention to the particles
CはZに日本語を教えてもらう – C has Z teach them Japanese.
Your examples –
1) Have someone change the tire. もらう
2) Love me (unprovoked) くれる
3) You are right – we can say くれる, but here it’s someone giving to some one else. あげる
For もらう, it may help to remember that the subject of the sentence is “doing” the receiving. So in Example 1, the speaker is recommending that the person they are taking to “receive/get” the action of changing the tire (from “誰か”). Using あげる here would mean “you should (yourself) change the tire (for someone else)”.
Similarly for example 2, using もらいますか would mean “will you (the unspoken subject of the sentence) receive love (from someone)?”, which is an unlikely thing to ask. Reading it with yourself as the subject I guess would be similar to asking “will I be loved by you?” in English, which I think you can see is not quite a typical question to ask.
The other answers you’ve received are already solid, but I’ll try to break it down even simpler:
もらう always means **to RECEIVE**
あげる always means **to GIVE** (away from speaker)
くれる always means **to GIVE** (towards speaker)
You can think of あげる and くれる as the same exact action (“to give”) with the direction of the giving simply being reversed based on perspective.
Also note that, by definition, くれる is an action that the speaker CANNOT perform. This is because YOU are the innermost person of your “in-group” (which is your yourself/friends/family/coworkers/etc.), so you cannot move a gift from yourself any further inward. Due to this, we know that anytime someone uses the word くれる, we know that they are referring to an action that someone *else* did for them (or for their family, friends, etc.).
Lastly, because もらう always means “to receive,” you will commonly hear ～てもらう to mean “(I/we) will have [person] do [X] for us” e.g., 田中さんに見せてもらいます means “(I/we) will have Tanaka-san show (me/us).” This pattern in particular took me a while to get used to for some reason, but it’s actually very simple and straightforward (:
To give you a bit of nuance してあげる has the connotation of going out of your way to do something for someone. してくれる is showing gratitude for something someone did for you and してもらう is having someone do something for you. The last one can show power balance and can be rude if you use it wrong and the first one should be used carefully as well.
あげる and くれる are two sides of the same coin.
あなたに見せてあげるよ！ I’ll show you!
私に見せてくれるの? You’ll show me?
ケーキを作ってくれる? Will you make a cake for me?
ケーキを作ってあげるよ！ I’ll make a cake for you.
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もらう is exactly the same as the English “To have someone do ___”
見せてもらった I had him/her show me.
ケーキを作ってもらった I had him/her make me a cake.
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I feel that もらう doesn’t necessarily have a sense of appreciation associated with it. It just means to have someone do something for you.
くれる has a sense of appreciation, that someone is going out of their way to make or do something for you.
あげる sounds a bit rude towards people your age or older, because it’s like you are taking time out of your day for them. I think people only use it as a joke. For example, I would only use it seriously to people younger than me.
If you can get past the weird presentation, this is the best explanation I’ve found on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CESFJaFp8FI