～て欲(ほ)しいI want you to

As mentioned in our lesson about 'saying that you want something' with がほしい, sometimes ほしい can be used as auxiliary adjective (an adjective that needs to be connected to another word in order to have meaning). In these cases, it will follow the conjunction particle, て. When used this way, てほしい expresses that the speaker 'wants somebody to do something'.

To use てほしい, simply change the verb that you 'want someone to do' into its て-form, and then add ほしい.

Caution

てほしい can also be used to ask questions/explain about what other people want you (or somebody else) to do. Due to this, we will need to be careful when trying to identify who wants who to do what.