N4 Topics
L4: Deepest Desires
Deepest Desires
In this Topic, we're going to learn two different ways to use the い-Adjective 欲しい, meaning 'want'. First, we will see it used as a regular adjective, with the が particle. Second, we will see it used with the て-form of verbs, where it can use the を particle. We will compare these two uses in the Details section, as well as comparing a variety of ways to talk about 'wants' depending on the context.
Grammar in this Topic
がほしい
To want something, To be in need of
To say that you want something in Japanese, the が particle will be combined with the い-Adjective 欲しい 'to want (A)', or 'to desire (A)'. This is exactly the same way as other い-Adjectives behave when describing nouns.
Caution
This use of 欲しい is only used for saying that you want 'things' (nouns). The auxiliary verb たい will be used when saying that you want to 'do' something (verbs).
However, ほしい may be used with verbs to express that you want another person to do something. This is done through the use of ほしい after the conjunction particle, て.
For more detail about this, please see our てほしい lesson.
てほしい
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.
Details
The two ways of using ほしい we have just learned use particles slightly differently, so let's explore the differences. Let's also compare ほしい to other 'wanting' words.
What Do You Want?
As we have just learned, as ほしい is a regular い-Adjective, the thing (noun) that is wanted will normally be marked by が. In the case of てほしい, the particles in the sentence will correspond to the verb that comes before ほしい, not ほしい itself. This is because て has a 'conjunctive' meaning, joining together the chunk of the sentence that uses the verb and then ほしい itself.
We previously learned that some adjective to do with the feelings or desires of others are only used from the perspective of the person in question. This is because only that person can know how they feel. (When talking about another person’s feelings or desires, we often attach がる to get around this.) This also applies to ほしい. Furthermore, we also have the auxiliary verb たい, used to talk about 'wanting' to do actions oneself. Let's compare some common ways to talk about desire and pay close attention to the particle use in each one.
We can go even further and use some of our 'seems like' phrases!