The Confusing Giving and Receiving Grammar

I learned most of my foundational Japanese grammar through Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese, probably one of the best grammar book for beginner out there. It does not really follow JLPT grammar, but it teaches you Japanese from the ground up and cover a lot of topics, ranging from the most fundamental like Japanese writing system to the more advanced ones like casual patterns and slangs. Unlike many other grammar books, it does not start and revolve around using the polite form, but instead start with introducing the simplest grammar points in casual form.

One of the chapter is called Giving and Receiving. It explains the grammar points of あげる ’to give (from giver’s perspective)’, くれる ’to give (from receiver’s perspective)’, and もらう ’to receive’. It can be used to express giving of things and “actions”, which the chapter framed as like giving/receiving a favor. I did think that the explanation is pretty straightforward and easy to understand.

But somehow it didn’t stick on me. I would often stumble trying to parse who is giving the favor to whom, when hearing (or reading) sentences containing those grammar points. I also often wasn’t sure whether to use ～くれる or ～もらう when forming sentences. You can even combine them together like ～もらってください, which does pop up in daily conversation. Now throw in causatives—like させてもらってください—and it became even more confusing. Who is doing a favor of what and for whom now?

Being confused every time is also more than mere inconvenience since these grammar points express who is doing what. They often are the key to understanding whether I need to do something or someone will do the thing for me, or are they actually talking about other people. And these grammar points are so common it appears all the time in any kind of conversation.

While “who is doing what” is important, it’s not the only thing that I was unsure about all the time though. I also had trouble remembering which particle should be used with which verb. Should I use が or に to indicate the person I receive the favor from if I use くれる? I sometime found myself needing to check that page again, or even to google which particle to use.

After enough time being exposed to those grammar points in the wild though, I found a more reliable way to parse the sentence, or just to recall which verb I should use. Rather than thinking about it as giving or receiving favors, I found that it is more helpful to me if I think about it as “how the one doing the action changes”. It certainly does not sound much simpler, but let me explain.

Let’s imagine there was an event in the past where you and I were eating gyoza, there was one gyoza left on the plate, and now we are recalling who ate the last gyoza. We will see how the event changes depending on the combination of the verbs I use to explain the event. (I will put less emphasis on the literal meaning and focus on who ate/got the gyoza instead)

With only the verbs:

- ギョザあげた。　　-> You ate the gyoza (because I gave it to you)
- ギョザもらった。　-> I ate the gyoza (I received the gyoza)
- ギョザくれた。　　-> I ate the gyoza (because you gave it to me)

Let’s try using it with 食べる:

- ギョザ食べた。　　　　　-> I ate the gyoza
- ギョザ食べてあげた。　　-> I ate the gyoza (for you)
- ギョザ食べてもらった。　-> You ate the gyoza (for me)
- ギョザ食べてくれた。　　-> You ate the gyoza (for me)

And then using the causative form:

- ギョザ食べさせた。　　　　　-> You ate the gyoza (I made you eat it)
- ギョザ食べさせてあげた。　　-> You ate the gyoza (I let you eat it)
- ギョザ食べさせてもらった。　-> I ate the gyoza (You let me eat it)
- ギョザ食べさせてくれた。　　-> I ate the gyoza (You let me eat it)

I realized that there is some kind of pattern here. Adding あげる does not change the one doing the action but adding もらう, くれる, and causative form does. By remembering this, we can more easily understand who is doing what in a sentence. For example, when someone say this.

使い方を教えてあげてください。

Since it’s ください, we know that we are expected to do something. But what?
We can try to parse it like this.

教える -> They do the telling
教えてあげる -> They do the telling (the one doing the action does not change with あげる)
教えてあげてください -> We do the telling (the one doing the action changes with くれる)

Now we know that we are expected to tell someone how to use something.

And when someone said this,

使い方を教えさせてください。

教える -> They do the telling
教えさせる -> We do the telling
教えさせてください -> They do the telling

we know that we are expected to listen to their explanation instead.