Hi everyone! do people ask grammar questions regularly on wanikani? bc I have a bunch!
for instance, this question:
What is the difference between
someone saying: “傘がないの？この傘を貸しませんか”
and the same person saying: “傘がないの？この傘を貸しましょうか”
I understand that “verb + ませんか” is about a proposal/invitation, and “verb + ましょうか” is mostly a proposal to do something with someone else, but I don’t quite get the nuances beyond that!
if people don’t ask grammar questions on Wanikani, do people have advice for free apps where you can get good answers? HiNative, Hello Talk, Tandem, etc.
I am more than happy to help ppl with their english (my native language) in exchange.
The forums have these grammar subforums so questions are welcome, but there’s a lot of people here are also beginners and not such a large number of people later in their journey sticking around, so these forums may not be the fastest place for a response. HiNative, japanese stack exchange and discord communities like English-Japanese Language Exchange are probably going to get you better answers. Unlike this forum, you’ll also have a decent population of Japanese natives in those places too.
The first one doesn’t really make sense in my opinion. この傘を貸しませんか on its own would most likely mean “Can you lend me this umbrella”. Given the first sentence 傘がないの？ that asks if the other person doesn’t have an umbrella, この傘を貸しませんか can technically mean “can I lend you this umbrella”, but that is still awkward.
The second one makes a lot more sense. この傘を貸しましょうか is “shall I lend you this umbrella”. ましょうか can definitely be a proposal to do something together (“let’s”; “shall we”), but importantly it doesn’t have to have a “we” in the meaning. It can be used as “shall I” like in this case.
Either way, if you’re offering to lend someone an umbrella, I think この傘を借りていいですよ (saying “it’s okay to borrow this umbrella”) would be more natural. (And if you wanted to borrow the umbrella yourself I still think 借りる for “borrow” would be better than 貸す for “lend”.)
One more thing to note is that you have to be careful to not mix politeness levels. 傘がないの is casual but then この傘を貸しませんか and この傘を貸しましょうか are polite.
By the way, there’s a whole topic on WaniKani for asking short grammar questions, so definitely free to ask more.
I had these recently on Bunpro, it is in chapter 9 of N5 deck:
This expression (ませんか) is a little bit different to ましょうか, in that it sounds directly like an invitation to do (A). ましょうか tends to sound more like a suggestion that (A) should be done.
