Difference between あげる and くれる?

I know that both mean “to give something to someone” but I don’t see the difference between both of them.

image

from:
http://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/sheets/basic-japanese/

Also see http://maggiesensei.com/2010/02/22/(〜して)あげる+くれる+もらう-shite-ageru+kureru+morau/ for a more in-depth view and some exceptional uses.

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No, あげる means give to someone, but くれる means “give to the speaker”

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Not always :wink:

if the receiver is close to you such as your family, sweethearts or pets, you can say :

:rrrr: 山田さんが息子にお菓子をくれた。

= Yamada san ga musuko ni okashi wo kureta.

= Yamada-san gave my son sweets.

マギー、そのお菓子(は)、誰がくれたの?

= Maggie, sono okashi (wa) dare gakureta no?

= Maggie, who gave you the sweets?

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Oh, I had no idea, thanks so much.

I guess your image needs correcting too.

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Luckily I also included the link to Maggie-Sensei’s article ^^

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Simplifying for the sake of expressing the central difference between the two concepts is not acceptable!

Not in a good mood at the moment, sorry.

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Even the article stated that “Usually the receiver should be “私 ( = watashi), me“, not the third person”, so the image shows the main usage corectly.

Yeah, that’s what I was going for with my answer.

He doesn’t know the main difference, so I wasn’t too worried about edge cases right off the bat.

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True enough, I slightly edited my first post.

Today is a weird day here, for some reason…

This question is already answered, just some more info from the DoBJG:

ageru – S.o. gives s.t. to a person who is not a member of the giver’s in-group but whose status is about equal to that of the giver.

Example sentence: 私は良子に花をあげた。 (I gave Yoshiko flowers.)

This is quite convoluted, but basically you use やる for in-group members and さしあげる for higher positions. The interesting part is that さしあげる is humble, so this verb looks from your viewpoint and emphasizes how poor that act of giving was.


kureru – S.o. whose status is not higher than the speaker’s gives s.t. to the first person or to s.o. with whom the speaker emphasizes.

Example: 大川さんは私に本をくれた。 (Mr. Okawa gave me a book.)

Here the honorific form is くださる, which raises the other person. It’s related to ください, and you can’t really ください yourself. So this verb looks from the giver’s viewpoint and emphasizes how badass they are.

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@Leebo @Chikuhitsu @acm2010

Thanks for for your explanations but I couldn’t get the gist of it unfortunately.
I think your explanations weren’t simple enough for me to understand :persevere:

I looked around a little and found two sources that are explaining the difference quite simple.
I think these two sources are summing it up for me well enough.

I also saw that Misa had made a Video about it. I think it’ll also help if I watch it.

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