I’m going through the Genki 2 textbook and I’m confused about one of the footnotes regarding もらう.
The texbook states that もらう can’t be used in situations where ‘someone else’ receives from ‘me’. So the sentence ‘あなたは私から手紙をもらいましたか。’ is incorrect because it involves ‘you’ receiving something from ‘me’.
So then how do you correctly translate the sentence “Did you receive a letter from me?”? If it’s not acceptable to use もらう, what verb do you use?
うけとる would be fine.
I’m fairly certain it would be more natural to use 届く（とどく）there, but I seem to recall both volumes of Genki holding off on it. Maybe because it requires some fairly non-intuitive (as in, opposite-of-English) subject-switching.
うけとる does definitely get the meaning across while keeping あなた as the subject though, with a closer-to-English structure.
(This is more just a note to @Shunrin to keep in mind for later that there are also other as natural/more natural ways to ask that resemble the literal “Did you…?” English structure a little less.)
Well, since the question was about what could replace もらう, I deleted my comment about とどく, because it just changes the whole grammar framework.
Oh. I didn’t even see it pre-edit. Just thought it would be useful to keep in mind for down the road.
Genki going as far as it does to shy away from more commonly used, but less similar to English, constructions for several everyday cases like that is also just one of my pet peeves with it. It’s definitely something I wish I’d understood better earlier, having gone through both books.
I’m definitely not using Genki as my only grammar resource, but I was having trouble finding more specific information.
If you or @Leebo think it’d be more instructive to talk about 届く as well, feel free to do so. I just used that sentence because that was the example the textbook gave.
Particularly when talking about letters, 私からの手紙が届きましたか would be the most natural. But it means “did the letter from me arrive?” rather than “did you receive the letter.” But as was noted, that is a question of natural word choice and not grammar.
EDIT: Thanks @jneapan
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I’d rephrase that as “私からの手紙”, but that’s the gist of it.
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Could someone explain this bizarre usage of quoting particles? It seems excessive and unnecessary.
初めてね、私ね、聞いて、へぇー！かっこいい！って、名前からしてカッコいい、ってね、ちょっとこれ憧れるな、と思いましたね。
When I first heard this I thought “What? Cool! Even the name is cool. I think people will long for this a little”
Did she literally say that and everything is encompassed within the と 思いましたね or was she just paraphrasing?
I see it as:
The first time I heard this, I said “What! Cool!”. I said, “Just from the name it’s cool!”. I thought, “I think people will long for this a little”.
Three different quotes?
Any help would be appreciated
Well, the person in question sounds super annoying, but I don’t think your interpretation is that off. Given that it says 聞いて, I think “I said” or “I’m telling you” is a reasonable interpretation of って there.
Thanks for the help!
Haha she is grating on the soul.
check her out at her best
皆さん一週間ぶりです。お元気でしたか？いやーね、とうとう12月、入りましたねぇ。うーん、もうなんでしょうね、最近の楽しみっていったら、いろんな所にイルミネーションがね、点き始めましたからね。これね、見るのすっごく楽しみですね。あっ、今年はここもやってる、とかですね。あっ、ここはねやっぱりね、毎年きれいだなとかですね。通るたびにですね、ついつい見てしまいますね。うーん
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So there’s this sentence on a NHK Easy article:
ニュージーランドは、いろいろな文化や宗教を大事にする社会をつくろうと考えていて、去年は外国から約５万人が来て生活しています。
I’m not really sure who’s supposed to be making the thinking or why 考える is used. ¿What would be a natural English translation?
*And this is about English, but I’m not sure if the first sentence that I wrote is correct, when talking about the content of a text (book, article, essay, paragraph,etc), do you use “on” or “in”?
In news stories, 考える usually means “to plan” or “to intend to.” And it was New Zealand that was doing it. This is definition #4 of 考える on Jisho.
I would say “in” an article.
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ありがとうございました! 
Okay. Thank you.
ば is functioning as the は particle. The nuance with the ~ば conditional is that it topicalizes the condition. “Well if it’s that way…” It would be odd to have the same particle twice in the grammar construct. This happens as well when you attach the は particle to the を particle. Unlike most compound particles with は, It becomes voiced: をば. It is acceptable in spoken Japanese to say じゃなければ, because じゃない fills the role of both ではない and でない in spoken Japanese.
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Thank you so much for explaining this!
Just a point of curiosity.
I happened to find 三省堂’s reference page where they list the symbols and abbreviations used in their dictionaries (or one of them, at least). And one thing I noticed is that in their part-of-speech notation, while they understandably enough identify 五段 verbs as 「五」, they make a distinction between 上一段 (“high one-stage”?) and 下一段 (“low one-stage”?) verbs, depending on whether they end with ～いる or ～える, and use 「上」 and 「下」 respectively to mark them.
I assume this is fairly standard terminology in Japanese grammar, since Wikipedia also mentions this distinction, and Japanese Wikipedia has fairly lengthy articles on both terms. (While I’m sure those articles have plenty of interesting and relevant information, I haven’t tried to wade through them just yet.)
So I’m just wondering if there’s any particular reason why a Japanese source would find it useful to subdivide the category of 一段 verbs like that. Does that add information that someone using these references would care to know? As far as I know, both types of 一段 verbs behave exactly the same, right? So why not just mark them all as 「一」 and be done with it? (Maybe ー is just too easily confused with other symbols?)
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I don’t think this answers your question, but this has some information on the origin of the 上一段 and 下一段 terms. It appears there used to be similar terms for 二段 verbs, which were combined with the 四段 verbs to form the modern 五段. It doesn’t really say why they made the distinction, or if it is a useful one, but I guess it was just an interesting bit of trivia your question reminded me of.
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I have a quick, simple question.
What’s the difference between:
田中さんを走る
And
田中さんは走る
Do they mean sort of the same thing or no?