People would probably interpret your sentence as meaning she sent a letter to her own grandmother, but you said you’re just learning grammar, so presumably they are trying to be as explicit as possible.
Just be aware that not specifying can result in different interpretations based on the prior context of the conversation.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the help!
Also it could maybe be interpreted as ‘she sent a letter to your(the listener’s) grandmother’
Hey all
I have a book: 501 Japanese Verbs
I’ve also been looking at this site: Japanese Verb Conjugator
(I know it’s an auto-program that may not be accurate)
I noticed neither of these resources have the たい form of the verbs:
買いたい - Want to buy
I also tried Jisho.org to see if it was in the Inflections section, but it wasn’t.
What is this form usually called in English (e.g. presumptive, imperative, etc)?
And any idea why they don’t list it?
Interestingly the word I picked at random for an example in this post (買う) had someone ask about it in the comments section for that word at the bottom of the page
In Dictionary of Basic Japanese, it’s in Appendix 4: Connection Forms of Important Expressions, under the V(masu-stem)+tai. It’s an adjective.
Yeah, the fact that they’re adjectives seems like a reason they wouldn’t be grouped with verb conjugations. Just like how explanations of adding の or こと to verbs to make nouns would be separate.
A fellow student of my japanese class (and user of WK) developed this web app for conjugation, which includes the tai form as well.
Thanks for the link! ^ _ ^
They’re adjectives…
Never mind, that’s too far above my level. I’ll just ignore that for now…
Yeah, ～たい form is weird. If someone else wants to buy something, you need to say 買いたがる, turning it back into a verb again.
Ah Japanese, you kill me so sweetly…
@_@
At least the actual formation of it is simple.
Here’s a sentence from Japanese Graded Reader Vol 1 Part 1.
二人はろっか月まえひこうきの中で会いました。
I don’t understand the bold part.
Does the sentence mean “The couple met six month ago on the plane”?
六ヶ月前
Six months previous.
Yes, it’s even more confusing without kanji. It is 六ヶ月前. 六月 is June, and 六ヶ月 are six months.
To add to this, basically for compound words, if the second word starts with the same letter as the first word ends or follows a つ, but does not have dakuten, then the sound merges.
so Roku Kagetu
Becomes Ro Kkagetu
Or たっする 達する which is たつ + する
To add to this, ヶ may look like ケ, but it is actually an abbreviation of 箇 or 个, so か 
Right, I might have forgotten to explain about where the ka comes from re my previous note.
Thanks!
Is “ヶ” the same things as “か”? Which one should I use?
Yes.
To the best of my knowledge, you will never see ヶ again outside of counting months.
But for your purposes both か and ヶ are correct although 六ヶ月 is the correct “kanji” way of writing it, both appear in the wild.
ヶ is also used in some names!