Hey Jona thanks a lot for your comment, I always find the info you provide and your point of view in general to be extremely interesting. Can you clarify what you wrote up here? I’m not sure I got what you mean (maybe it’s the way you phrased this in english) and specifically I don’t see why てほしい is not used to express desire for actions that the speaker itself would do (putting apart the possibility of achieving that action).
Weird, because the more I read about it, the more I get confirmations about what @Arzar33 said, of it being a strong expression, for example the tofugu article on てほしい says:
I guess it wasn’t really a good justification, nor necessarily a very logical bit of reasoning, but the best えexplanation I have is essentially this: ほしい seems to express wanting something you don’t have from an outside source. That’s why I think it’s not meant to be used for something you already possess or can potentially do yourself.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I really think this is a matter of how you phrase things in the sentence as a whole. Just as 掃除（そうじ）してほしい (literally ‘I want you to clean’) is rude on its own, so too is 掃除（そうじ）してくれ (literally ‘clean for me’), which is the informal version of 掃除（そうじ）してください. You can say these things to friends and close family, but not to people you don’t know as well. I think it’s completely fine once you add something like です to make the sentence polite.
However, here’s the thing: I know I can just end a sentence with 〜てください. I can’t necessarily do the same with 〜てほしいです, depending on whom I’m talking to. The reason is that it sounds too much like a statement I expect the other person to just ‘get’. If you’re talking to someone who can be expected to take instructions from you, then it’s fine. For example, ‘if you have it, I’d like you to send it to me’ can be translated as something like ‘もしあったら、送（おく）ってほしいです’ without being rude if you’re talking to an equal/someone who can be expected to do that without any issues. On the other hand, if you’re talking to your boss or sending your boss an email, that may not be enough. If I were talking to my boss and I knew he was quite formal, I would say ‘もしあったら、送（おく）ってほしいです[が・けれども]…’ and trail off a little. That final ‘but’ doesn’t really need to be translated, but it softens my tone because it suggests I’m making my statement somewhat conditional – ‘I’d like you to do it, but… you know, I hope it’s OK with you/it’s fine if you’re busy, I can wait/would that be alright?’ It’s more a matter of how you phrase things on the whole than just a single – otherwise relatively neutral – word.
crystal clear!
About the use of が you mentioned at the end, very interesting, I’m not used to that. I’d like to see (hear) it spoken, do you know anything I could watch where this grammar is used (like YT video or an anime episode, anything) so I can hear the actual intonation?
I edited the post to add another line from a different anime that might be helpful. Honestly, the Shield Hero line was what I remembered first. For Grace of the Gods, I had to go by feel because I just remembered the protagonist is really polite, so I figured he had to use it at some point.
Just checked them both, I have a clearer idea now. (Lucky me I could find them both on Crunchyroll)
Wow I had to concentrate to recognize the second が which was so nasal that felt like な is this a dialect thing? Or simply the equivalent of having the french “r” (don’t know how to call it in english" or similar.
Actually I frequently hear this weird pronunciation of “g” sounds in wanikani lessons as well, with the male voicing of vocabs… never with the woman tho
Nope, it’s standard Japanese. There’s even a whole PDF from NHK about it. But how much people do it depends on age and region. Usually it happens with が particles and G sounds that come after vowels in the middle of a word.
I think the title translates as ‘The Place and Current State of Nasal Voiced Sounds’, so I guess you could go with ‘nasal voiced sound’? Or ‘nasalised G sound’? But I have no idea if there’s an official name for the phenomenon otherwise.
is this a dialect thing? Or simply the equivalent of having the french “r” (don’t know how to call it in english" or similar.
