I’m sorry, but are you sure that’s the correct translation?
I’d translate 「高村さん、忙しいなら私も手伝いましょうか。」
as “Mr. Takamura, if you are busy, should I help too?”
P. S. Also, 高村 is Takamura, not Nakamura (that would be 中村)
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Ah yes! Of course, now that makes total sense and いそがしい doesn’t need to be in the negative.
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I think I’ve just come across another こそあど which we talked about yesterday：
Would I be right to say that こう+やって means: ‘thus, in that way’ (according to Bunpro)?
So:
田川さん「はい。こう③やって②使う④と①いいですよ。
I’d say I’m about 90% confident. I’m fairly sure that と comes last. Would I be right in saying that the purpose of the that と is…
… the last one, the manner in which s.o. does s.t.?
Rei: Tagawasan, please teach me how to use chopsticks.
Tagawasan: Yes (sure). Using them in this manner is the right way (good manner).
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No, it’s DoBJG’s と (4), the “marking a condition” one. (Lit. “If you use them this way it’s good”.)
The quotation/sound/manner と goes with either:
- a verb like いう、思う、書く etc that can take an indirect or direct quotation
- a sound effect or sound symbolism word like バタバタ、しっかり、ゆっくり (effectively forming an adverb)
It’s the sound symbolism stuff that the “manner in which” wording in the summary is covering.
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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ok! I get it. Thanks pm215sensei.
あげる・くれる・もらう
Ok so the next one is pretty hardcore. I have a Japanese tutor (日本人) and she can’t explain it. I’ve also read a lot about this but I’m still having a hard time. I find a lot of material on this is not explained very clearly which leads to more confusion. In fact, it’s so confusing than even books have mistakes in their grammatical explanations about this. I’ll give you guys an example:
My tutor prepared an exercise for me. She couldn’t explain to me what the right answer was, she was she was going to think about it. She typed the three sentences there on the right.
Since she couldn’t explain it I suppose it might be hard for anyone else to explain it but I figured it’d give it a shot here. It might be one of those things where she’s a native speaker and can’t explain it but just instinctively knows it.
Now, to go back to the example, I understand that I need to always determine who is the giver and who is the receiver.
This is from the book Nihongo Challenge.
I think I should probably approach this this way:
- Who is speaking?
- Who is giving/receiving?
私は母に料理を＿＿＿
- I am speaking (私)
- No clue!
I mean, it could be that I’m receiving cooking from my mom. So:
a) 作ってもらう
From DBJG:
Sample sentence:
If we compare to:
私は母に料理を…
It’s the exact same structure.
My mother cooked for me.
The particle に follows whoever provided the action 私 is benefiting from, in this case, cooking.
Ok, so くれる then.
Here I’m not clear on what first person means. Is it first person as in ‘I/we’? Anyway:
私は (giver) 母に (receiver) 料理を…
So the structure is the same but I think this answer might not be possible because くれる is used when the person speaking (in this case わたし) receives the benefit of the action.
I read somewhere else that あげる implies a movement ‘away’ from the speaker while くれる implies a movement ‘towards’ the speaker. It was from Genki:
What’s the best resource to finally understand the difference between the three あげる・くれる・もらう?
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The verbs of giving and receiving are tricky – they are one of the big challenges in Japanese for beginners, and I think most intermediate learners find they need to go back for a refresher at some point. A few guidelines:
- Make sure you understand how the verbs work as standalone “give” and “receive” before tackling their use as auxiliary verbs (where they express doing some action for somebody else)
- There are three verbs here, two of which are “give” and one which is “receive”: くれる あげる もらう
- The reason there are two verbs for “to give” is that one is for when the giver is you or someone in your in-group, and one is for when you/your in-group person is being given the object. (This is what the Genki stuff about closer/away is trying to say.)
- There are also more polite and less polite versions やる さしあげる くださる いだたく : ignore these for now, but they work in basically the same way
There is a tofugu article, and I think the DoBJG explanations are also good.
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Thanks pm215 unfortunately I know all of those things but I still struggle 
.
My understanding was that they work the same way, except that the ～て form means an action (verb) is given/received while with the non ~て form, a noun is given/received. The thing is that exercises based on this particular grammar point are hard to find so I often end up with exercises which mix both auxiliary/non-auxiliary form.
Here’s my take on the following exercise. Unfortunately, it does mix both form. I’ll try to refer to other threads on the forum when possible.
子供たちは the sentence is about the children.
先生に the coach is either the giver or the receiver.
おしえて… the action of teaching is either given or received.
The speaker: material often refer to "the speaker” when dealing with this grammatical point. I’d say that, in #1, the speaker isn’t involved in the sentence. It’s a sentence where the narrator is neutral.
Now considering the action is 教える it would make sense that the coach is the one who teaches (who gives) and not the other way around.
Now, technically, it would be possible for kids to teacher a coach something about soccer, it’s not unthinkable.
I’ll now refer to another thread, this one:
あげる is from the speaker outwards - you’re doing something for someone
I find this explanation a bit inaccurate in the sense that あげる can be used even if ‘the speaker’ isn’t involved…
For example (from the Tofugu article):
（私が）ジェニーにガムをあげる。
In this case the ‘speaker’ (私) is involved in the sentence so the explanation provided by the member above makes sense.
However, not all sentences involving あげる will involve the speaker, as clarified in DBJG:
‘or a neutral point of view when describing an event’
This actually clarified further down the thread:
So, in other word, to frame あげる ‘is from the speaker outwards’ is incomplete from my understanding anyway. The reason I’m bringing it up is regarding this grammatical point in particular, there’s quite a bit of contradiction out there so I guess it’s one of those things which made me a bit more confused due to discrepancies in various sources.
That, however, is accurate I think.
Provided the receiver is “me” or part of my uchi, it works:
You wouldn’t be able to use くれる in a situation where the point of view is neutral, like in the example I’ve provided above with the coach teaching soccer.
I think, is also partly accurate as it’s not only ‘you’ but also:
…or someone with whom the speaker empathizes.
To go back to my previous example:
In this case:
The speaker isn’t involved in the ‘transaction’, there’s no 私, explicitly or implicitly.
The giver is the coach and the receiver are the kids.
Giver が Receiver に Object を あげる。(Tofugu)
(Nihongo Challenge)
So based on this, I assume that, with あげる, it’s not only が, it can also be は (altough it’s usually が).
Based on that structure, the answer can’t be ①, あげる since 友達 here aren’t the ones giving.
もらう：Receiver が Giver [に/から] Object を もらう。(Tofugu)
Based on the structure above, the answer would be ② もらった because the receiver are 友達 followed by は/が then the giver followed by に.
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It’s okay to work through some of these things like you did for a few times to get a rough understanding of these concepts. I would however advise you to not be hung up on it for too long. I struggled soooo hard with these in the beginning as well. A lot of immersion can help great wonders, though.
If you do this deduction in any kind of test, you will run out of time in the end 
I still sometimes have to do a double take in てあげてくれ or similar doubled constructs, but they are pretty rare. For “common” usages, it will just get natural, since you unconsciously know if the people on either side are in your うち or not and which direction the transaction makes sense (like in your soccer example).
The most important part is to know the direction of the action くれる、あげる、もらう and the particles.
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Generally speaking, I’d say I go through those fairly quickly. Since it’s a tangent, I’ll put it in spoilers:
Summary
This is (zoomed out) how much I do in a week + anki (around 100 daily) + Japanese movies + reading articles. I study about 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, 3 hours weekly with my tutor. I don’t have much trouble with the other parts in JLPT 4. The only thing I’ve got left to practice are the listening part and the ★ questions. I’d say I share here about 5% of what I do on my own. Just to clarify regarding focusing only on grammatical exercises.
I genuinely like grammar. I read grammar in my free time to relax. It’s something I enjoy discussing and studying, it’s not a chore or anything.
I hope you won’t feel like I’m dismissing your suggestion of focusing on immersion. The way I see it, if I don’t practice what I struggle with the most, it’s what will come back and bite me in the… during the exam. I might get あげる・くれる・もらう from immersion but what I might get might be intuitive as opposed to being grammatically correct. This, I think, leads to thinking you understand something when you don’t (which happens with a lot of sources about Japanese grammar out there). In other words, I like clearly understanding things as opposed to winging it. That’s just how I am as a person, I need to understand all the details about something.
All this being said, I like reading and I’d read a book provided said book would prepare me for JLPT 4 (be written which consciously help me with my preparation with JLPT 4).
since you unconsciously know if the people on either side are in your うち or not and which direction the transaction makes sense (like in your soccer example).
In the soccer example, wouldn’t the うち be irrelevant since ‘I’ am out of the equation altogether? The only actors involved being the coach and the students.
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Oh wow, you’re doing a lot. Reading at JLPT level 4 is still pretty hard. I found around N3 it gets considerably easier.
I love doing drill books too. Drills that bring you to your limits are in my experience the 新完全マスター文法 and the レベルアップ日本語文法中級 books. I also did 初級から中級への日本語ドリル + チャレンジ編.
The Shinkanzen series I started from N3, I don’t know how the N4 book is. The level up book says it is 中級 but it sometimes feels close to N1 (regarding how detailed it gets) and is pretty dense and completely in Japanese. Has a chapter on 授受表現 as well, but is still too hard for your level, but maybe something for the future (when going for N3).
初級から中級へ was okay, but easier and probably better suited for some relaxing drills. It might be okay for the start of level N3. In most other textbooks (e.g. Try!, そうまとめ) I found the drills were mostly too easy for me.
模擬試験 before the actual test are always nice.
For N1 I bought some パワードリル books but haven’t tried them yet. Can’t comment on the スピードマスター since I never used it.
Yeah, my sentence was not written the best way. The part in brackets was meant for the direction of the transaction part.
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As always. Speak of the devil and it shall appear. I just had this sentence in my reading that let me do a double take.
3 people involved:
Aさんに世話役を代わってあげてくれないかと言われた時、…
I felt the quotation put in an extra layer of: he? Who done what now? in the sentence. Hope someone appreciates a real life example 
The Aさんに pairs with the と言われた, that is clear from context and makes the sentence a little easier. But to whom the giving is done is just implied from context. As is often the case in Japanese.
That example is also fun because it has two verbs of giving chained together, which would give you three people involved even without the と言われた…