Expressing Desires || ～たい・～欲しい・～て欲しい
Hey guys, today we’re going to discuss expressing our desires in Japanese! In English we have the useful phrase “I want” that we can use to express almost all of our desires. However, there are about three common phrases used to express different desires in Japanese. There are a number of other ways to express desires but I’m just going to try and cover the basic ones today!
To want to do・～たい：
～たい is used when you want to express something that YOU want to do. You can’t use ～たい by itself to express the desires of others. To use ～たい, simply remove the ます form of a verb and add ～たい. You can add です to the ending if you’d like.
Rule:
I want to do = topic / subject + direct object + verbたい
e.g. 寿司を食べたい。I want to eat sushi.
英語の先生になりたいです。I want to be an English teacher.
To conjugate ～たい into positive past tense you can use “~たかった”. To conjugate ～たい into negative present tense you can use “～たくない” and negative past tense you can use “～たくなっかた”.
If you want to talk about others desires, you should use “looks like” as in “そう” and “みたい”.
e.g. メアリーさんはシドニーに行きたいそうだ。
Seems like Mary wants to go to Sydney.
To want・～欲しい・～ほしい：
While ～たい acts like an い adjective, ～欲しい is an い adjective. Therefore you should follow the same conjugations rules as you would an い adjectives. ～欲しい is used when you want to express your desires using nouns.
Rule:
To want = topic / subject + noun + が欲しい
e.g. 水が欲しい。I want water.
車が欲しいです。I want a car.
To conjugate ～欲しい you can use the same rules as ～たい. Positive past tense “～ほしかった”, negative present tense “～ほしくない” and negative past tense ”～ほしくなかった”.
To want someone to do something・～に～て欲しい ：
When you want to express your desire for someone else to do something, you should use ～に～て欲しい. You should use the particle に after the the person’s name. Change the verb to て form and add ~欲しい.
Rule:
To want someone to do something = topic / subject + someone + adverb + verbて欲しい
e.g. メアリーさんにこの本を読んで欲しい。
I want Mary to read this book.
