Could this also be accepted, or it convey a different meaning

Japanese
#1

So… I’m solving some daily review, and I came upon this exercise:

ブラジルのように負けて欲しくない。I don’t want (you) to lose like Brazil

in my first attempt, I tried a different approach.

Knowing that 負けて is in the て form, and that the て form of the negative would be 負けなくて.

I tried this solution, that seems to me, to be a equivalent phrase. (Not necessarily as natural)

ブラジルのように負けなくて欲しい。

I know that, there’s also this way to conjugate: 負けないで, but this usually means Without doing A. So I don’t think it would work in this phrase.

So my question is: Even if it’s not natural, is it gramatically correct? 'Cause it seems to make sense to me.

Thanks in advance. :slightly_smiling_face:

#2

I think the difference would be something like the difference between:

“I don’t want you to lose” and “I want you to not lose” … with the latter usually not sounding natural, but it might be okay for extra stressing the point.

But there’s another problem. I think with 欲しい you should use the ないで form of the て-form.

At least this answer on stackoverflow seems to think so:

And ChatGPT also “thinks” that なくて欲しい is not as natural and ないで欲しい should work better.

I am just guessing here. Can somebody with more experience or a native speaker give us their opinion?

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#4

Hey there @itsWilliam !

It is not grammatically correct to use なくて in that sentence since なくて is used to express reason/cause.

Due to this not being a grammatical way to use なくて, the sentence sounds very unnatural. The Japanese sentence sounds as unnatural as saying ‘I don’t want them to lose and like Brazil’.

I hope this helps!

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#5

I think there’s another angle worth considering here. のように is adverbial which means it modifies the verb 負ける. Since Brazil lost, we have a logical error here → “I want you to not lose like Brazil” might be ambiugous in English, but I think ブラジルのように負けないでほしい is not ambiguous in Japanese and means that Brazil has won, or rather - has not lost. If this is correct, cause this is just my gut feeling, then the second answer even if gramatically correct, logically isn’t.

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#6

Since english is not my native language it might not come as clear to me, but… How could “I want you to not lose like Brazil” be ambiugous in English? Nevertheless, I really liked this angle that you brought. That’s way it’s not probably accepted. Well, makes sense to me at least. Thank you for your reply. :slightly_smiling_face:

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#7

English is not my language too :sweat_smile: It’s very hard for me to explain why I feel that sentence is ambiguous. Maybe it isn’t? But while trying to answer this question I figured that the Japanese sentence might also be ambiguous… Let’s see.

I can see the English sentence interpreted in two ways.

I want you to “not lose like Brazil”. Here Brazil has lost and you’re pointing to them as an example of what not to do.

I want you to “not lose, like brazil”. Here Brazil has not lost and you’re pointing to them as an example of what to do.

This heavily depends on punctuation and I think the difference may be more visible (or audible, heh) in speech rather than writing, because the punctuation in English is rather loose from what I know. I also may be nitpicking.

Now if we apply the same logic to the Japanese:
ブラジルのように、負けないでほしい, I can see the ambiguity too. Does this make sense? Am I going to deep with this?

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#8

Oh, I see now. But, like you said, this different interpretation would only work if we put this “,” before “like Brazil”, if not so, I think it could only have one interpretation. (Brazil lost) I’m not very knowledgeable of English grammar, but even if it’s “loosy” I think in this example it wouldn’t be acceptable. Well, in my native language it certainly wouldn’t at least.

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