てあげる - Grammar Discussion

See my earlier response. I think it’s the て form that makes くれる wrong here.

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@mrnoone

I am also confused about このプレゼントをお父とうさんに わたしてあげて. I would’ve expected it to combine あげる and くれる like it does in this sentence (used in the てくれない entry):

まつさに先生せんせい:「みしまさん、ちょっとにったさんを手伝てつだってあげてくれない?

Because you are doing the favour to me (くれる) of handing something over to your dad (あげる). If those verbs can be combined in the other example, why not in this sentence?

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Sure, it could be, but why does that mean it has to be? In this case it’s simply あげて(ください) instead.

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Could you explain why?

In “Please hand over this present to your dad.” aren’t I asking for a favour to be done to me? The favour of doing someone else a favour, as it were? So why would このプレゼントをお父とうさんに わたしてあげてくれて be an incorrect way of asking?

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I guess? There can be more than one way to say basically the same thing. But “please” in English is more often translated to て form, with an implicit or explicit ください. てくれる・てくれない would more often be translated as “won’t you” I think. It’s about what nuance you want. Do you want to tell someone to do something (politely) or do you want to ask them to do something? In this case the translation using “please” tells you that they want the nuance from て form.

Well this would be incorrect. You can’t use くれて ever I think (though someone with more experience should confirm). You’d have to either use くれない as you first proposed, or くれ. But くれ is command form, so you probably don’t want to use it outside of a group of close friends.

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The answer it looks for in that sentence is わたしてあげて. The て-form is mentioned in this list. I misinterpreted it at first, thinking you’d use the て-form of くれる in addition to the て-form of the favour-verb. But now I realise the least polite way of asking for a favour is to use 〜てくれる and then leave out the くれる-part entirely!

Still makes me wonder why any of the more polite options are not recognised as alternatives? @mrnoone

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@seanblue @Melanthe @Pep95
More alternative answers has been added to those examples, to be honest I am wondering if てあげてください doesn’t deserve grammar point on its own.

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In the sentence
周りの人の話をよく聞いてあげましょう。
I’m trying to figure out the purpose of よく. Is it intended to mean ‘often’, as Wiktionary suggests it can be used?

Thanks,
Cris

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@CrisH Hey! よく is the adjective い (いい) being changed to an adverb (く) to mean “well” or “properly.” Cheers!

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Me again!
So I’ve been given this sentence:
このプレゼントをお父とうさんに わたしてあげて
I can’t tell why it’s あげる and not くれる. The favour is being done for the person speaking, isn’t it? So wouldn’t it be ‘towards them’, so to speak? Or is the favour being done for the お父さん?

Thanks,
Cris

Hey again!

It might be better to think of てくれる and てあげる as “for (someone)” or “with (someone) in mind” rather than “towards (someone).” This particular sentence’s nuance is “do this for your father” rather than “do this for me.”

てくれる is perfectly acceptable here, it just changes who you are doing the favor for or who you should be keeping in mind when you do the favor. You can even combine the two (わたしてあげてくれる) to make the request done for the speaker and the favor done for the receiver (the father in this case). Hope this helps! Cheers.

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That helps a lot, thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

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I was confused by being shown the answer このプレゼントをお父さんに わたしてあげて because I don’t remember ever having to answer “please _” in a casual form before now.

I went back to the lesson for it and realized that you can drop the ください part, but I wasn’t ever asked to give the casual form in an answer before getting here. I suppose that’s the case for various other casual forms as well, but I found this confusing.

By the way, why does pressing “a” to view alternate answers not work if you got the answer wrong?

@flowsnake Hey! The addition of “please” in the translation is just to guide you away from using the imperative. While the imperative and polite request forms are accepted, てあげて is the most natural in this context and it is the version that matches the audio.

We thought it better to draw focus to the “main” answer of a review sentence when answering incorrectly. Once you have gotten that answer down (by answering again later in your review session), only then will you be able to view alternatives. We may change how this system works in the future. Cheers!

That makes sense, I just thought it would be useful to have a review that forced you to use the informal form of request before this point, as I somehow missed that it existed.

Why is エレンさんがミカサさんに美うつくしい花はなを もってきてくれた wrong here? Surely both あげる and くれる are valid depending on the relationship of the participants, or am I missing something?

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Yes you’re right, but it would depend on the relationship of the participants to the speaker, and not to each other. Nice spot!

@francisdavey Thank you for drawing this to our attention. I have updated this review question to catch てくれた rather than mark you wrong. Cheers!

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Hello there!

Someone help me, please…
How come here 友達ともだちに優やさしく してあげましょう cannot be してくれましょう? Aren’t they the same in that regard? Like, I thought that 友達 is supposed to be a part of your inner circle, no? Where am I mistaken?

Someone please explain this to me…

Only other people can -てくれる. Because it’s generally other people who -てくれる, it’s not used in forms that express volition like the volitional form or the -たい form etc.

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