A short follow up to last week’s post on 助かりました. The present tense of this verb is also incredibly useful. The key is to remember that the present tense (助かる or 助かります) is the same thing as the future tense. That let’s you form patterns like this: 〜していただければ、助かります.

~ is any verb (not necessarily a する verb; the して just stands in for all verbs in the example) that you are having done for you. The subject of the ~ is another person. You, the speaker, are the subject of いただければ, which is the conditional tense (?) of いただく.

Looking at it literally we have, “If I could receive you doing ~, I will be helped (in the future).” In normal English, “I would really appreciate it if you could ~.”

A couple examples:

8時に起こしていただければ、助かります。
I would really appreciate it if you could wake me up at 8.

今日中に出していただければ、助かります。
It would be great if you could turn it in at some point today.

大きい声で読んでいただければ、皆助かります。
It would help everyone if you could read in a loud voice. (Threw a 皆 up there to vary the subject a bit.)

You can even use an energetic 助かります！ right after you’ve made a request to soften said request. (Effective when combined with a frowny face.) Kind of a reverse airbag expression.

In the future once you’ve been assisted, you can then say 助かりました！

I’ve wanted to do this for a while now. Starting today, I will attempt to go for as long as possible speaking Japanese without using a personal pronoun to refer to myself! No 私, no 僕, no 俺, no 自分, and definitely no あたし or おいら. I might make an exception for 家. Nah, none of that either.

I’ll call it the “No Boku” Challenge because boku is my current personal pronoun of choice, and it sounds better than the “No Personal Pronoun” Challenge. Feel free to join in and see how long you can hold out!

I think the three keys to this challenge will be:

1) constant vigilance

2) passive tense

3) giving and receiving verbs

I think this will be a great exercise, especially for students of the language in the intermediate / advanced-intermediate levels; that’s when you start to break free from the English grammar patterns that bar you from true Japanese phraseology.

I’ll do my best to log my progress. Boku will soon be my pink elephant, so I’m sure there will be many harrowing and hilarious tales of near self-referral. Ha ha. (Joke.)

This goes without saying, but Japanese is not English. The way people express things in Japanese is not the same way that people express them in English. Part of learning to speak Japanese is learning how to abandon your English and swim in the deep end without relying on direct translation.

In my experience, there have been certain patterns that took me a while to master, but once mastered, I felt as though I took a palpable step forwards – something clicked. Here they are from easiest to most difficult:

1)    Japanese Patterns of Giving and Receiving
してくれる／してくださる
してもらう／していただく
してあげる／してさしあげる

2)    Passive Tense
される／られる

3)    Causative
させる・らせる

Now that I took the time to write out that impressive three-step list, I’ve realized that it looks exactly like an intermediate textbook, which many of you are familiar with. I, too, put in my time with the same textbooks, but it wasn’t until years later when something finally clicked for most of these patterns. Studying kanji, memorizing grammar patterns and vocab – none of it is going to help you figure out what these patterns mean.

The best way to learn them is by learning contextual phrases, memorizing them, and then forcing yourself to use them. Eventually you’ll be able to triangulate a meaning for yourself. I want to give you some examples and explanations of the contexts. Hopefully they’ll help your Japanese become slightly more intricate and subtle.

1. Patterns of Giving and Receiving

I brought in a pumpkin to my elementary school for Halloween. Initially I was going to buy it myself, but a junior high school teacher helped get the BOE to purchase it for me. One of the elementary school teachers asked me if I bought it myself:

あのかぼちゃ、自分で買ったの？
Ano kabocha, jibun de katta no?

And I replied that I hadn’t, that I got the BOE to buy it for me:

I could have just as easily said, いいえ、教育委員会が買った。(Iie, kyouikuiinkai ga katta.) but that is a little simple. Sure, the BOE bought it…but then why the hell do I have it? By using one of these 買ってくれた or 買ってもらった, I make my answer a little more specific – they bought it for me.

The trickiest part of もらう and くれる is keeping track of the subject. In the above example, if you simplify it, this is what happens:

僕がもらう　　　　　　　　I receive.
教育委員会がくれる      The BOE gives.

が marks the subject and に will mark the other person involved in the exchange:

Now what exactly are they giving? They are giving a gerund, actually:

僕が教育委員会に買ってもらった。 I received the buying (of something) from the BOE.
教育委員会が僕に買ってくれた。 The BOE gave the buying (of something) to me.

Now, change that from dumb-dumb English into normal English and you get:

I got the BOE to buy (something) for me.
The BOE bought (something) for me.

And if you change it from dumb-dumb Japanese (dumb-dumb Japanese being Japanese where you include all of the subjects, objects and indirect objects – the Japanese are very efficient and use as few words as possible, that is unless they are being polite, which is an entirely different post) into normal Japanese you get:

教育委員会に買ってもらった。
教育委員会が買ってくれた。

Either one will answer the lady’s question – all she wants to know is who the hell bought the thing. It wasn’t me, so I’d better emphasize who did the buying, although with subtle Japanese I can explain that they bought that shit for me.