Last Wednesday I forgot to include the most basic informal causative request pattern – やらせて (yarasete). “I wanna try!” “Let me have a turn!” I spent three years teaching and being neighbors with Japanese elementary school students, so it must have been them I really learned the pattern from and not the JHS English teacher as I claimed. There were two kids in particular who knocked on my door to play DS and they always wanted to use my DS…probably because they had already scratched up the screens on their own.

Sadly (and surprisingly) I can’t find a video demonstrating the proper intonation, but it should be super whiny with heavy emphasis on the や and せ. A less whiny version is useful when someone is bumbling and you know that you can do whatever it is better than they can. Just try not to show your frustration.