N4 Japanese Grammar || Expressing Desire in Japanese

Here is an interesting topic to study today: expressing desire in Japanese.

This can be broken down into two categories:

• Wanting something
• Wanting to do something

In this lesson we’ll study several situations and ways to express a desire in Japanese.

This lessons goes in pair with the lesson Expressing Requests & Demands in Japanese.

Expressing Desire & Want || To want something

Expressing Desire & Want || To want to do something

Expressing Desire & Want || Wanting someone to do something

Expressing Desire & Want || Someone wants to do something

Expressing Desire & Want || Asking about someone’s desires

Expressing Desire & Want || FAQs

Desire & Want in Japanese || To want something

When expressing desire for a thing, or a noun in other words, we can use the word 欲しい（ほしい).

欲しい is an ii adjective. Even though “want” is a verb in English, it is an adjective in Japanese, so we have to adjust our thinking about “wanting” appropriately.

It is similar to the word 好き（すき), to like, which is also an adjective in Japanese but a verb in English. 

Since ほしい is an adjective, what is “wanted” takes the adjective particle が.

欲しい follows all of the conjugations of an い adjective to form past, negative, and past negative versions.

This happens by dropping the final い and adding くない (negative), かった (past), or くなかった (past negative).

• 欲しい　
• ＋ くない　
• ＋ かった　
• ＋ くなかった

Desire & Want in Japanese || To want to do something

When expressing desire to do something (as in a verb), we can use ～たい (tai) as a verb suffix.

To make a verb into its ~たい form, take the ます masu stem of the verb (which is just the verb in masu form, but without the masu) and add tai.

Some examples:

たい is an い adjective, like 欲しい, so the conjugations are the same for past, negative, and past negative:

Also like any other い adjective, it can modify a noun by coming directly before it:

These forms of tai and hoshii are only used when talking about our own desires. There are different ways of wording things when talking about a desire for someone else’s action, or other people’s desires in general. 

Desire & Want in Japanese || To want someone to do something

When we desire someone else to do something, we use a different form: てほしい (~tehoshii).

Verb (て form) + ほしい

If the desire is aimed at someone, and they are stated in the sentence, they are marked with the particle に (ni) after them.

Person + に + Action て + ほしい

Again, the conjugations for てほしい (te hoshii) are the same for when we use hoshii on its own.

If we have a desire for someone not to do something, we can express that in two ways. Either we can use the negative form of hoshii, or the negative form of the verb + de + hoshii.

There is certainly a difference in nuance between these two, but it truly varies on the context, the tone of voice, and what emphasis it is spoken with.

A thing to keep in mind is that this ～て欲しい form is relatively casual, or used between people of the same status.

If we want to express a desire for someone of a higher status to do something, there are more polite forms that we would use. 

For example, we might use ～てもらいたい, or to be even more polite, ～ていただきたい.

もらう is the verb “to receive”, and もらいたい is the ～たい form of that verb.

いただく is the humble version of もらう, which again you can phrase in ～たい form to humbly express your desire to receive something. 

From top to bottom, these examples become increasingly humble. We will want to use more humble phrasing when talking to and/or about people who are of higher status than ourselves. 

Desire & Want in Japanese || Someone wants to do something

When we talk about someone else’s desire to do something, we want to phrase it in ways that seem less certain.

As it is someone else we are talking about, we cannot really be sure what they desire or not (unless they said so!). There are a few ways to accomplish this. We can use words like そう (sou), らしい (rashii), and mitai, which imply the speaker’s own judgement:

（～そう　can replace the final い in い adjectives to convert that adjective into a word that means “seems like that adjective”)

We can say, “they say they want to ~”, or “I heard they want to~” as a way of quoting them:

Or, we can use the verb がる (garu), which affixes to 欲しい (hoshii) and たい (tai) by dropping the い and adding がる. 

There’s a trick there with using 欲しがる (hoshigaru)! Check out the first example.

Normally, when using 欲しい, the thing that is wanted takes the particle が because ほしい is an い adjective. But, ～がる is a verb, so that means what is wanted takes the を particle instead, which is why it is in bold in the example.

Desire & Want in Japanese || Asking about someone’s desires

When asking about someone else’s desires, it is important to refrain from being too direct.

In Japanese, we don’t ask people direct questions about what they want, like, “Do you want to eat it? Do you want to go?” This can be okay when among friends, but definitely avoid this when talking to higher-ups or people you are not close to!

In fact, asking so directly about desires in general is unnatural in Japanese.

Instead, simply ask if they are going to do something, or invite them to do something, rather than ask if they want to directly. 

We can inquire about people’s desires in open ended question forms, using interrogative words like 何（なに), どこ, etc. If asking if someone wants something, use a polite invitation, like いかがですか or どうですか.

Are you a Flexi Classes student already?

Learn more about Desire in Japanese in the following Flexi lessons:

I Want A Black One (A1+, Chapter 4)
I Want To Eat Vegetables (A2, Chapter 1)
What Do You Want For Your Birthday? (A2, Chapter 3)

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This is everything you need to know about expressing desire in Japanese!

It’s a rather long lesson, so make sure to bookmark this page to come back to it whenever needed.

Want to study more N4 grammar lessons? Here you go:

• Turning adjectives into nouns
• Japanese special verbs
• Japanese purpose of action
• Probability in Japanese

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Expressing Desire in Japanese || FAQs