Receiving verb – morau
written on June 2, 2010 in Japanese
A while back I talked about the giving verbs, ageru and kureru, and how to use them, so today I’ll be talking about morau, the verb of receiving. This is the basic sentence structure:
Giver + ni/kara + receiver + ga + item received + o + morau.
The [receiver + ga] part is often omitted, since the receiver is usually the speaker or someone in the speaker’s in-group. Let’s look at some examples:
Kinou nihon no tomodachi ni tegami o moratta. || Yesterday I received a letter from a friend in Japan.
Okasan kara Yamato-kun ga inu o moraitai. || Yamato wants to receive a dog from his mom.
If you’re receiving something from someone of a higher rank than you, you would use itadaku instead of morau. The same structures apply.
Te-form verbs + morau
Like the giving verbs, morau can also be used in conjunction with verbs in their te-form. In this case, the verb in te-form is the action you had someone perform on your behalf (and you received its benefits). This is the basic structure:
Performer of action + ni + receiver + ga + item received + o + te-form verb + morau.
This can easily be confused with the te-form + giving verb structure, so let’s compare:
Tomodachi ni kono muzukashii nihongo o yonde moratta. || I had a friend read this difficult Japanese for me.
Tomodachi ga kono muzukashii nihongo o yonde kureru. || A friend read this difficult Japanese for my benefit.
You really have to look at it from the perspective of giving and receiving, which is difficult in English since we don’t really differentiate. Sometimes both the giving verb and receiving verb can be used together:
te-form verb + moratte + kudasai
ex: Kaite moratte kudasai. || Please have it written down.
Ok, I some of my notes for morau at school, so this is all I have so far, but there is more complicated stuff that I will add to this soon. When I get my notes that is.Error processing request
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