I want to say:

> Tell Paul to send me the letter I wrote for his father.

My attempt is:

> パオロさんに それ 父に 書いてあげる 手紙、出してあげると 伝えてください

Is this grammatically correct? How could it be written otherwise?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-01T17:27:14.927
21573
2021-12-25T18:08:10.693
2015-11-17T12:09:56.550
888
9278
question
grammar translation meaning relative-clauses
How to say “Tell Paul to send me the letter I wrote for his father”
Almost, but not quite. First of all, it's kind of a strange sentence in
English. In Japanese, it is usually possible to omit one or more pieces of
information and the meaning will still be clear. In this case, however, there
are four different people involved: The speaker, the listener, Paul, and
Paul's father. So in order to convey the exact meaning of the English, you
will need to specify each of the people.

(Note: I'm not actually sure how "Paul" is most commonly written in katakana.
パオロ as you have it makes it sound Italian like "Paolo". In the Bible, the
apostle Paul is written as パウロ. And I myself would probably write it as ポール or
ポウル. So I'm not sure which is most common, but that's another topic.)

Second, when you say "letter I wrote _**for**_ his father", do you mean " _
**for**_ " in the sense that his father asked you to write the letter to
someone else on his behalf because he couldn't/didn't want to, or that his
father is the intended recipient of your letter? For the sake of simplicity,
I'm going to assume the latter; if I'm wrong, please comment and I'll change
it.

Here's how I'd write the whole sentence:

> **私が** （ **パオロの／その** ）お父さんに書いた手紙を **私に** 出す **ように** **パオロに** 伝えてください。 → (The
> letter **I** wrote to **his/Paul's** father) (send to **me** ) ( **him to**
> ) ((you) please tell **Paul** )

Note that you could also put the パオロに at the very beginning.

So you can actually omit the "you" who is the listener, but as you can see,
you need to specify that it was **I** who wrote the letter to **his/Paul's**
father, and **Paul** needs to be told to send it to **me**. I think if you
leave out any of these, the meaning will not be exactly as you want:

  * If you leave out the わたしが, the writer of the letter is ambiguous
  * If you leave out パオロの／その, then it sounds like the letter was written to the listener's father
  * If you omit the 私に, Paul is simply being told to send the letter (possibly "to his father" would be implied)
  * If you omit the パオロに, it sounds like you want the listener to tell Paul's father to send the letter that you wrote to him (Paul's father), which just doesn't make sense.

Finally, the actual grammatical mistakes are the と and あげるs that you have. The
と would be for a "quotation" of words. When you want the listener to tell the
third person to do something, you must use ように.

>   * パオロに手紙を出す **と** 伝えてください → Please tell Paul (the words), "Send the
> letter".
>   * パオロに手紙を出す **ように** 伝えてください → Please tell Paul **to (do the action of)**
> send(ing) the letter.
>

You don't need the あげる in 出してあげる because that means you're doing the favour of
sending a letter for someone. It would actually be 出してくれる to mean Paul is
sending it as a favour for you, but because of the ように I just described, this
isn't needed. You don't need the あげる in 書いてあげる unless my assumption at the
beginning was incorrect, and you _were_ actually writing the letter as a
favour to Paul's father. But even if that were the case, I think there are
better ways to say that.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2015-02-01T20:14:02.047
21578
2021-07-28T17:26:06.537
2021-07-28T17:26:06.537
78
78
21573
answer
Yo let's be polite!

When talking about someone else's father you want to use お父さん.

Your own pops is your Chichi 父.

The letter written to Paul's father = Paul (no) Otousan (ni) kaita tegami

"Send it to me please" = [it] (wo) 「watashi (ni) okutte kudasai」

Say all that to Paul = (to) Paul-san (ni) tsutaete kudasai.

パオルさんの お父さんに 書いた手紙を 私に 送ってくださいと パオルさんに 伝えてください。

The letter written for Paul's dad, "send it to me" -- say this to paul please.
Or in more natural english "[please] tell paul to send me the letter written
for his father"
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-08T05:44:07.503
23112
2015-03-08T05:44:07.503
9542
21573
answer