48035
In an exercise in my textbook, there's the following instruction in one of the
exercises:

> 友達のいちばん好きな言葉を書いて **もらいましょう** 。その読み方と意味を質問してください。

The bold もらいましょう really confuses me. I'd expect something like -て くれましょう or
あげましょう but "to receive"? "Let's receive the favor of having written our
friends favorite word"?

It kind of works, but it feels so funny that I wonder whether I misinterpreted
the function of this -て もらう construction here xD
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-04T12:49:12.337
48033
2017-06-06T00:06:07.523
2017-06-06T00:06:07.523
9831
20172
question
subsidiary-verbs giving-and-receiving
How do I have to understand that phrase
Well, first 「もらう」 doesn't not really mean " _receive the favor... "_ as you
translated it, but it means most of the time " _get... "_. A lot of times,
"get" is the most accurate translation you can get for 「もらう」, some examples:

> 一口もらっていい？ = can I get a bite? (to eat) **or** can I take a bite?
>
> もらったカードを使って。 = Use the card you got.
>
> 彼にやってもらったことをちゃんと思い出して。 = Just remember the things you got him doing

I am not a translator but what you want to be doing learning a language is not
perfectly translating into your mother tongue (which is useless if you don't
want to become translator), but write literal translation which will help you
understand the real logic of japanese through your mother tongue. So you
should not be worried about weird translations because the "logic of japanese
language" is very different than english's.

Anyway, if there is a word you could think of as " _do a favor_...", it is
「～くれる」, because the one who does the action of 「くれる」 is a third person that
does something (or gives something) to you/your circle:

> 彼がやってくれたこと。 = The things he did for me.
>
> 彼がやったこと。 = The things he did.

Anyway to sum it up, 「もらう」 does not have imply a " _favor_ " or something,
just the fact that you get something, or someone to do an action:

> 友達のいちばん好きな言葉を書いてもらいましょう。その読み方と意味を質問してください。 = Let's get (them?) write their
> friends' most liked word. And ask them the meaning and reading.
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2017-06-04T13:26:16.633
48035
2017-06-04T13:26:16.633
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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48033
answer