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~たがる

Rei Yahya

ぺらぺらになりたい生徒
17 Sep 2011
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こんにちわ、質問があります。
It is my understanding that when we say 'I want', or 'you want', 「~たい」を使います. However when we refer to a third person, 「~たがって」を使います. Now, I have a grammar book for verbs and in its Base 2 Endings chapter, it presents 「~たがる」 as another way to express wanting, even in the case of first person, and that it is sort of one step up from the simple ~たい form and expresses a longing for. Their example sentence:

ふるさとへ帰りたがります。I want to (am eager/yearn to) return to my hometown.
子供はアイスクリームを食べたがりました。 The child wanted to (longed to) eat the ice cream.

Is all this correct, because I assumed that this form was only for referencing third person, as in 私車買いたい opposed to ジョン車書いたがっています。

お答えをどうもありがとう。
 
私は車を買いたい and ジョンは車を書いたがっています😄

The subject of the first example sentence seems like "people in general" to me. At least, it's not "I". I would use ふるさとへ帰りたいです/帰りたいと思っています for "I want to (am eager/yearn to) return to my hometown". As for the second one, 食べたがっていました is more appropriate when describing a concrete situation. 食べたがりました has a nuance of "used to want to eat".
 
Thank you for the reply! And yes, my bad, in those sentences I over-casualized things (no o or wa). Not next time!

So, would ~tagarimashita and ~tagatta both have the nuance of 'used to want to ~' while ~tagatte iru/imasu expresses a more concrete situation?
 
The meaning changes depending on the types of the verb or the context. For instance, 妹はよくアイスクリームを食べたがっていました means "used to" because of よく. Plus, the subject 子供は plays a roll in the example. That sentence sounds like "Generally speaking, children..."
 
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