a brief-ish breakdown of くれる and もらう!
hi all! it’s been a minute since i last wrote a grammar post, but this particular topic has been popping up a lot for me lately so i thought i’d write my own explanation. the difference between these two used to confuse me a lot (and, let’s be real, sometimes もらう is still so confusing lol), but i think it can actually be explained fairly simply. so let’s get to it!!
types of differences between words: grammar vs. semantics
“wait, wait, what??” i hear you say. yes, it’s true—as a linguist i am incapable of explaining a grammar item without also explaining a little bit about human grammar itself. whoops 😉
so, as i’ve implied in the title, words can differ in multiple ways; for くれる and もらう, we’re interested in their grammatical (or “syntactic”) difference as well as their semantic difference. grammar, as i’m sure you know, refers to the structure of language, including word order, word movement, and stuff like that. in this case (くれる/もらう), we’re going to be mainly concerned with particles, an integral part of japanese syntax. so keep that in mind.
semantics, on the other hand, is something you might not be as familiar with (or at least not outside the phrase “just semantics”). semantics basically refers to the meaning of a word or phrase, notably without social context. to give an american english example, the words “you guys” and “y’all” are semantically identical because they both denote the exact same thing: a group of multiple people whom the speaker is addressing. however, any native english speaker can tell you that people do not really use “you guys” and “y’all” interchangeably, largely for social reasons (e.g., where you’re from, your gender identity, etc.).
so, to summarize: grammatical differences are differences in structure, while semantic differences are differences in meaning (without social context). now let’s move on to くれる and もらう!
you might know already that くれる is the japanese “giving” verb. more specifically, it’s the giving verb whose subject isn’t the speaker:
⭕️ 兄が私にプレゼントをくれた。 = my older brother gave me a present.
from these examples, we can deduce two facts about the grammar of くれる:
the giver is marked with が, meaning the giver is the subject.
the recipient is marked with に, meaning the recipient is the indirect object.
these rules apply to くれる used as a solo verb and as an auxiliary (as in 〜てくれる). this grammatical construction is pretty familiar to english speakers, who can say things like “my brother gave a present to me,” mirroring the 兄が私に structure in japanese. english-speakers also might feel like the giver has a more “active” role in the scene, which lends itself well to the giver being the subject.
*in this case, if you were going to use a giving/receiving verb, you would use あげる.
in japanese, もらう is the “receiving” verb, and in fact the only* receiving verb: there is no out-group/in-group distinction here like there is with くれる. let’s look at some examples:
❓ 私に弟がプレゼントをもらった。 = ?my little brother got a present from me.
⭕️ 私が兄にプレゼントをもらった。 = i got a present from my older brother.
the first example, marked with ❓, is not technically grammatically incorrect (as far as i know), but it is sort of awkward, just like in english. the second example, on the other hand, shows us exactly what we need to know about the grammar of もらう:
the giver is marked with に**, meaning the giver belongs to a prepositional phrase.
the recipient is marked with が, meaning the recipient is the subject.
are you seeing an important difference between もらう and くれる? you probably noticed: while the subject of a くれる phrase is the giver, the subject of a もらう phrase is the recipient. this makes it really obvious that くれる is about someone giving something to someone else, while もらう is about someone receiving something from someone else.
as with くれる, the above rules apply to もらう as a solo verb and the 〜てもらう auxiliary construction.
*in this post, i’m ignoring 敬語, so technically there are indeed other receiving verbs (like いただく), but only as far as formalities go.
**the giver in a もらう sentence can technically also be marked with から, but i don’t feel like that’s very common to see.
the semantics of くれる and もらう
let’s compare the two correct examples from the above sections:
兄が私にプレゼントをくれた。 = my older brother gave me a present.
私が兄にプレゼントをもらった。 = i got a present from my older brother.
now, imagine a scene on a stage where no words are spoken: someone labeled 兄 mutely hands a wrapped gift box to another person labeled 私, and then the curtain falls. how would you describe that scene you just saw—using the first sentence, with くれる? or using the second sentence, with もらう?
if your answer was “i don’t know,” or maybe “what’s the difference,” then you’ve actually hit upon something really important about くれる and もらう! while certain social implications might be different between the two verbs (e.g., was 私 expecting to get a present?), the semantics of くれる and もらう in this construction are functionally identical. remember, semantics ignores social context, so whatever the particular circumstances of this gift-giving scene, the fact remains that a present changes hands from 兄 to 私, which can be accurately described by either the first example sentence or the second. to put it simply, the constructions XがYにZをくれる and XにYがZをもらう mean the same thing! it’s easy to remember that way, right?
so, we’ve looked at the grammatical differences and the semantics differences (or lack thereof) between くれる and もらう. here they are:
in くれる sentences, the subject (marked with が) is the giver. in もらう sentences, the subject (marked with が) is the recipient.
in くれる sentences, に marks the recipient. in もらう sentences, に marks the giver. this means that the grammatical (particle) structure of くれる and もらう sentences is reversed.
the constructions XがYにZをくれる and XにYがZをもらう are semantically identical, i.e., they mean the same thing. this is true of sentences where くれる and もらう stand alone and sentences where they are auxiliaries following the 〜て form of another verb.
and that’s that! obviously there are always exceptions and complications to rules, but i hope that my explanation of these two words has been helpful for you. i spent a long time not understanding how to use もらう since it didn’t really feel like anything we had in english, but once i learned exactly how it was related to くれる, i think started to get the hang of it—and i bet you can too!
as a final note: if people are interested in more posts about もらう (which i have personally found is the trickiest for english speakers), i might have a post about semantic-passive もらう coming down the pipeline, so keep your eyes peeled! またね！！
