# watasi hosii koto dake sita



## wide12

Hi, I'd like to know what's the meaning of those words, in this context:
"watasi hosii koto dake sita"
with my limited japanase, I tried to figure out the entire meaning of this sentence, and I think it is something like "Only I want about....",

...: Please refer to this thread for the other question (one topic, one thread).

All of this was said by a japanese friend, she tried to explain me but to no avail.

Thanks in advance.


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## Flaminius

Hi,

Moderator Note:
Please provide context and background information (as defined by WR) for us to better help you.

"watasi hosii koto dake sita"
I might come across picky but more details are necessary to answer your question because this sentence is ungrammatical and open to a few "corrections" with different meanings.


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## wide12

Hi, I would gladly provide more context, but I am afraid I don't have any more context...is "sita" the form past of the verb "suru" ?


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## Franzi

wide12 said:


> Hi, I would gladly provide more context, but I am afraid I don't have any more context...is "sita" the form past of the verb "suru" ?


 
Where did you see the sentence?

"Context" can refer to anything about why you're asking: where you saw it, what kind of person said/wrote it (age, sex, native language), whether it was spoken or written, if it's from a long time ago or if it's recent, etc.


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## Derselbe

Okay come on.
Just type that in hiragana and it comes out quite good since you can type both "si" and "shi" for し。
so written in hiragana "watasi hosii koto dake sita" becomes
私欲しい事だけした。　which appears like a regular casual sentence to me. Sure the particles are omitted but isn't that what Japanese people do all the time in spoken language? 

"I(or someone else) did only things I liked" 

Any objections?


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## wide12

Derselbe, thank you, you are right, it makes sense in the context (thanks too for the nice explanation of context Franzi), because it was a friend whom I was playing with a few games, and she said that because I let her choose what she wanted to play, so yes, it makes sense now, thanks 

And maybe the sentence is not quite right japanese because she tries to talk to me in a simple way so I can understand (I fail most of the times though ;().


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## Wishfull

Derselbe said:


> Okay come on.
> Just type that in hiragana and it comes out quite good since you can type both "si" and "shi" for し。
> so written in hiragana "watasi hosii koto dake sita" becomes
> 私欲しい事だけした。　which appears like a regular casual sentence to me. Sure the particles are omitted but isn't that what Japanese people do all the time in spoken language?
> 
> "I(or someone else) did only things I liked"
> 
> Any objections?


 
Hi, Derselbe, thank you for your comment.
And I know why we want to get more context.

私欲しい事だけした is not natural to my ear. I think it will be natural when it is translated in Englsih.
*I only did what I wanted to do.*
I imagine that it is spoken/written by a non-native.
First, the subject “私”　is usually omitted in this brief sentence.

Second, the adjective “欲しい“　is not proper adjective in this context.
The usual alternatives would be;
したい事だけした。
好きな事だけした。
やりたい事だけした。
Or
欲しい物だけ手に入れた。
やって欲しい事だけ（あなたに）お願いした。


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## Arashi

Wishfull said:


> Hi, Derselbe, thank you for your comment.
> And I know why we want to get more context.
> 
> 私欲しい事だけした is not natural to my ear. I think it will be natural when it is translated in Englsih.
> *I only did what I wanted to do.*
> I imagine that it is spoken/written by a non-native.
> First, the subject “私”　is usually omitted in this brief sentence.
> 
> Second, the adjective “欲しい“　is not proper adjective in this context.
> The usual alternatives would be;
> したい事だけした。
> 好きな事だけした。
> やりたい事だけした。
> Or
> 欲しい物だけ手に入れた。
> やって欲しい事だけ（あなたに）お願いした。


 
It might sound unnatural because the speaker was simplifying what they were saying to make it easier for a non-native speaker to understand (hence "私"). I agree, though, that "欲しい" in this context doesn't sound natural, but I'm a beginner of the Japanese language and I've just never heard it used in context like this before.

"好きな事だけした。" or even "だけ欲しい事した" sound a bit more natural to me and easy enough for someone just learning the language to understand. "私" at the beginning of the sentence just makes it a little more simple for someone who might not be used to the omission of implied pronouns.

Couldn't the sentence also mean "I did only what I wanted to do" or "I only wanted to do (this)"?


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## Derselbe

Wishfull said:


> Second, the adjective “欲しい“　is not proper adjective in this context.
> The usual alternatives would be;


 
Hi wishfull!
I thought about the question whether 欲しい事する makes much sense and thought that したい事　would probably fit better. Thanks for the clarification on that!
However, I thought that it was good enough to give wide12 a translation so that he has a first clue to figure out the rest by himself.


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## Wishfull

OK, Derselbe. Thanks for your comment.


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## Flaminius

*Arashi*: "好きな事だけした。" or even "だけ欲しい事した" sound a bit more natural to me (...)

The former is a respectable Japanese sentence but the latter is ungrammatical because だけ needs to follow what it modifies.

In fact 欲しい事だけした is as ungrammatical as this.  I wouldn't think it's written (or said? Confirmation needed) by a native speaker.  If *wide12*'s friend is Japanese, then I still think she meant something different from "just did what I wanted to do".

English _want_ has three counterparts in Japanese. Note the conjugation difference between 2 and 3.

1. desire to possess an object N
N ga hoshii
Mizu ga hoshii.
I want water.

2. desire to perform an action V
V [adnominal form] tai
Shimbun ga yomitai.
I want to read newspaper.

3. desire for someone else to perform an action V
V [te-form] moraitai* / hoshii
Denki o tsukete moraitai (hoshii).
I want someone to turn on the light.

*_Moraitai_ is the preferred form in "the good usage" but _hoshii_ is more frequent.


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## wide12

Yes, I confirm it is a japanese native speaker, and the context where she said this was like this:
She sais she wanted to play an specific kind of game, so I agreed, and after a while she said that sentence to me.
And since I am not really skillfull in japanese, I guess she makes the sentence easier for me to understand.


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## Derselbe

wide12 said:


> Yes, I confirm it is a japanese native speaker, and the context where she said this was like this:
> She sais she wanted to play an specific kind of game, so I agreed, and after a while she said that sentence to me.
> And since I am not really skillfull in japanese, I guess she makes the sentence easier for me to understand.


 
Did she say it or write it? Can you ask her what she was trying to say?


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## wide12

She wrote it, and I will ask her now, I will edit this post when I get the answer .

Edit: this is what she told me just now
watasiga sukina game dake asonda
watasiga sitai mode dake


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## Derselbe

wide12 said:


> watasiga sitai mode dake



That makes less sense than "hoshii koto" if you ask me. You probably don't have a logfile or chat history or something?


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## kaito

I could imagine that it means モード if the game can be played on a certain mode.

But since you can simply ask the person who said it, you're better off asking than guessing.


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## wide12

Yes, the game can be played on a certain mode, so, yes, I think what she meant its the first answer that Derselbe wrote. 

A lot of thanks for helping me !


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## Arashi

wide12 said:


> Edit: this is what she told me just now
> watasiga sukina game dake asonda


 遊ぶ is past tense in this sentence, so isn't she saying "I like the only game I played"?

Broken down, it looks like
*私* *好きな* *ゲームだけ 遊んだ*
*I* *like* *(the) only game played*.



wide12 said:


> Edit: this is what she told me just now
> watasiga sitai mode dake


*私      したい   **モードだけ* 
*I* *want to do*   (this) *mode only* 
I want to do (this) mode only
"I only want to do (play) this mode."


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## Flaminius

> Broken down, it looks like (...)


Hi,

Breaking the sentence into components isn't enough since Japanese follows different word order from that of English.  You need, ahem, splicing:
*私が 好きな ゲーム だけ 遊んだ*

This turns into English:
*(I) played only the games I like*


The sentence in the thread-beginning post is built on the same construction.  See below with corrections:
*私が したい こと だけ した*

Two things are important for understanding the splicing here.  First, Japanese verbs are always placed at the end of a sentence.  It follows that, if you see a verb in the middle of a sentence, it is the end of a subordinate sentence.

In fact *私が 好きな* and *私が したい* are relative clauses (a type of subordination) whose "antecedents" are *ゲーム* and *こと*, respectively:
*ゲーム* (games) [that] *I like*
*こと* (things) [that] *I want to do*

The second point is, therefore, the Japanese relative clause precedes the main clause noun it modifies.


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## Arashi

Flaminius said:


> Breaking the sentence into components isn't enough since Japanese follows different word order from that of English.


 That's true. Particles helps with this. To my dismay, however, particles are sometimes omitted.


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## Derselbe

Arashi said:


> That's true. Particles helps with this. To my dismay, however, particles are sometimes omitted.



You don't need particles. If a verb or preceeds a noun it always descibes it just like an adjective. Japanese is more consequent here than English. In English you say:

The green tree. 
but
The tree I climed.

In Japanese you would say
The green tree.
The I climed tree.

midori no ki
nobotta ki

(I don't know if noboru is the correct verb for climbing trees, so don't quote me on that)

That's the whole trick. You have to keep in mind that Japanese relative clauses work like English adjectives in terms of word order.


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## jazyk

Japanese relative clauses are not too different from English constructions like _horse-drawn carriage _and _bacteria-induced acidosis_.


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