～がほしい: How to Say "Want Something" in Japanese

To say you want something in Japanese, use ～がほしい. Mark the wanted thing with the particle が and follow it with ほしい, an い-adjective meaning "wanted" or "desirable."¹ This is the noun half of "want": ほしい is for wanting a thing, while the sibling ～たい form is for wanting to do an action.²

Overview

ほしい is one of the first desire expressions a beginner meets. It often surprises learners who expect a verb. It is an adjective, and that single fact explains its particle, its conjugation, and the restriction on who can be its subject.

The placement here follows curriculum convention rather than any published standard. The bodies that administer the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) state that they publish no official list of grammar for the test.³ The bare ～がほしい pattern is conventionally taught at the elementary N5 level. The ～てほしい and ～ほしがる extensions sit in the N4 band; the standard textbook Genki introduces ～がほしい in Lesson 14 and ～てほしい in Lesson 21.⁴

What ほしい actually is

ほしい is an い-adjective (イ形容詞) meaning "wanted" or "desirable," not a verb meaning "to want." It conjugates exactly like other い-adjectives.¹²

Because ほしい says that the thing "is wanted," that thing is its grammatical subject. It takes the subject particle が, never the object particle を. The template is 「N1は N2がほしいです」.¹

わたしは今いまコンピューターがほしいです。¹
"I want a computer right now."

ほしい belongs to the class of emotion adjectives (感情形容詞), alongside こわい, 悲しい, and うれしい. That shared membership is what gives ほしい the person restriction covered later.⁵

At the beginner level, the word is written in kana as ほしい. The kanji form is 欲しい, read the same way. 欲 carries the senses of craving, desiring, and wishing for.⁶

ほしい vs. ～たい at a glance

ほしい and ～たい split the English word "want" along one line: object versus action. ほしい expresses desire for a thing, a noun, in the pattern [thing] が ほしい. Desire to perform an action, a verb, uses the verb-stem + ～たい instead.²

The two do not cross over. ほしい cannot attach to a verb to mean "want to do," and ～たい cannot attach to a bare noun to mean "want a thing." To say you want someone else to perform an action, use the bridging form ～てほしい. It combines the te-form of a verb with ほしい and is covered below.²

水みずがほしい。 / 水みずが飲のみたい。²
"I want water." vs. "I want to drink water."

The same noun, 水, takes ほしい when the speaker wants the water itself and ～たい when the speaker wants the act of drinking it.

お金かねがほしい。 / 働はたらきたい。²
"I want money." vs. "I want to work."

Form and particles

The core pattern: Noun が ほしい

The full sentence pattern is 「(私は) N が ほしい(です)」: optional 私は as the topic, the wanted thing marked with が, then ほしい.¹ が marks the wanted thing because it is the grammatical subject of the adjective ほしい: "N is wanted." を is not used.¹

A separate topic can still front the sentence with は while the wanted thing keeps が. The two particles do different jobs, topic versus subject-of-desire, and can appear together, as in 私は車がほしい.¹

The polite form simply adds です to the い-ending adjective: ほしいです. The plain form is ほしい.¹²

車くるまがほしいですか。¹
"Do you want a car?"

A question naturally points the desire at the listener rather than the speaker, a property explored under the own-desire restriction below.

わたしは何なにもほしくないです。¹
"I don't want anything."

Conjugating ほしい as an i-adjective

Because ほしい is an い-adjective, it inflects like any other い-adjective. Once you know it is an adjective, not a verb, its full conjugation is already familiar.¹

Form	Plain	Polite
Present affirmative	ほしい	ほしいです
Present negative	ほしくない	ほしくないです / ほしくありません
Past affirmative	ほしかった	ほしかったです
Past negative	ほしくなかった	ほしくなかったです / ほしくありませんでした

In the negative, the particle on the wanted thing commonly shifts from が to the contrastive は: 〜はほしくない.¹

前まえは車くるまがほしかったです。¹
"I wanted a car before."

わたしはコンピューターはほしくありません。¹
"I don't want a computer."

In that negative sentence, が has shifted to は. This marks the computer as a contrastive topic rather than the plain subject of desire.

その時ときはお金かねがほしくなかった。²
"At that time I didn't want money."

Nuance and usage contexts

The own-desire restriction

ほしい is an emotion adjective. In a plain declarative sentence, emotion adjectives take the speaker as their subject. A third person cannot be the subject of a bare ほしい statement.⁵

This reflects a general property of internal-state predicates in Japanese. In plain assertions, they are confined to the first person; in questions, they are confined to the addressee.⁷ In a question, then, ほしい naturally takes the listener as the implied experiencer: 何がほしいですか asks what you want.¹

あなたは何なにがほしいですか。¹
"What do you want?"

To state someone else's desire, the speaker usually routes it through conjecture or quotation. Common forms include ～そうだ, ～らしい, and ～と言っている, rather than asserting another person's inner state directly.¹⁸

アンさんはノートパソコンがほしいそうです。⁵
"I hear that Anne wants a laptop."

弟おとうともゲームがほしいと言いっていました。⁵
"My little brother said he wanted a game too."

This restriction is why the next two forms exist. ～てほしい lets you say that you want an action from someone. ～ほしがる lets you report a third person's desire as an observed state.

～てほしい: wanting someone else to do something

The te-form of a verb plus ほしい means "I want [someone] to do X." It expresses the speaker's wish about another person's action while keeping the が→ほしい adjective logic. The thing wanted is now an action carried out by someone else.²⁸ Because the wanted thing is an action rather than a bare noun, this construction edges past the N5 pattern into the N4 band.⁴

The person the wish is directed at is marked with に: 「(私は) 人に Vてほしい」.²

友達ともだちに来きてほしいです。²
"I want my friend to come."

先生せんせいに教おしえてほしい。²
"I want the teacher to teach me."

The に-marked person is the default form to learn first. One refinement is worth noting: when the awaited situation is abstract or not tied to a specific person's deliberate action, the subject of the embedded clause can be marked with が instead of に.⁸

早はやく工事こうじが終おわってほしい。⁸
"I want the construction to end soon."

～ほしがる and ～ほしがっている: reporting a third person's desire

To form ～がる, drop the final い from the adjective stem and add がる. This turns the emotion adjective into a verb that reports a third person's desire as observed from outside: ほしい becomes ほしがる.⁵ This treatment follows the emotion-adjective class as a whole. The page that documents it covers こわがる, 悲しがる, and ほしがる together, and the ほしがる behavior is by analogy to that class rather than from a ほしがる-specific study.⁵

Once the adjective has become a verb, the wanted thing is no longer the subject. It becomes a grammatical object and is marked with を, not が, as in 彼は車を欲しがる.⁵ This を is the sign that you have switched from adjective to verb.

田中たなかさんは新あたらしいパソコンを欲ほしがる。⁵
"Tanaka wants a new computer."

To describe a third person's desire as a present, observed ongoing state, the progressive ～がっている is used.⁵

弟おとうとは新あたらしいゲームを欲ほしがっています。⁵
"My little brother wants a new game."

～がる carries an inferential nuance: the speaker reports a desire deduced from the third person's outward behavior rather than asserting an inner feeling directly.⁵ For polite hearsay about a specific named individual, the quotation and conjecture forms from the previous section, ～ほしいそうです and ～ほしいと言っています, are common alternatives.⁵

The three routes out of the own-desire restriction map cleanly onto what the speaker is doing.

Good to know

Asking ほしいですか directly to a superior

A bare ほしいですか put to a social superior asks point-blank whether they "want" something and can sound blunt. The same internal-state directness that makes plain ほしい first-person-only makes a flat second-person question to a superior socially awkward. When speaking upward, indirect offering phrasing, such as an いかがですか-type expression, is preferred over a direct ほしいですか.⁵⁸

Why が, not を: ほしい describes the thing as wanted

ほしい does not act on an object the way a verb does. It says that the thing "is wanted," so the thing is the subject and takes が, exactly as the emotion-adjective class behaves.¹⁵ A useful mnemonic is that ほしい describes the thing as wanted, and が follows the subject of that description. The moment the desire becomes the verb ほしがる, the thing becomes a true object and flips to を. That を signals that you have switched from adjective to verb.⁵

ほしい vs. 欲しい: when the kanji shows up

Kana ほしい is the beginner default. The kanji 欲しい is read the same way and appears in print and in more formal writing.⁶ The 欲 character is a phono-semantic compound (形声). It combines 欠, the "lack" element, with the phonetic 谷, and it means "to crave" or "to wish for." The modern 欲 is a rewrite of the older form 慾, which carried the heart element 心.⁶ Knowing that 欲 means "craving" links the kana ほしい a learner meets first to the kanji 欲しい and to compounds like 食欲 (appetite) and 意欲 (motivation).⁶

See also

• The Te-Form Benefactive: 〜てあげる, 〜てくれる, 〜てもらう
• Japanese Giving and Receiving Verbs: あげる, くれる, もらう
• The は Particle: Topic Marker
• Japanese Adjectives Overview: The Two Classes (い-形容詞 vs な-形容詞)

References

Footnotes

1. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, TUFS Language Modules grammar, "Nがほしいです／Nがほしくありません." ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. Makino, Seiichi, and Michio Tsutsui. A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. The Japan Times, 1989. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

3. Japanese-Language Proficiency Test official site, FAQ. ↩

4. Banno et al. Genki I & II, 3rd ed. The Japan Times, 2020. ↩ ↩²

5. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, TUFS Language Modules grammar, "こわい・悲しい・うれしい、など" (emotion adjectives). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

6. Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, Kanjipedia, entry 欲. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Kuno, Susumu. The Structure of the Japanese Language. MIT Press, 1973. ↩

8. Japan Foundation, Japanese-Teaching Newsletter, "表現意図 -願望-." ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵