Whether or not to give

[leonl]

This is the phrase in English: And then she decides whether or not to give him any(money)

And this is my attempt:そしてかのじょは彼に何もを差し上げるかどうかすることにします


In a sense this a continuation of my Salary Man Senryuu thread. This is for the speech I have to write explaining the senryuu and all the cultural stuff behind it.

Thanks

[chikara]

Whether or not to give

This is the sentence in english

It is?

[leonl]

Whether or not to give

This is the sentence in english

It is?

I know you're just joking, but the point is valid all the same.(Technically its a fragment, actually the second half of a compound sentence. I was going to major in English at some point in the recent past, I have since abandoned that goal)

[keatonatron]

何もを

何も = Everything

差し上げるかどうかする

You have two verbs where there can only be one.

[する]ことにします

This means "to decide to do", but in your sentence it would appear that the decision hasn't been made yet. Try 決める instead (which simply means "To decide" regardless of the result).

[furrykef]

I find it a bit odd that you wrote かのじょ in hiragana, but 彼 in kanji.

何も cannot take the particle を, because も is itself acting as a particle, and も always replaces を. (I've made this mistake too. ^^;)

Also note that, for that reason, when 何も, どこも, etc. is used with other particles, those particles will typically come before the も. For example, 何でも, which means "anything", どこにも, which is どこも combined with に to mean "at/to anywhere", etc.

- Kef

[Astral Abraxas]

You're also using 謙譲語 incorrectly. 謙譲語 is used to describe your own actions. 尊敬語 is used to describe the actions of others. 差し上げる(which is 謙譲語) isn't just more formally. It's 敬語 and that means it's black magic. Evil stuff. I can't use use 敬語 that well myself so I'm going to do you a favor and not advise you on how to use it...

差し上げる literally means "to lift up and give" meaning you're reaching up to someone in higher status and giving them something.

[leonl]

Thank you everyone. I dropped this sentence in favor of something else entirely, though that didn't do much good I still got the assignment back with a ton of corrections needed. I wanted a challenge this year in my Japanese class and I guess I got it, next time I will be more careful in wishing for more challenging classes

[keatonatron]

You're also using 謙譲語 incorrectly

Well, it all depends on context... If かのじょ is your coworker and 彼 is your boss, 差し上げる would be fine.