Giving and Receiving in Japanese – Agemasu, Kuremasu, Moraimasu

The words used to describe the acts of giving and receiving in Japanese can be quite confusing, but they needn’t be.
In a nutshell, there are two words that mean “to give”:
- agemasu
- kuremasu
And another word that means “to receive”:
- moraimasu
What most often confuses people is the fact that there are three words to describe actions that, in English, can be expressed with just two words.
More options = more trying-to-figure-out-when-to-use-what.
Fortunately, however, there is a simple way to look at these words that will eliminate any uncertainty about their use in 99% of situations.
In this article, we will see how we can easily differentiate between the words for “giving” and “receiving” in Japanese. In doing so, we will also cover everything you need to know to form sentences using the verbs “agemasu” , “kuremasu” , and “moraimasu” .