Could this sentence also be “ほかの誰がほしい” or “ほかの誰かがほしい” and mean the same thing? A bit unsure about how 誰か grammatically connects to ほかの人, as it is not an adjective.
@ericaw
Could you give me the original English sentence? – please do not delete the default setting.
誰かほかの人がほしい sounds a bit awkward to my Japanese native ears. I looked it up in the source, Tatoeba. But I couldn’t find it, so I assume it was deleted from Tatoeba or completely altered. I need the original English sentence for further search.
Anyway, your proposed sentence “ほかの誰がほしい” is totally different from “誰かほかの人がほしい”. The only interpretation I can deduct from 誰かほかの人がほしい is like this: Tom was sent to you from a staffing agency in order to help you. But Tom is not the right guy (either due to lack of skills or due to his terrible communication with you). So, you are asking the agency “I need someone else”. 誰か means “someone”, and ほかの人 means “else”.
If you replace “誰かほかの人がほしい” with “ほかの誰がほしい”, it means that “I don’t need anyone except Tom (i.e. Tom is the right guy)”, or “Who the hell wants a guy like Tom? (in an ironical way)”, or “Who do you additionally want?”. In either way, you are not requesting for a replacement.
Your second proposed sentence “ほかの誰かがほしい” could mean either “someone else needs something” or “I need someone else”. Therefore, this is a confusing word order. I don’t recommend you to say “ほかの誰かがほしい” if you mean the latter.
1 Like
Thank you for your thoughtful response and helpful examples, MsFixer! I believe my error was that in ほかの誰がほしい , 誰 without か makes the sentence mean “anyone / anybody else” instead of “someone else.”
The original English sentence is “I want somebody else.” It seems like there are actually quite a lot of examples with this word order in Tatoeba to mean “somebody else” – such as:
馬鹿だなあ、僕は。誰かほかの人の傘を間違えて持ってきたよ。
Silly me! I’ve taken someone else’s umbrella by mistake.
https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/121607
誰か他の人、答えられますか。
Can anybody else answer?
https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/136872
It seems that the latter sentence can also be 他の人誰（が）、答えられますか and mean the same thing?
Sorry for the delay in response.
No. We don’t say 他の人誰が because it means “Who the hell can answer? ZERO!!” Your altered sentence is not asking for an answer, but condemning the creator of the difficult question. If you want to swap the word order, 他の誰か、答えられますか？ is okay (i.e. drop 人 and replace が to か) although I still find 誰か他の人、答えられますか more natural.
2 Likes