LANGUAGE: How to express degrees of hope with ように・てほしい・いのる and 〜といい JLPT N4

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ように in combination with てほしい and いのる, and 〜といい can be used to express varying degrees of hope:

• small or fantastical wishes like, ‘I hope I can become rich in the future’
• more convenient real life wishes like, ‘it would be nice if there was no queue at the store when I go shopping’
• much larger scale, immediate wishes like ‘I’m praying you recover from your accident quickly’

Let’s see how ように・てほしい・いのる and 〜といい can be used to best convey our ‘hopeful’ sentiments:

〜といい I hope, It would be good

You can use this when you’re just hoping that something good in your life will happen – it’s a light-hearted, spur-of-the-moment wish in which the outcome would be a temporarily positive outcome for you.

This can be remembered as ‘〜it would be good if that happened‘, such as ‘if the rain stops (〜), that would be good‘ 雨が止んだらといい

ように～てほしい Want ～ to happen like

Say you hope something will happen in a certain way, like the sky will clear up like on a cloudless summer’s evening, ように～てほしい is the way to go.

This can be remembered as ‘In the way that is like ～ , I want it to happen‘

ようにいのる ・ ますように I Pray that ～ happens

What if you need convey a deep hope for something serious, and in fact state that you are praying for a good outcome as soon as possible?ようにいのる / ますように will do just that – ますように is just a shortened version of ようにいのる but no less important.

This can be remembered as in ‘In that way of an outcome, I am praying‘

Here are examples of each of the grammar points: