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There's a scene where some employee shows her prototypes to her manager. And this manager looks at her after browsing those and says:

[意見が欲しい]{いけんがほしい}?

Now I thought [欲しい]{ほしい} is strictly used for describing one's own desires and not those of others. How is this possible here?

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You are right that you shouldn't use ほしい to express someone else's desires, i.e. お姉ちゃんは子猫がほしい would be incorrect because you can't claim to know someone's personal feelings. But it's fine to use it to ask a person about their desires as in your example sentence.

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  • Thanks a lot for your answer. I'm a newbie in Japanese, and I wonder whether I should write "hoshii" with its kanji "欲しい" or in pure hiragana "ほしい"? Or they're interchangeable?
    – Matin Sasan
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 22:01
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    I think I see ほしい more than 欲しい but both are commonly used and equally well understood.
    – user3856370
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 22:07

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