I froze on this translation :O

[chryuop]

I was surprised on Facebook by a Japanese friend and I hate chat coz I got no time to use dictionaries She told me she received my Christmas present and I wanted to tell her "good you already got it. I was afraid you wouldn't get by Christmas"........PANIC!!! All it came out was
もうもらって、カッコイイね。クリスマスまでにもらわ ないと恐れたんです
Did I even get close to it? All there was in my head was for sure is past the "afraid" part, but in the quotation? I was battled between もらわなかった and もらわない. I am sure she understood (she is used to my bad Japanese by now LOL), but I am curious what is the right tense to use.
Thank you.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by chryuop

I was surprised on Facebook by a Japanese friend and I hate chat coz I got no time to use dictionaries She told me she received my Christmas present and I wanted to tell her "good you already got it. I was afraid you wouldn't get by Christmas"........PANIC!!! All it came out was
もうもらって、カッコイイね。クリスマスまでにもらわ ないと恐れたんです
Did I even get close to it? All there was in my head was for sure is past the "afraid" part, but in the quotation? I was battled between もらわなかった and もらわない. I am sure she understood (she is used to my bad Japanese by now LOL), but I am curious what is the right tense to use.
Thank you.

もうもらって、カッコイイね = It is handsome/attractive that you received it already.

クリスマスまでにもらわないと恐れたんです = I was frightened you wouldn't get it by Christmas.

So you were very close.

[masaegu]

You can't use もらう here. This means your friend is getting a present from another person other than you. Use 届く.

Also, why use カッコイイ at all? What's so good-looking/cool-looking about getting a present on time?

One more thing, the tense of 恐れた.

[chryuop]

I thought カッコイイ meant also "cool" (at least that is one of the meaning every Japanese-English dictionary gives). I will stop using it then
Why もらう shows from another person? I guess I miss some points when I was studying あげる-くれるーもらう.
One more thing, what about the tense of 恐れた? Should have it been 恐れていた?
Thank you very much.

[masaegu]

Originally Posted by chryuop

I thought カッコイイ meant also "cool" (at least that is one of the meaning every Japanese-English dictionary gives). I will stop using it then

I know and that's exactly why so many Japanese-learners often use the word wrong. One of the meanings of カッコいい surely is "cool", but something must be appealing to your eyes to use the word. It cannot be used to mean "very good".

It might help you use the word correctly if you remember that the original meaning of the word 格好（かっこう） means "a figure", "a shape", "appearance", "the way a person is dressed", etc.

Why もらう shows from another person? I guess I miss some points when I was studying あげる-くれるーもらう.

Nearly all Japanese-learners use もらう/あげる/くれる wrong even after years of studying. They seem to mistakenly believe that they are easy to use because the translated words like "give" and "receive" are easy for them to use. Those are among the most important (and difficult, believe me) verbs in Japanese along with なる、おく、いく、くる, etc. in my opinion.

If you say 「スミスはプレゼントをもらった。」, you are not the one that gave Smith the present. There is no why about it. That's just what the word means.
This will not change even if you replace スミス by a second person pronoun or the listener's name. You just won't be the one giving the present.

One more thing, what about the tense of 恐れた? Should have it been 恐れていた?

You've got it.

[chryuop]

Thank you very much.
I went back to look into my books and I have a textbook (university used one) that I used seldom due to the way it is written (rather difficult explanations).
Where it explains もらう it says ＸはＹにもらう and small on the bottom of the paragraph it says Ｙ cannot be 私.
You think that such an important thing should be mention in every textbook :O

Thank you very much...what we'd do without you