What's the difference between くる and やってくる?


Can someone explain the nuance between them? They both mean "come", but I'm
unsure of when they are interchangeable. My perception is that `やってくる` seems
to put more emphasis on the actual action of coming (compared to the rest of
the context, if any) than `くる` by itself. Compare:

>   * 友達が来ました  
>  
>  _and_  
>
>   * 友達がやって来ました
>

But there seem to be times when you cannot use them interchangeably. For
example：

> ○ さぁ、こっちにこい！ → OK  
>  ? さぁ、こっちにやってこい！ → Sounds unnatural to me

Will someone please explain where they do and don't overlap?




The dictionary is unfortunately vague on this matter, but
[some](http://okwave.jp/qa/q639016.html)
[discussion](https://web.archive.org/web/20041229074917/http://nihongo-
online.jp/tree02/treebbs.cgi?kako=1&log=2144) elsewhere on the web lends some
clues to the nuance. These discussions say that やってくる, as you suggest, places
more emphasis on the act of coming, but especially that the traveler came with
some particular effort or purpose, or from especially far away.

From the second link:

> 「やって来る」は「苦労して、はるばる、遠くから来る」と言うニュアンスを持っているのではと思います。

The writer goes on to list a few examples. If this is the case I think it
seems clear why you wouldn't say やってきて to your friend. It almost has kind of
an お疲れ様 kind of feel to it. It's just the same way you can't say わざわざ来てください.
In fact it may be appropriate to think of やってくる as わざわざ来る, expressing some
amount of deference toward the subject, making a command feel unnatural. I
can't find any instances on google of it being used as a command. It's like in
English you wouldn't issue the command to someone, "Go to the trouble of
coming here."

There's also the meaning wherein you can use やってくる to refer to work you've
been doing for a long time, like もう２０年この仕事をやってきた。




The dictionary is unfortunately vague on this matter, but
[some](http://okwave.jp/qa/q639016.html)
[discussion](https://web.archive.org/web/20041229074917/http://nihongo-
online.jp/tree02/treebbs.cgi?kako=1&log=2144) elsewhere on the web lends some
clues to the nuance. These discussions say that やってくる, as you suggest, places
more emphasis on the act of coming, but especially that the traveler came with
some particular effort or purpose, or from especially far away.

From the second link:

> 「やって来る」は「苦労して、はるばる、遠くから来る」と言うニュアンスを持っているのではと思います。

The writer goes on to list a few examples. If this is the case I think it
seems clear why you wouldn't say やってきて to your friend. It almost has kind of
an お疲れ様 kind of feel to it. It's just the same way you can't say わざわざ来てください.
In fact it may be appropriate to think of やってくる as わざわざ来る, expressing some
amount of deference toward the subject, making a command feel unnatural. I
can't find any instances on google of it being used as a command. It's like in
English you wouldn't issue the command to someone, "Go to the trouble of
coming here."

There's also the meaning wherein you can use やってくる to refer to work you've
been doing for a long time, like もう２０年この仕事をやってきた。

