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Hi, I’m just posting because I kind of need some advice/motivation. I’m on season five of textfugu currently practicing たら and so far it seemed like such an easy thing, but every time I post something on lang-8 people usually cannot understand what I’m saying at all, and often rewrite entire sentences, or give me way too many corrections that it doesn’t seem to help at all. It feels like everything I’m learning is incorrect, though it probably is just me. It’s frustrating though when I feel like I follow everything textfugu says and still get things wrong. I realize though that sometimes people like to change sentences to how they think it should be or what sounds more natural, but right now I just want to know if they are grammatically correct or not.
I was wondering if anyone else has felt this, and has figured out a way to deal with it, or a better way to check answers?
Anyway, I’m sure a part of the problem is just me not understanding. These are some of the few sentences I posted if anyone wants to help me out, because if it’s just me then I guess I’ll try to work harder, but i’m considering either quitting (which I really don’t want to do) or just switching to Tae Kim’s guide (which would suck to have wasted all this money on textfugu).Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for any advice or help
勉強したら私は薬と日本語を勉強します。
If I study, I will study medicine and Japanese.
勉強するために教科書を読みます。
In order to study, I will read textbooks.
バレンタインデーだったら僕は独りです。
When it’s valentine’s day I will be alone.
バレンタインデーだったら僕は一人です。
When it’s valentine’s day I will be alone.
１２じだったら私をねます。
When it’s 12 o’clock I will sleep.
１２じだったらを僕は寝に行きます。
When it’s 12 o’clock I will go to sleep.
バレンタインデーのはずはつまらないです。
I expect valentine’s day will be boring.-
This topic was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
xxSilentspiritxx.
I guess I should also mention, it feels like I’m not getting enough grammatical explanation, or good explanation of sentence structure from textfugu, which makes it difficult. Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?
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This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
Sorry, don’t want to heap on the confusion, but I think part of the problem is the subtle differences between the four conditional forms in Japanese. S1たらS2 is specifically used when S1 and S2 occur in chronologial order – that is, S1 is the antecedent, and S2 is the subsequence. “(If/when) S1 happens, THEN S2 happens.”
勉強したら私は薬と日本語を勉強します。
If I study, I will study medicine and Japanese.Here, your act of studying in general and your studying medicine and Japanese specifically occur concurrently, so you can’t use たら. Instead, you’d probably use 勉強するのなら, which could be rendered in English as “if I were to study”.
勉強するために教科書を読みます。
In order to study, I will read textbooks.This looks fine.
バレンタインデーだったら僕は独りです。
When it’s valentine’s day I will be alone.
バレンタインデーだったら僕は一人です。
When it’s valentine’s day I will be alone.Again, you’re talking about two events that are ocurring concurrently. It’s a little odd to use a conditional here anyway, even in English. You’d probably say バレンタインデーで、私は一人です – “on Valentine’s Day, I’ll be alone.”
１２じだったら私をねます。
When it’s 12 o’clock I will sleep.This sentence looks fine, except it’s 私が or 私は – you’re the subject and/or topic, not the object. A little late to sleep though. You know what they say: early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, weathly and wise. =P
１２じだったらを僕は寝に行きます。
When it’s 12 o’clock I will go to sleep.It’s really tempting to translate “going to (verb)” as に行く, but take care, here – に行く specifically means “go to (a place) for the purpose of (verbing)”, but that’s not the same as “going to (verb)” (which tends to be more like “I intend to (verb)”). 寝る on its own already conveys a meaning equivalent to the English “go to sleep” anyway.
バレンタインデーのはずはつまらないです。
I expect valentine’s day will be boring.This says “My expectation of Valentine’s Day is that it will be boring”. It’s… ok, but a shade odd, I think.
Let me know if I can explain anything better. Honestly, sometimes it’s better to get confused and have someone explain what’s going on – it can help you understand things much more deeply. Don’t give up on it. =)
Hey thanks! I really appreciate it, and frankly I didn’t really expect someone to even reply, let alone to be so kind and succinct with your answers! A few of those I threw in try things out and to figure out some of the more subtle nuances (but I didn’t get much help from lang-8, which is understandable though).
I hadn’t realized that たら could only be used in that way, so that clears up a whole lot.
I really appreciate it though. I’m trying to struggle my way through, and your answers really help clear things up.I’m gonna get back to it I suppose.
ありがとう！Another point of confusion might be, if by “medicine” you mean medical science, then the word for that would be 医学 (いがく), not 薬. 薬 is usually something you ingest to make you feel better when sick. It’s not something that one would “study”. I blame the English language for ambiguity on this one.
よろしくおねがいします！In the future, when posting sentences here that you got confusing feedback for on Lang-8, try to include the corrections you got on the sentences, not just the sentences themselves. Also, both here and on Lang-8, try to give some context. A sentence that has been isolated from its context is hard to interpret. This is especially true with conditional statements, where the context really determines what the conditional means.
I say this because some of your sentences seem very strange to me (and I realize that them may have just been contrived grammar practice), but they could make sense in context. For example, “When it’s twelve o’clock, I’ll go to sleep” sounds strange on its own (why not just say “I’ll go to sleep at twelve”?), but could make sense in the context of a conversation. Without the proper context, the people on Lang-8 (and here) don’t know which way to go to help, and will likely reduce the sentence to the simplest form that still conveys the information, even if that form does not bear the nuance you were looking for.I’ve never heard of ～たら being limited to strictly chronological cases.
Another point of confusion might be, if by “medicine” you mean medical science, then the word for that would be 医学 (いがく), not 薬.
Oh, hah. I didn’t even notice that. =P
I’ve never heard of ～たら being limited to strictly chronological cases.
Really? That is literally the defining characteristic of ～たら. And I mean “literally” literally, here.
If the two clauses in an A たら B sentence were required to be chronological with A before B, then sentences where A is a stative clause would be ungrammatical.
Take the following sentence from a lifehaker article on teaching yourself to like foods that you don’t currently enjoy:
しかし、人によっては、恋人や家族が辛いもの好きで、自分もそれが好きだったらいいのにと思っているといった場合もあるでしょう。
Rough translation: “However, there are some people, perhaps with family or loved ones who like spicy food, that think that it would be nice if they themselves also liked it (spicy food).”If I pare the sentence down (and rephrase it) a bit to get to the part we are talking about:
（私）も好きだったらいい or “It would be nice if I liked it too.”The state of liking the food (A clause) is concurrent with the “goodness” expressed (B clause). You would have to do some doctoring to make the A clause precede the B clause. Something like this:
私も好きになったらいい or “It would be nice if I come to like it too.”
Which is a perfectly fine sentence (if not a little clunky), but so is the original.Other examples include any sentence starting with either 私だったら or あなただったら (“If I were you…” and “If it were you…” respectively).
～たらいい gets a special mention in the grammar dictionary, actually. I’ma check it when I get home.
As for 私だったら, 私 is a noun, not a verb, so the state of being “I” is what’s preceding the main clause.
I checked DOBJG and it seems you’re right about it *almost always being antecedent/consequence. The exception (which my examples fall into) is counter-factuals; like “If I were you…” or “If I had a million dollars…”
I guess since I use counter-factuals so much, it didn’t strike me as an “exception”.
Also, I know 私 is a noun. When you said that the first clause had to precede the second, I thought you meant it must entirely precede the second, that is to say, what’s happening in the first clause must be done with before the second.
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This topic was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
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