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Season 7 lesson 2 - http://www.textfugu.com/season-7/trying/3-2/#top
It teaches “try to do something” is: te-form + みる
1) Shouldn’t it be: te-form + し みる & specifically mean try something out or experiment doing something? (rather than trying, or attempting, to do something)
2) Isn’t trying, in the sense of attempting, to do something: te-form + しようとする ?
Thanks.
何かしてみる – try to do something
食べてみる – try to eatThose are two different things. I think your problem is that you’re confusing yourself over the English “to do” – eating is “doing something”, but you don’t “try to do eat”.
I think みる is something like “to try something out”, whereas ～ようとする is “make an effort to do something”. Again, you’re getting caught up with “to do”. It’s just 「volitional」＋とする – no te-form there, and you use the volitional form of the verb in question, not simply しよう (unless that’s actually the verb you’re wanting).
Explained better here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/try
Bet anything I’ve been beaten to the punch by Joel while I’m typing this :P
EDIT: Guess I wasn’t :D-
This reply was modified 11 years, 1 month ago by
MisterM2402 [Michael].
～てみる basically means “do [something] and see” (as in, and see what results) – it’s the auxiliary-verb form of the verb 見る, but is always written in kana. For example, 食べてみる = eat it and see = try it out and see if you like it.
The volitional+とする (for example, 食べようとする) does also mean “try to do [something]“, but the meaning changes in past tense – 食べてみた means you did eat it, while 食べようとした means that you attempted to eat it, but were unable or unwilling to actually eat.
Not really sure what you mean by しみる…
Unrelated side note: finally worked out how I keep typing “we’re” instead of “were” without noticing, especially considering it takes two presses to type an apostrophe. Stupid iPad auto-correct. Learn how to spell, please.
Edit: Boo! Ninja-posted! =P
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This reply was modified 11 years, 1 month ago by
Joel.
Thanks all! Great help. You’re all winners.
I think the confusion has come about as the TF lesson isn’t very precise.
I don’t believe I’ve been enlightened on volitional form (unless it goes under a different term sometimes?)
Joel – Can’t say I’m sure what I mean by しみる either.
I was taking it from a correction I got on Lang-8. The original comment is:
1. I [tried to move] the table, but it was too heavy. (so I couldn’t move it)
2. I didn’t like the way the furniture was arranged, so I [tried moving] the table to the other side of the room. But it still didn’t look right, so I moved it back again.
In the first example “tried to move” suggests that you made an effort to move the table, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it moved. In this case, the Japanese translation should be “～しようとする、しようとした” but not “～してみる・してみた”. 「私はテーブルを動かそうとしたが、それは重すぎた」
In the second example “tried moving” suggests that you did move the table as an experiment. In this case, the Japanese translation should be “～してみる・してみた”. 「私はそのテーブルを動かしてみたが、まともとに戻した」
しようとする・・・attempt to do, make an effort to do
してみる・・・do something as an experiment or testYeah, it would be helpful to read up on volitional form, to use with しようとする. Here, しよう is kind of a placeholder used to represent some verb or other in its volitional form (usually, しよう is volitional form of する, but here it’s just a generic verb).
Aye, I was just saying the same thing – good thing I checked for ninjas this time. =P The verb being used in the example sentences is 動かす.
You might have heard the volitional form as ましょう – as in, 食べましょう. That’s the ます-form volitional, and appears quite often in anime. Not sure if/where it gets covered in TextFugu, though.
Yeah TF does ~ましょう, but I can’t see that it covers volitional anymore than that.
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This reply was modified 11 years, 1 month ago by
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