Plans And Conviction
“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” – Gandhi
In this chapter, you’re going to learn about the grammar point つもり, which is all about “plans” and “conviction.” By this, I mean sentences like:
“I plan to go to the store”
“I intend (plan) to get married today.”
“I’m convinced that I’m a teacher.”
“Bobby’s convinced that he’s fun.”
You’ll also be able to ask questions based on this, like “what do you plan to do?” But, the real reason this is good is because you’re going to get to practice positive and negative dictionary form verbs while you’re learning this.
Now, there are actually a few of ways つもり is used that are all a tiny bit different. We’ll go over all of them, but most of our focus will be on the two most common ones, which will cover the above example sentences. The third way つもり is used will be looked at briefly, but it makes sense to go over it more later when you’ve learned another grammar point that you’ll need to know to really “get” it.
Let’s get started.