Actions And Consequences
“Happiness is not a reward / it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment / it is a result.” - Robert Green
Now that you’ve learned the first half of the たら sentences, let’s look at the second half. This part is the consequence, the result. If you do something, something else will occur. That sort of thing. Right now we’re here:
aすし を たべたら…
If (I/you) eat sushi…
The second part comes after. The pattern looks like this:
[If something occurs] [this will happen]
You can think of the sections in the [brackets] like their own sentences or statements because basically they are.
aすし を たべたら 。。。 あぶない よ！
If you eat sushi … it’s dangerous!
You’d of course want to take out the dot-dot-dot part, but I’m just putting that up there to separate out the two sides a little bit.
aボビーさん が きたら えいが を みます
If Bobby comes I will watch a movie.
aわたし は とうきょう へ いったら、でんしゃ で いきます
If I go to Tokyo, I will go by train.
a１１じ に なったら かえります
If/When It becomes 11, I will return home.
You might have noticed with the third example here that we used “when” along with / instead of “if.” There’s some rule to this.
If the subject is uncertain, たら means “if”
If the subject is certain, たら means “when.”
In the examples above, 11 o’clock was a certainty. When it becomes 11, I will go home. We know 11 will happen (unless, perhaps, we were expecting the end of the world, then by all means translate it as “if”) at some point, so we say “when.” The other examples are less certain. If I go to Tokyo and If Bobby comes. We don’t know if either will for sure happen.
Now, technically I’d say they’re both “if” no matter what, but in English, “if” just doesn’t work for the sentences with higher certainty, so we have to translate it to when. It’s just polite in Japanese to be ambiguous, so there’s lots of things like this that don’t quite translate right in English.
At this point, we’re going to move on to the adjectives, because they’re pretty similar to verbs. Then we’ll look at nouns (which are pretty similar to な adjectives). See how that works? Connections! After all that’s done, we’ll practice them all!