If You Practice

“If you want to move to a new level in your life, you must break through your comfort zone and practice doing things that are not comfortable.” - T. Harv Eker

We have three different things to practice: Verbs, Adjectives, and Nouns. They all have different (though similar) rules, though the “if/then statements” are pretty much the same across the board. The things you should try to keep in your mind as you go through:

Past Tense Casual → たら

[Something something if] + [then something else]

If these two things are in your mind, you should be okay. Also, make sure you understand those two things up above – if you don’t, you might want to go back and review the previous 5 or so pages then come back.

For the practice, we’ll go over some examples first and then I’ll give you some prompts to help you to come up with some of your own たら sentences. The goal will be to get you closer and closer towards using たら on your own, coming up with your own sentences. After that, we’ll look at a couple of grammar-specific たら variations that will help you to practice what you’ve learned (and teach you something new).

Examples Practice

Let’s examine more examples, just to get you warmed up. I’ll talk about each one in some detail so you can understand why each sentence works (and thus be able to create your own!).

a１０月　だったら　わたし　は　あたたかい　ところ　へ　いきます
When it’s October, I will go to a warm place

There are two sentences here: 1) １０月だったら (when it’s October…) and 2) わたし　は　あたたかい　ところ　へ　いきます (I will go to a warm place) where あたたかい ところ is (warm place). This is one of those “certainty” たら statements, where たら is “when” and not “if” because it’s certain that “when it’s October, I will go to a warm place.” You could do something less certain, though, and then it would be “if.”

aさむかったら　わたし　は　あたたかい　ところ　へ　いきます
If it’s cold, I will go to a warm place

This one is less certain. We don’t know if it’s going to be cold or not, but if it does, then I’m going to a warm place. Whew.

aさむい　ところ　だったら　わたし　は　あたたかい　ところ　へ　いきます
If it’s a cold place, I will go to a warm place.

Another example, this time with a noun+だったら.

Now let’s look at some questions – you’ll be creating some of your own sentences using prompts (and I’ll be providing example answers to help you out and help you to study more).

Questions

I’m going to provide a prompt, and you’re going to try to provide an answer. Then, when you provide an answer, take a look at the example answer and compare. They’re not necessarily going to be similar in any way, but there should be some crossover you can use to help check what you’ve created.

If it’s English… Example Answer →

If it’s Bobby…Example Answer →

If it’s noisy…Example Answer →

If I drink beer…Example Answer →

If it’s tasty / good tasting… Example Answer →

If we go to see a movie…Example Answer →

If I want a game…Example Answer →

How were your answers? Don’t worry, there’s more practice where that came from!

たら Practice Sheet

Now it’s time to learn a couple of new things and practice this some more. Remember 〜たい form? We’ll be doing that just as soon as you learn something else (which we can use with 〜たい form).

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