The Four Conditionals in Japanese

An Article from Xamuel.com Japanese is famous for having four, count em four different ways to say, if this then that. But actually, the fact is, this isnt that unusual at all, and Im going to show how the four different Japanese ways of saying if..then correspond exactly to four different English ways of saying if..then. I think that in the process, you might gain some insight into conditional statements in general, so the post should be helpful no matter what languages youre interested in. Note, when I write Japanese, Ill write it in both real Japanese, and in Romaji, the romanized version of Japanese. If you dont have Japanese fonts installed, the real Japanese text may look like boxes or squares or even just gibberish. In that case, just stick to the Romaji and ignore the real Japanese. There are some subtle differences between the four Japanese conditionals, and some are used more often than others to express certain types of ideas. Im not going into all that; Tae Kim does a good job of it in his guide. The point of this article is, rather, to understand the conditionals structurally, and to see theyre not all that different from English after all. Ill go through the four different Japanese conditionals in the same order that Tae Kim covers them in his guide. Let me emphasize, this article isnt meant as a guide to translating Japanese conditionals. As I said, there are subtle nuances involved, which Tae Kim covers in better depth. The point of this article is just to show how the four Japanese conditionals correspond to four English conditionals, and thereby show that it really isnt all that unusual to have four different conditionals after all. And in the process, you might be pleased to become aware of three secret English conditionals that we dont usually think of. FIRST CONDITIONAL: (TO) The first Japanese conditional is (to). Thats pronounced like the English word toe. By coincidence, the same word (to) also means and in Japanese. So Im rather surprised that people dont just equate the two. If you just treat this conditional as if it literally means and, then everything here makes perfect sense. Mechanically, the way you use this conditional, is you put the hypothesis on the left, then (to), then the conclusion on the right. EXAMPLE: Im gonna give a Japanese sentence, first in real Japanese then in Romaji. Then, Ill give two different English translations. The first English translation treats (to) like a conditional, which is apparently the standard way to treat it. The second translation treats (to) like it means and. Youll see the second translation, my translation, is better because it really simplifies the grammar of the word (to). With my method, you only need to learn it as and, and dont have to worry about the conditional business at all! kusuri wo nomu to naoru. (KEY: (kusuri) = medicine. (nomu) = drink. (naoru) = get better) Standard translation: If (you) drink medicine, (then youll) get better. My translation: Drink medicine and (youll) get better.

As you see, this conditional corresponds very directly with the invisible English conditional which uses the English word and. Perfect coincidence, since (to) also means and in Japanese! (NOTE: In Japanese theres actually another word for and, it is (soshite). The two are used in different places and are totally different words, even though both basically translate to and in English. Just so no one gets confused reading this) SECOND CONDITIONAL: (NARA) In my own limited experience, this conditional is the least often used one. With this conditional, you can pretty much directly translate it to if. And the only difference with the English if, is that the order is all messed up (get used to that in Japanese, everythings all jumbled around!) EXAMPLE: kusuri wo nomu nara naoru. Translation: If (you) drink medicine, (then youll) get better. This is a pretty straightforward conditional. Structurally its a lot like the English word if, except the orders different. THIRD CONDITIONAL: (BA) This conditional is the one thats least like any English conditional. And thats because its not actually a separate word at all, but rather a way of conjugating the hypothesis. Since its a way of conjugating the hypothesis, structurally it corresponds to the English conditional which you get by taking the gerund, that is, by putting the hypothesis in ing form. An example will make this clear. EXAMPLE: kusuri wo nomeba naoru. Here, the verb (nomu, drink) has been conjugated into (nomeba). Heres the standard translation, then another possibility Standard translation: If (you) drink medicine, (then youll) get better. My translation: Drinking medicine makes (you) get better. The advantage of this method is that it shows how there really is a conjugational conditional in English after all. We just arent as aware of it because we dont normally think of it as a conditional. In my translation, I conjugated the English verb drink into drinking. The disadvantage of this method is that if you applied it to some Japanese sentences, the resulting translation would sound very strange. FOURTH CONDITIONAL: (TARA), (DARA) This conditional is personally my favorite. Structurally its like the English word when. In fact, this conditional is one of the most confusing when its taught in the standard way, because it has dual meanings. Ill give two examples, one for each meaning, to illustrate this.

EXAMPLE 1: A Conditional Example kusuri wo nondara naoru. Here, again (nomu) has been conjugated, this time into (nonda) which is actually just the pasttense, drank. When (ra) is attached to the past tense, the resulting (nondara) can mean either, when (you) drink or when (you) drank. In other words, the past tense part may or may not be reflected in the translation, whichever way makes more sense. Standard translation: If (you) drink medicine, (then youll) get better. My translation: When (you) drink medicine, (you) get better. As you can see, Ive just revealed yet another secret English conditional: a conditional using the English word when. EXAMPLE 2: A Non-Conditional Example kusuri wo nondara naotta. The only difference from the previous example is that this time Ive also put (naoru) into its past tense, (naotta). Translation: When (you) drank medicine, (you) got better. Here, theres nothing conditional about it. Its a plain statement of fact. Structurally, the translation is very similar to my translation from the conditional example. That shows how my version is less confusing to learn. Usually, when this grammar is taught, its done in a rather confusing way, where sometimes the sentence gets translated into an ifthen and sometimes it gets translated into a when As Ive just shown, the when translation can work for both cases. CONCLUSION Theres no need to be all surprised and astounded that Japanese has (gasp!) four different conditionals. It turns out, so does English. To summarize the four English conditionals, here they are: 1. Drink medicine and youll get better. 2. If you drink medicine, then youll get better. 3. Drinking medicine makes you get better. 4. When you drink medicine, you get better. Whats more, I showed how, structurally, these correspond pretty well to the Japanese conditionals. Except for #3, the correspondences are shockingly accurate. The next thing Im wondering is, how well do these conditionals correspond with other languages besides English and Japanese?