The Four Conditionals In Japanese

Japanese is famous for having four, count 'em four different ways to say, "if this... then that." But actually, the fact is, this isn't that unusual at all, and I'm 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 you're interested in.

Note, when I write Japanese, I'll write it in both real Japanese, and in Romaji, the romanized version of Japanese. If you don't 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. I'm 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 they're not all that different from English after all.

I'll go through the four different Japanese conditionals in the same order that Tae Kim covers them in his guide.

Let me emphasize, this article isn't 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 isn't 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 don't usually think of.


FIRST CONDITIONAL: と (TO)

The first Japanese conditional is と (to). That's pronounced like the English word "toe". By coincidence, the same word と (to) also means "and" in Japanese. So I'm rather surprised that people don't 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 と (to), then the conclusion on the right.

EXAMPLE: I'm gonna give a Japanese sentence, first in real Japanese then in Romaji. Then, I'll give two different English translations. The first English translation treats と (to) like a "conditional", which is apparently the standard way to treat it. The second translation treats と (to) like it means "and". You'll see the second translation, my translation, is better because it really simplifies the grammar of the word と (to). With my method, you only need to learn it as "and", and don't have to worry about the conditional business at all!

薬を飲むと治る。
kusuri wo nomu to naoru.

(KEY: 薬 (kusuri) = "medicine". 飲む (nomu) = "drink". 治る (naoru) = "get better")

Standard translation: "If (you) drink medicine, (then you'll) get better."

My translation: "Drink medicine and (you'll) get better."

As you see, this conditional corresponds very directly with the "invisible" English conditional which uses the English word "and". Perfect coincidence, since と (to) also means "and" in Japanese!

(NOTE: In Japanese there's actually another word for "and", it is そして (soshite). The two are used in different places and are totally different words, even though both basically translate to "and" in English. Just so noone gets confused reading this)


SECOND CONDITIONAL: なら (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, everything's all jumbled around!)

EXAMPLE:

薬を飲むなら治る。
kusuri wo nomu nara naoru.

Translation: "If (you) drink medicine, (then you'll) get better."

This is a pretty straightforward conditional. Structurally it's a lot like the English word "if", except the order's different.


THIRD CONDITIONAL: ば (BA)

This conditional is the one that's least like any English conditional. And that's because it's not actually a separate word at all, but rather a way of conjugating the hypothesis. Since it's 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:

薬を飲めば治る。
kusuri wo nomeba naoru.

Here, the verb 飲む (nomu, "drink") has been conjugated into 飲めば (nomeba). Here's the standard translation, then another possibility...

Standard translation: "If (you) drink medicine, (then you'll) 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 aren't as aware of it because we don't 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: たら (TARA), だら (DARA)

This conditional is personally my favorite. Structurally it's like the English word "when". In fact, this conditional is one of the most confusing when it's taught in the standard way, because it has dual meanings. I'll give two examples, one for each meaning, to illustrate this.

EXAMPLE 1: A Conditional Example

薬を飲んだら治る。
kusuri wo nondara naoru.

Here, again 飲む (nomu) has been conjugated, this time into 飲んだ (nonda) which is actually just the past-tense, "drank". When ら (ra) is attached to the past tense, the resulting 飲んだら (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 you'll) get better."

My translation: "When (you) drink medicine, (you) get better."

As you can see, I've just revealed yet another "secret" English conditional: a conditional using the English word "when".

EXAMPLE 2: A Non-Conditional Example

薬を飲んだら治った。
kusuri wo nondara naotta.

The only difference from the previous example is that this time I've also put 治る (naoru) into its past tense, 治った (naotta).

Translation: "When (you) drank medicine, (you) got better."

Here, there's nothing conditional about it. It's 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, it's done in a rather confusing way, where sometimes the sentence gets translated into an "if...then" and sometimes it gets translated into a "when..." As I've just shown, the "when..." translation can work for both cases.


CONCLUSION

There's 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 you'll get better.
2. If you drink medicine, then you'll get better.
3. Drinking medicine makes you get better.
4. When you drink medicine, you get better.

What's more, I showed how, structurally, these correspond pretty well to the Japanese conditionals. Except for #3, the correspondences are shockingly accurate.

The next thing I'm wondering is, how well do these conditionals correspond with other languages besides English and Japanese?

Here are some other articles I've written.
My Trip To The Fujitaisekiji Buddhist Organization
Studying Foreign Language Proper Nouns
What Is Karma? Is There Really Any Karmic Justice?