たら versus なら

[jkid]

So I kind of understand the difference but not enough that I am comfortable with which to use in a given situation.

The grammar bank says this about なら:

"Nara" is the hypothetical form of the "da" copula. Nara-conditional introduces the conditions under which a given hypothetical statement will hold true.

The difficulty I am having here is, aren't all If statements hypothetical? For example, "If I go to the shops I will buy bread". To me, that statement is saying "If [at some point] I go to the shops I will buy bread." I'm not really getting the difference.

The example sentence provided is:

もし私のことが好きなら明日6時に学校の前にいてください。
Moshi watashi no koto ga suki nara asu roku-ji ni gakkō no mae ni ite kudasai.
If you like me, be in front of the school by 6 in the morning.

Why なら and not たら in this case?

[wccrawford]

Edit: I've removed this to prevent confusing anyone else, as I obviously didn't understand it right.

[Psy]

I hate the way texts fail to explain this clearly. I'm pretty sure the introductions to these concepts I had in my first books is what made it so hard for me to learn distinguish between them. At any rate, to use the age-old example of don't drink and drive:

乗るなら飲むな
飲んだら乗るな
noru nara nomu na
nondara noru na

なら can be taken as "assuming if," which is purely hypothetical. You don't know if it's going to happen at all, and as such you're just making a statement "if you''re going to be.." with plenty of uncertainty and no real presumption along with it. In the first example, "noru nara nomu na," "assuming you're going to drive... don't drink (before you drive)!." This assumes part 2 happens first. Obviously it doesn't matter if you drink after you're finished driving, so 乗ったら飲むな wouldn't make much sense. The second example, "nondara noru na" assumes the drinking happens first, and comes with the presumption that you've had something to drink at some point and thus, afterwords, don't drive. "nondara --> (after) noru na." "don't drive... when you've had a drink."

以上です

[hatch_jp]

I hope the following sites can be helpful in understanding.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/conditional.html
http://www.language-global.com/lglbbs/i ... topic=37.0

[jkid]

Thank you all for your replies. I can tell this going to take me some serious time to comprehend.

[Javizy]

You could complicate the question more by asking what's the difference between なら and ば, たら and と, or たら、と, and 時?

I really think you should own a copy of A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. The explanations on when to use these different points are pretty in-depth, but it's the comparison sections that make it so invaluable for things like this. I refer to all three volumes all the time.

Realistically, it's going to take a fair bit of exposure to understand and use closely related points like this without error, but a decent explanation is definitely the first step towards that.

[jkid]

I really think you should own a copy of A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

Javizy-san,

I will be purchasing it soon.

Psy-san,
Regarding your example I was discussing this with my sensei trying to get a better understanding and the complicated things further for me by saying that replacing なら with たら is fine within the example of 乗るなら飲むな that you provided. Do you agree with this?

[Psy]

I really think you should own a copy of A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

Javizy-san,

I will be purchasing it soon.

Psy-san,
Regarding your example I was discussing this with my sensei trying to get a better understanding and the complicated things further for me by saying that replacing なら with たら is fine within the example of 乗るなら飲むな that you provided. Do you agree with this?

Assuming your teacher is Japanese, i haven't a choice but to agree with it. It goes against the differences I learned when I studied the expression, but until I'm able to converse and comprehend as well in Japanese as I can in my native language, I can only offer impressions and experiences rather than hard facts/real usage from he perspective of a native.

Anyhow, upon asking the almighty Google先生, while 乗ったら飲むな actually comes up with more matches, upon moving to page 3 or 4 (and onwards), I found that the search results were no longer a continuous expression but rather split about multiple phrases. In contrast, a search for 乗るなら飲むな finds full matches for the string from page 20 and beyond. As such I maintain the accuracy of my explanation, but this doesn't mean there aren't alternative usages of which I"m unaware. I won't question that your teacher's explanations are correct, however I would ask him to explain, in detail, the difference in nuance, for I can promise you that there is one.

[Javizy]

The nuance is quite different, so I wouldn't exactly call them interchangeable. Like Psy already explained, なら is suppositional, so when you say 乗るなら飲むな, it should be reasonable to assume that the guy is driving to the venue; maybe he told you he is, maybe he usually does. It's better to force the translation 'if it is true that...' until you understand it better: 'if it is true that you're driving, don't drink!'.

たら is sequential; when the action in the たら clause is completed, the following action happens without fail, otherwise you shouldn't be using たら. Due to the suppositional nature of なら, there's no saying the second clause will ever take place, so in many cases only one or the other can be used. 乗ったら飲むな is a lot more straightforward in meaning 'if/when you drive, don't drink!'. In this case, you can try to force the translation 'if/when たら-clause is satisfied...': 'if your driving there is satisfied, my saying 'don't drink!' will take place.

Since the second clause in these examples is a command, it makes it a bit harder to understand. The dictionary explains all the cases that they can be used in, so it'll give you a much better impression of what they mean.

[jaboyak]

I get -tara. No problems there.

I thought I understood -nara, but now I'm out to dry again...

Can you give me some more examples, perhaps?