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Mastering the Japanese Conditional form: A complete overview ：Learn to use たら, ば, と, and ならto master the conditional form in Japanese.  

Hey guys, welcome to today’s online Japanese lesson on mastering the conditional form In Japanese. The conditional form is what it says on the tin really, a condition. In English we use the term “if” to express conditions. If you be a good boy, you can have some sweets, If you press this button, the monitor will turn on, if go to Japan, you can see the temples. We have it pretty easy in English, “If” kinda takes care of everything, but In Japanese, it’s a whole different ball game.  

In Japanese you have many different ways to express different types of conditions. Today we are doing to be focusing on the main four, Tara, Ba, Nara and To. So, if you are ready to get started, let’s begin!

Learning how to use なら Nara to express conditions in Japanese

You use nara なら as the contextual conditional form. A good way to remember this is to think of it as “If that’s the case” or “given that”. With this one you always need to state the context in which the condition will occur. Let’s take a look at an example sentence.

友達が行くなら私も行く。 

Tomodachi ga iku nara, watashi mo iku

If it’s the case that my friend goes, I will go too.

Do you see how this works? You need to state the context of the condition first.

ベンさんが言うなら心配することはない。

Ben san ga iu nara shinpai suru koto wa nai

If Ben says so, there is no need to worry.

We will now move on to the next conditional form which is たら tara.

Learning how to use たら to express conditions in Japanese

Tara is used much like how we use the English “If” and is generally the safe bet to go for if you can’t figure out which conditional to use. To form a “tara” sentence take a verb, change it to the past tense, then add ら.

Also, when using だ da, simply change it to だった dattara.

Let’s have a look at an example sentence.

暇だったら、会いましょう

Hima dattara, aimashou

If I’m free, lets meet up.

Learning how to use と to express conditions in Japanese

To と is the “If” that you use to express a natural consequence. For example, If you turn on a light, it will get bright, If you close your eyes, it will be dark, If you punch that wall, you’re going to hurt your hand. It’s all things that happened naturally as a consequence / condition of doing something.

To create a sentence with と all you need to do is add it after a plain form verb. For example:

学校に行くと先生にあえます
 Gakkou ni Iku to Sensei ni aemasu
 If you go to school, you can see your teachers.

Of course this is something that would happen naturally, going to school would result in you seeing your teachers. Let’s take a look at another example sentence.

学校に行くと先生が見えます
 Gakkou ni Iku to Sensei ga miemasu
 If you go to school, you can see your teachers.

Of course this is something that would happen naturally, going to school would result in you seeing your teachers. Let’s take a look at another example sentence.

あまり食べないと瘦せる。
 Amari tabenai to yaseru
 If you don’t eat much, you will lose weight.

Of course this is a natural condition of not eating much, you are going to lose weight. Let’s now take a look at the final conditional segment, ば.

Learning how to use ば to express conditions in Japanese

Our final conditional form is ば this is just a plain old conditional form that means if. To create the ba forms the rules are as follows:

For nouns and na-adjectives, add であれば.

For i-adjectives remove the last い and replace withければ.

With verbs, change the last vowel sound to the equivalent e vowel sound and add ば.

Here is an example sentence so you can see it in action.

私はお金があればうれしいですね。
 Watashi wa okane ga ureshii desu ne
 If I had money it would be nice right!

So there we have it guys, there are lots of different ways of expressing “If” in Japanese as they all have slightly different meanings to them, but now you should have a clearer understanding as to which one to choose in any given situation.

Like everything it takes practice to get it right so don’t be afraid of a little trial and error. Practice with just one first and once you’ve completely mastered that one, then move on to the next one. Don’t rush things as you can get easily confused and overwhelmed for sure. We would suggest starting with なら first as this is one of the easiest to implement right away.

We’d like to say a massive thank you for reading today’s online Japanese lesson and we hope you gained a lot from it. If you have any questions or new ideas for content that you’d like us to write about, please do get in touch. Until next time, またね.

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