ならWere it, If, If it's the case, As for (Conditional)

Most Recent Replies (20 in total)

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  nekoyama

  もし can be used with hypotheticals to reinforce that nuance. Reinforcing that something is hypothetical means you’re less certain about it. For example, you’ll often see もし in expressions like “もしよかったら…” because the speaker doesn’t want to presume how the other party feels.

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  If we’re comparing なら and たら only, then the biggest difference is that the sequence of events is reversed.
  In “AたらB”, event B occurs after event A. “Once/when/if A happens, then B.”
  In “AならB”, event A can occur after event B but not before it. “If A is/were/will be the case, then B”.

  I found this example on Amazon (as a sticker):
  

  飲んだら乗るな - don’t drive if you drank something
  乗るなら飲むな - if you’re going to drive, don’t drink

  From a learne...

• 

  onekun

  This reply is an excellent resource, I think I got the basic difference down, but I’ll reference it if I ever get confused. Bookmarked.

  So would you use と and ば instead? How would you construct that?

  I would ask what the nuance is with と vs ば, but it’d fit better in one of their respective threads and I could almost infinitely ask about nuance so I don’t want to kill you with grammar questions, haha.

• 

  nekoyama

  I’ll just steal the example from the page I linked:

  夏休みになると、母の実家によく行ったもんだ。
  夏休みになれば、母の実家によく行ったもんだ。

  This is something the speaker used to do often during summer vacation - not just once.

  (There is a separate grammar point for how もの is used in this sentence to express something that used to happen in the past.)

  It’s not strictly necessary to use a conditional - e.g. the たものだ grammar point’s examples just use 夏休みは etc.

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  In general terms, when both ば and と can be used, the nuance difference is that ば focuses on the condition (and how to make it true) while と focuses on the result.