116 CHAPTER 3. MORE GRAMMAR
needing to pass first.
In less simple terms, the construction is a (hypothetical) future
past. That is, it sets up a hypothetical future in which some action has
already been taken, about which comments are then made. Looking at the
previous sentences using this explanation, we get some rather conceptual
translations:
”In a future where you are walking around town, you see lots of in-
teresting things””In a future in which I have spent 2 hours doing (something), I will
(then) go study.”This explanation doesn’t quite work for noun conditionals, which
use. This is the for the copula , rather than for the conditional
form of the helper verb of past tense, and rather than a hypothetical future
past, is essentially just a plain if/then:
”I’m sure the teacher will understand.”
literally: ”If the teacher, understand.”There are a few more conditionals in Japanese, so (much like with
”and” and the ) when translating from Japanese to English, translat-
ing with ”if ... then ...” is fine, but translating an English sentence that
has an if/then construction to Japanese requires figuring out exactly which
style of if/then is being used. For instance, ”If you walk around town, you
will see many interesting sights” is an example of a conditional pertaining
to a current situation, ”If you get fired, I’ll quit too” is a conditional per-
taining to a hypothetical situation, and ”If you’re late for the exam, you
fail it.” is actually not a conditional but a factual statment (”if A, then B as
well”).
Of these, the first uses as conditional, the second uses the hy-
pothetical construction - (explained later in this chapter) and the third
uses the simultaneous action marker, (possibly the most abused particle
by beginning students), explained in the chapter on particles.