LEARN + JAPANESE / Note 124 JLPT N4
If It Happens (たら)
たら attaches after a verb, adjective, or noun’s plain past た-form and means “if” or “when,” setting up a condition for whatever follows. It’s the most flexible of Japanese’s conditionals, comfortable with one-time events, hypotheticals, and polite suggestions alike.
If you have time tomorrow, want to go out?
If the weather's good on Sunday, want to go to the beach?
In Real Life
Built literally on the past tense, 起きたら, 買わなかったら, 高かったら, but the meaning is entirely about the future or a hypothetical, not the past. Combined with ませんか at the end, たら becomes a natural way to float a plan that depends on something else working out first.
What do you do if it turns out to be inconvenient for the manager?
If you finish your homework tomorrow, want to grab tea?
In Real Life
どうしますか after たら asks what someone’s plan is for a given scenario, “what do you do if X happens,” useful for talking through contingencies rather than committing to a single outcome.
Vocabulary
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| design | |
| convenience, circumstances | |
| to be too many | |
| worry | |
| to finish | |
| jazz | |
| next time | |
| sea, beach | |
| art museum | |
| condition | |
| hypothesis, assumption | |
| to go out | |
| to invite | |
| plan, schedule | |
| result | |
| case, situation | |
| to be decided | |
| situation, circumstances | |
| unpredictable | |
| to change |