"Not sure if I’m getting better at Japanese or not”
Hey guys! Sorry for the little break between posts. Today we’re covering another conditional! The ば conditional.
Like tara, ba can mean if or when, but most of the time it is used to mean “if”
To make the ba form, follow these rules:
Positive: ru verbs change the ru to re and add ba, u verbs change the u to e and add ba e.g. 食べる ＞ 食べれば、遊ぶ ＞ 遊べば
The exceptions are sureba (suru) and kureba (kuru)
Negative: Simply change nai to nakereba e.g. 話さない ＞ 話さなければ
I adjectives: drop the i and add kereba for the positive and kunakereba for the negative e.g. 暑ければ、寒くなければ
na adjectives: the positive is technically naraba, but it’s shortened to nara almost always – same with nouns! In the negative, nouns and na adjectives take denakereba e.g. 学生なら（ば）、便利なら（ば）
ba is not only conditional, but often also hypothetical. It is ba you would use for things like “If I won the lottery, I would buy a house” Using to or tara here would make it sound like you think this situation is tangible, or that you’re saying when this happens, like it’s a solid fact.
Ba comes with some pretty specific rules. I’ll be the first to confess that I don’t often have these in mind and it comes down mostly to what is expressed in German as Sprachgefühl, or an intuitive feeling. It’s been a good few years since I learnt this stuff, so even I had to remind myself of some of these rules! In some cases, misusing ba will just sound plain wrong, like how tara doesn’t fit in the example above, but you should be patient and learn from your mistakes. When constructing a ba sentence, keep in mind that if the subject is the same in both parts of the sentence, you:
> Can’t express your will or desire in the second sentence e.g.日本に行けば、秋葉原に行きたいです ｘ (Wrong because you can’t express your will or desire with a verb and ば. In this case, the desire is to visit Akihabara if/when you go to Japan)
> Can’t express a request or invitation e.g. 東京に到着すれば、電話してください ｘ (Please call me if/when you arrive in Tokyo) This is wrong because you cannot pair an action (in this case, arriving) with a request when using ば
> Can’t express prohibition or permission
[By “same subject in both parts” I mean that these rules don’t apply in cases such as this: 上川さんが行けば、僕も行きます。 See how we used a verb here? This is okay because we have two subjects: Kamikawa-san and myself]
These rules apply ONLY if you’re using an action verb. If you’re using an i adjective, negative form, or iru/aru, it’s okay to do the above. That’s why the following phrase is okay:
わからないことがあれば、聞いてください。 If there is anything you do not understand, please ask me.
Also, the condition you are expressing cannot have happened yet, so you’ll never use the ba conditional to talk about the past. Though I’m not sure if it’s a rule per se, ba seems to deal primarily with positive outcomes.
There are other uses of ba that produce different grammar, but we will cover those separately. They include:
> ba yokatta (briefly covered before, I believe) meaning “I wish/I should have done X”
> ba...hodo meaning “the more you x the more you y”
> ba...ii/daijoubu meaning “it will be good if you do x”
We’ll get to those in good time, but, believe it or not, we still have two more conditionals to cover: to and nara
Please get in touch if any of the above is unclear. Happy studying~
