Is there any other meaning for ば form besides conditional?
I can`t figure out the conditional meaning in some Japanese sentences.
For example, this is a sentence of “Stay With Me” song from Miki Matsubara
グレイのジャケットに
見覚えがある コーヒーのしみ
相変らずなのね
ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば
The last sentence is translated as “the two of us reflect in the window display” in a lyrics website. What is 映れば meaning in this sentence?
In the game “Yu Yu Hakusho: Makai no Tobira” for Game Boy. Yuusuke says after his mother wakes him up:
ん~ なんだよ！ うれせーな！！
おきればいいんだろう おきれば
What about おきれば? What would be the meaning in this context.
First time posting here I hope it’s correct, sorry any English mistakes I’m not native speaker.
Are there any lyrics after ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば? Normally the result clause follows a conditional clause like this one, so it could be you’re just missing the rest of the context. If there isn’t anything after this, it’s good to keep in mind that songs will often use sentence fragments or take artistic liberty with rearranging clauses.
ん~ なんだよ！ うれせーな！！
おきればいいんだろう おきれば
This is like “ugh what the hell, shut up! If I wake up / As long as I wake up (おきれば) then it’s all good (いいんだろう), right?”
Basically he’s mad that his mother keeps pestering him after he’s “already awake” as it were.
As Phyro mentioned, my guess is that ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば is a fragment. She might have completed the thought with 嬉しいになる。(suggesting that if they (二人, her and her presumed love interest) were to find themselves reflected in a cafe window sippin’ coffee, she would be happy). Hopefully, I’m getting the gist of the context right.
In general, one common follow up of a ‘ば’ conditional is 'いけない’. Most commonly it follows the negative ’ば’ specifically.
For example: 食べなければ いけない, directly translating to ‘if (I) do not eat, It won’t go’, or ‘if (I) do not eat, that won’t fly’. Awkward English when literally translated.
What it more cleanly translates to is ‘I must eat’, or ‘I have to eat’. You could think of it completely as:
‘if (I) do not eat, it will be no good, so, I must eat’.
Once I compressed that pattern as kind of a set phrase for ‘must’, I kind of forgot that 'ば’ was still a conditional here. It is, it’s just obscured in the common translation.
I see. It`s still difficult to me to figure it out, but if there isn’t any other meaning to the ば form, I think I just have to get more familiar with it so.
About the music, after the sentence comes the chorus, so I thought there would be no connection between them. But the next two verses of the music are:
相変らずなのね ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば
Stay with me…
真夜中のドアをたたき 帰らないでと泣いた
You can take a look at this (apparently) official music video with the lyrics to get an idea of what it might mean:
(There are subtitles in English as well.)
Assuming that when the singer chooses to lengthen certain lines has special meaning…
My original thoughts on what it might mean:
相変らずなのね ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば
This is an inverted sentence, with the usual sentence order being ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば 相変らずなのね = ‘if the two of us were reflected in the show window, it would be the same as always, right?’
In this case, ば just means ‘if’, even if ‘if only’ is also a possible translation.
After looking at the ‘official’ translation of the lyrics, and assuming the translations provided are mostly correct… :
相変らずなのね ショーウィンドウに 二人映れば
Maybe this actually means ‘It’s/you’re/we’re the same as ever, eh? If only the two of us were reflected in the show window…’
In this case, ば would be translated as ‘if only’.
Ultimately, I think the two express roughly the same ideas, but the second probably feels a bit more wistful as a translation. Either way, the song seems to be sung by persona replaying a break-up in her head, so I think either translation fits the tone of the song. I lean towards my original translation because I feel like 「相変わらずなのね」shouldn’t be left on its own since the singer barely paused after singing it. The second verse is split into two connected halves as well, so assuming the structure is the same throughout the song, I’d bet on my original translation. The main question is whether or not it’s common to use something after なのね, but I can tell you that I’ve seen a lot of inverted sentences, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if this turned out to be one too.
