Basic Structure, conjugation practice

That’s correct!

若かったら would be “If I was young” and 若くなったら would be “if/when I become young” :slight_smile:

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Mindfucking man :sweat_smile:

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Does that mean I failed in my quest to explain it and just made you more confused? :sweat_smile:

if that’s the case I can try to explain it a bit more clearly maybe

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haha no, just all this conjugation in general is alot.

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I feel like this is missing the nuance of the ‘yet’ in the English.

Something like まだそのやまをのぼろうとしたことがありません feels closer to me.
I’m not confident about the placement of the まだ though. そのやまをまだのぼろうとしたことがありません feels like should also work, but with different emphasis.

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That’s because I forgot about it until after I wrote my already lengthy explanation! :sweat:

But yeah a まだ… somewhere… (I also started second guessing myself as to where I should put it. My gut told me その山はまだ登ろうとしたことがない。But I think like you said, or even その山を登ろうとしたことはまだない would work too…)

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While I’m not the best at grammar, what I’ve learned as the ‘haven’t done something yet’ form would be the ‘て-form +ない’ conjugation. Would this also work with this sentence, or would it not? I was thinking it might not work due to the ‘tried’ part of the sentence, but I’m not sure.

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I think you may be confusing things here… I only know ~てない as the more colloquial short version of ~ていない (the negative of ~ている).

DISCLAIMER: ~ている and its negative has a bunch of nuances I’m still not comfortable with, but it does mean, among other things, to do (or not do) something currently or habitually.

If it is indeed this ~て(い)る/~て(い)ない you’re referring to, then, のぼってない or のぼっていない would be more something like not climbing (currently or habitually).

And のぼろうとして(い)ない would be “not attempting to climb”.

Buy maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here… if so, could you give a source where this grammar is explained or some other example where it’s used?

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Yeah, that’s the conjugation I’m talking about. The way I’ve learned it is that it can mean that you’re not doing that thing currently, but that it can also mean that you haven’t done that thing yet.

The source comes from this video by Japanese Ammo, which I use for most of my grammar knowledge due to the lack of a textbook.

You did say that you aren’t very familiar with the nuances of て(い)る and て(い)ない, so it’s understandable that you didn’t know what I was talking about and I’m sorry if I confused you.

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That seems like a more immediate “haven’t done yet” like “I haven’t talked to the boss yet”. Unless I’m missing something.

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(Pssst, you made that same mistake, omitting the た, there)

This is often in combination with まだ and has a strong implication that you were planning to do it, all already started, but haven’t finished, yet.

In the case of the sentence here I would go for まだその山を登っ(てみ)たことがありません。

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Interesting… I suddenly feel less sure about my own choice to go with 登ろうとした… but my thinking was that 登ってみた would give more of a “tried out mountain climbing” vibe, but thinking again I feel like it kinda sounds better still…

(I guess I don’t want to give people too much bad and wrong advice here… :sweat_smile:)

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Fixing now. :sweat_smile: :rofl:

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I feel like your choice was good, too, might be better, I am just more comfortable using てみる. Have not internalized ようとする as much. I feel the general feeling of:

is negated by using the specific ‘this mountain’. But that might just be me. I’ll check some grammar resources on 〜てみる対〜ようとする.

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I feel that there are definite benefits to us students helping each other out with grammar (teaching is a great way to learn, the native members of the WK team couldn’t cope with answering all the grammar questions etc), but I also worry a bit that I might get someone off on a bad start if and when I’m explaining something I’ve actually gotten wrong :slight_smile:

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Checked Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Could be that the 〜たことがある grammar point muddles things here, but 〜ようとする in past tense implicates that whatever was tried didn’t work out, whereas 〜てみる in past tense implies that whatever was tried, worked out in the end.

Also, 〜ようとする means simply to try something, but 〜てみる means to ‘make an attempt at something to see what it is like or what will happen’.

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Well… that does seem difficult to combine with never having done it :slight_smile:

I just did a quick google, and it seems nobody writes ~おうとしたことがない/ありません (less than 10 hits each!) while ~てみたことがない/ありません seem quite common!

So I guess my advice was indeed a bit wonky…

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だよね :sweat_smile:

I often feel like telling a beginner to not get too caught up in difficult grammar. Get a good grasp of the basics first. But my frame of reference for basics is Minna no Nihongo book I(&II to a lesser extent), and that is not the same path as most people who self study, take. I am mostly a classroom learner, so very structured in basic–> advanced grammar.

I do sometimes get super curious and really want to understand some particular sentence or grammar at an early stage, even if it’s too difficult for me, and then I just forget it anyway because I can’t really wrap my head around it.

Then later on, looking back, I realize that I just learned it anyway somehow and I probably shouldn’t have put that much effort into something I still wasn’t ready for.

So I think that if saying you haven’t tried to climb a mountain means you have to learn four hitherto unknown grammar constructs then it’s pretty much OK to just let it go at this stage if it feels overwhelming :slight_smile:

With Japanese I did go through basic grammar pretty early on, but with other languages than I’ve mostly been learning from exposure and sentences mined from native materials.

I guess this means the grammar points come in sort of random order, but you still tend to get a grasp on the basics first, and if an anki sentence doesn’t make sense to me even with the translation I can just delete it and move on so…

I kinda enjoy learning more colloquial stuff naturally at an early stage (like with French I noticed almost immediately that in normal conversation the “ne” part fo the negation “ne ~ pas” is optional… something a friend who had taken several French classes still didn’t know), but I guess that I also think that it makes logical sense to learn the correct way before you learn how to bend the rules. :slight_smile:

Oh dear, I’ll stop derailing the topic now!

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This makes my descriptivist hackles rise! If the resources don’t teach how the language is being used in the real world, the resources are the ones that are wrong! :triumph:
/pendantry

P.S. I guess there is a “correct” French, since they have a standards body for it. I don’t think anyone actually speaks it in reality though.

I’ll stop derailing as well

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