{{first_name | みんな}}さん、こんにちは ☕

Four ways to say "if" in Japanese. You've studied all of them. You use one.

たら. Every time. Because some guide told you it's "the safe choice." And honestly? It usually works — until someone asks why you picked that one, and your brain just... stalls.

There's one question that sorts all four. But first — why has every explanation you've read so far failed?

That's the whole problem in one sentence.

Every textbook, every Tae Kim page, every YouTube breakdown treats these as four separate grammar points. Four chapters. Four sets of rules. Four chances to get confused.

But Japanese doesn't have four words for "if." It has four words for four different kinds of consequence. The reason you're stuck isn't that you haven't studied enough — it's that nobody framed them as one system.

We know because we lived it. Mid-conversation with a tutor, trying to say "if you go straight, you'll find the station" — we used と and then added a polite request. Dead silence. Then: "You can't do that with と." We'd studied all four forms. Passed the textbook quiz. And in the moment it mattered, we had zero idea which one to grab. Spent the next week reading every explanation we could find. Four chapters later, more confused than before.

The thing that finally cracked it wasn't another chart. It was one question.

This sounds like a linguistics dissertation. It's not. You need one question and about five minutes.

English uses "if" like a Swiss Army knife — one tool, any situation. Japanese uses four specialized tools. Each one describes a specific relationship between what happens first and what follows.

The sorting question: "What kind of consequence am I describing?"

→ Automatic result that always happens? → と

→ Specific event triggers what comes next? → たら

→ Condition needs to be true first? → ば

→ Responding to something already on the table? → なら

Four buckets. One question. Let's see them side by side.

Same word. Same concept. Four completely different angles on what "if" means. That's what the decision tree sorts.

と — The vending machine.

Same input, same output. Every time.

Not just natural laws — instructions and habits too.

But と has a sneaky second life.

One-time, past tense, but still automatic. You didn't choose to find the cat. Common in storytelling. The vending machine covers ~90% of cases. Discovery is the main exception.

たら — The timeline pin.

A specific moment happens, then something follows.

Here's what most guides don't tell you: たら is also the most flexible conditional overall. It works for habits, hypotheticals, all kinds of situations. "Specific event trigger" is what makes たら different from the other three — not its only job. That's why teachers call it the safe default. Fewest restrictions of any conditional.

ば — The prerequisite checklist.

Is the condition true? Then the result unlocks.

なら — "Given what you just said."

Someone mentions something. You respond.

なら also works when you're supposing a scenario:

Core logic: you're framing an assumption and giving your take.

(Honestly, we drafted this next part three different ways before landing on the simplest version. Nuance is like that — easy to feel, hard to explain.)

The nuance swap — feel why it matters

Now try swapping と and たら:

Neither is wrong. But と is the better choice for "this is how things work" statements. たら loses that automatic, no-exceptions feeling.

Most advice says one is right and the other is wrong. That's not how conditionals work. It's about which nuance you want to carry — not which form passes a grammar test.

And for the edge cases that don't fit neatly? Even advanced learners default to たら in conversation and clean it up in writing. There are 200-comment Reddit threads where native speakers argue about which conditional fits a specific sentence. The core uses are stable and learnable. The edge cases are genuinely debated. That's not a reason to panic — it's a reason to nail the core first.

Sort these sentences. Which conditional is being used, and which bucket does it fit? Ask yourself: "What kind of consequence is this?"

(Answers drop in next week's brew — try sorting them first!)

Starter: Sort sentences 1–3 using the decision tree.

Standard: Sort all 6, then write 2 of your own — one と and one たら.

Challenge: Sort all 6, write 4 original sentences (one per conditional), using real scenarios from your week.

You'll know you did it when: You can explain why each answer fits — not just guess the right one.

If you read this far, you now have something most conditional explanations never give you — a decision tree that fits in your head. Not four chapters. Not four videos. One question, four buckets.

For: N3-N2 learners who want a deeper look at ば — the trickiest of the four.

Use: Read Tofugu's ば conditional breakdown (15-minute read). Focus on their examples of when ば sounds natural vs. forced.

Why it helps: ば has the most restrictions of the four conditionals. Tofugu covers the edge cases our decision tree flags but can't fully unpack in one issue. Pair it with today's framework and ば stops feeling random.

Hit reply and tell us: which conditional do you overuse?

(We already know it's たら. But tell us anyway.)

We read every response. And if you want to test yourself — go sort those six sentences right now. Five minutes. We'll be here when you get back.

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