Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Of Swords and Shields: Part 2/Grammar
The volitional form; plain tense[edit]
You probably already studied the volitional form (Let's ~) in the polite tense (～ましょう)
- (If not, check out Tae Kim's guide, "Making a motion to do something using the volitional form (polite)" here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/desire )
In this lesson, we will see how to form the "Let's ~" in the plain tense.
For る verbs, take off the final る and add よう.
- 食べよう Let's eat
- 寝よう Let's sleep
For う verbs, change the verb to Base 5 and add う
- 買う 買おう Let's buy
- 読む 読もう Let's read
- 乗る 乗ろう Let's ride
- 死ぬ 死のう Let's die (Hopefully, something you don't come across..)
する and 来る are irregular; their forms are しよう and こよう.
- 借りておこう! Let's plan on returning (it)!
- 剣で草を切ろう Let's cut the grass with the sword.
- オイラとれんしゅうしよう Let's practice together.
The last conditional: ～たら[edit]
We have looked at three different conditional statement: と, ～ば and なら. We will look at the last one today.
First to form this tense, you add ら after the past tense of a verb. This applies to all verbs:
食べたら したら きたら 行ったら
～たら in an AたらB statement means "B will be fulfilled under the condition A is fulfilled"
If A is certain to happen, you can translate たら as "when". If A has a probable chance of occuring, you can translate it as "if"
As the way to form ～たら implies, this is used as an "after" statement, or in a different way, after the previous events occur, the next event will occur.
- あなたは東京に行ったら私も行きます。 If/When you go to Tokyo, I will go to (After you go, I'll go)
- お金が貰ったらコンサートに行きます。 If I get money, I will go to the concert. (after I get money, I will go to the concert)
From the dialogue, we can see that it is certain that you will exit the area, so we can translate this as "when"
- 表に出たら「れんしゅう」だ！ When you go out, practice!
We will look at all four conditionals in the next section, and see what we can and cannot do with each one.
Without doing something with ～ず[edit]
You can express doing something, while not doing something else, by putting the verb into the plain negative and replacing ない with ず.
- 食べず Without eating
- 読まず Without reading
- 晩御飯を食べず、大学に行きました。 Without eating breakfast, I went to college.
- カンバンは切らず読んでください。 Please read the sings without cutting them.
It is common to see に after this conjugation.
Doing two actions at once with ～ながら[edit]
To say "I did this and did this at the same time", put ながら after the base stem of a verb.
- 食べながら While eating
- 読みながら While reading.
- 音楽を聞きながら本を読みました。 I read a book while listening to music.
- Ｚ押しながらＢでタテ斬り You can cut vertically with B while pressing Z.
