While you can use が after question words, in this case を is the correct particle to use. That said, thinking about it, 方がいい wouldn’t be the best way to ask your question since I believe it is used as a statement, not for questions (though I could be wrong about that). IMO, a better way to ask “What should I do?” Would be:
どうしよう?
どうすればいい?
Something like that.
Yes! You can also add の before か to soften the question. There’s an extra nuance when adding の, as in you’re asking for an explanation, but that’s another option. When in doubt, just put a “?” mark at the end of the sentence, or raise your pitch at the end when speaking (like you would normally do when asking questions).
Tomorrow is my day off! Of course, I’ll continue playing Resident Evil, but besides that, I also plan to work on some songs. Speaking of which, I need to finish my video game band’s album this year. There’s still a lot to do though.
Man, it’s been a good few years since I last replied to one of these, but to thank you for your support on the other threads, I’ll see if I can make it a little more natural for you. I’m not promising it’ll be native level, but I’ll give it a shot.
You’re talking about one specific occasion, so I would personally just use the たら form here. Furthermore, your English translation says ‘told’, so 話 doesn’t really work here. I would go with 伝える.
I feel like this would be more natural without 彼は. You’re not incorrect to use it, but as I’m sure you’ve heard, Japanese is a very high-context language and a lot of information is assumed by the listener.
This is fine, but your translation says ‘honestly’. So in this case, I would either change your English translation to ‘extremely’ or ‘really’, or change your Japanese to 正直に, to fit your translation better.
I try to write out sentences every once and a while to make use of the grammar points I’m learning in BunPro (that one was based on the だす Grammar Point), so having someone go over them and tweak them to be more natural sounding helps strengthen my knowledge.
I typically write them out more dictionary style, hence the addition of 「彼は」when it may be redundant, but I’ll keep working at it! Thank you for the corrections!
I might be wrong, but in this case I think using 代わりに would be a better phrase if what you wanted to say was “instead of”. With ずに you’re saying that you did something without doing another thing.
AFAIK, ずに is the equivalent of ないで as in 運転しないで家に帰った = “I went home without driving.”
I just learned ずに, it is indeed a formal ないで. The thing is that I’ve seen a couple of times this “自転車に乗らないで歩いていく” kind of expressions and thought of using it in this sentence.
I don’t fully understand the nuance though, why would you say that you went by walk without riding a bicycle? But it sounds quite nice. I guess your suggestion also works though probably introducing a different nuance.
Could someone enlighten us on this point?
Further to this, I really appreciate this input as a way to better understand the proper use of words, grammars and expressions. So, 遠慮せずにコメントをたくさんしてください!
I guess I see how your interpretation is also valid, but to me it feels like it misses the actual nuance of the Japanese. I would interpret your example as:
自転車に乗らないで歩いていく。
“To go walking without riding a bike.”
At least that’s my understanding of it but, perhaps it does sound odd in English. Wouldn’t mind hearing other people’s thoughts on this. Maybe I’m being too literal again, lol.