なら vs たら

I’m aware that なら depends largely on context, so telling for sure from one sentence if it’s なら or たら isn’t all that easy, but i really can’t imagine any context where you’d use なら here instead of たら?

@mrnoone Wasnt sure who to tag, but I couldn’t find a grammar discussion topic for なら
I really like the idea of having a sort of “wiki” of previously asked questions.
Any chance you guys could link the topics on the page of each grammar point to make finding them a bit easier?

Edit: Also seems like I dont know how to tag people :smiley:

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As I understand it, なら (and all -form verbs, because なら originally came from なら) have a nuance of, “if and only if” to them. So, following that logic, this sentence is simultaneously implying, “Please don’t turn on the fan if it isn’t hot.”

I saw this illustrated with these examples:

お金を持ったらいい。。。
お金を持てばいい。。。

The first sentence sounds like, “It’d be good if I had money, but other things (maybe food/clothes) would be nice to have, too.” The second sentence sounds more like, “Money is the only thing I’m missing!! If only I had money…”

That being said, I don’t think “If and only if” necessarily works for all cases of なら… and this is all stuff I’m recalling from quite a while ago. I’m not confident that this perfectly portrays the nuance, but it’s helped me understand things like ~ばよかった as, “Things would’ve been good if only I’d done [verb], but I didn’t…” (In other words, “I wish I’d done [verb].”)

 


EDIT:
We can also compare/contrast どうしたらいい? with どうすればいい?

I remember reading that どうすればいい? is used more for things that have a well-defined answer, like maybe you’re asking about the next step in a set of instructions when you’re assembling furniture. It sounds to me like, “What must I do?” or, “What do I have to do?”

どうしたらいい? is a more open-ended question, more likely used when there is no clear answer, but you want to do something to help the situation. どうしたらいい? sounds closer to, “What can I do to try to make things better?” or, “What do you think I should do?”

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なら can be used when responding to statements the speaker doesn’t entirely take at face value. I think the Wasabi reading does a great job of illustrating the response usage.

Dr. Yuki Johnson dives a bit deeper:

なら is a rather unique conditional form compared to other conditionals since なら is entirely discourse dependent. なら is often used in a sentence that reiterates, summarizes, and/or advances previously conveyed communication as information belonging to the domain of a third person. . . . なら is used when a given piece of information based on previous discourse does not entirely belong to the speaker, and the speaker tries to confirm the information by repeating the sentence, summarizing the previous discourse, or presenting a related entity to advance the communication. . . . The information is not yet common [to everyone in the conversation].

Fundamentals of Japanese Grammar pp. 341-43

Returning to the sample sentence, imagine John walks into Kim’s room on a midsummer day. Their dialogue may go like this:

John: 「この部屋は暑すぎるんだよ。」- This room is way too hot!
Kim: 「暑いなら、扇風機を点けてください。」- If it is hot (a notion that I don’t fully agree with but am willing to entertain), please turn on the fan.

Thus, なら is usually used to distance the speaker from a prior hypothetical.

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