# する時 vs. 〜たら



## ty604

I've been using suru toki to express "when I'm VERBing" and moshi VERB+tara to express "if" sentences since I arrived in Japan last year. 

Yesterday a new friend throws a wrench into the mix. She starts using VERB+tara/nara to express "when she verbs" type sentences. 

Now I know some uses of nara and tara of course but not in this context. She said close friends use tara/nara instead of suru toki or at least that's what she chooses to use.

Can someone explain this to me. 

The example sentence I wanted to say was 帰った時音楽を聞く。 She changed it to 帰ったら音楽を聞き。 

I wanted to say 'I [always] listen to music when I get home' (without using いつも). First off is my sentence correct? Second, is he use of tara correct? Maybe she misunderstood me because my sentence was incorrect to begin with?

Thanks


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## Aoyama

帰ったら音楽を聞き is correct, here ~tara does not imply a condition (like : if I go back home ...) but rather (as intended) *when/ as soon as* .
帰った (or _kaeru_) 時音楽を聞く is understandable but sounds like a literal translation ...


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## Flaminius

Hello,

The correct form is 帰ったら音楽を聞く if you mean that you always listen to music when you get home.

帰った時音楽を聞く is a bit hard to understand as a correct Japanese utterance but it should mean "I (as a regular course of things) hear music at the moment I get home."  I assume that you hear the music for such a short time that it can be hardly your volitional act; hence my preference of "hear" in the second sentence.

I take the liberty of creating a more comfortable example using the _-ta toki _construction:
帰ったとき流れ星を見た。
When I got home, I saw a shooting star.
As a reference, 帰る時音楽を聞く means either;
a. your custom is to listen to music while you are going home until you get there. OR
b. your custom is to listen to music when you are setting out for home.  A logical context is that you listen to the music they play in the dressing room as you change your uniform before getting out of the place where you do whatever you do in a uniform. 

If you want to be more specific and say that you listen to music while driving home:
帰る間音楽を聞く。
I cannot find any grammatical sentence that has _*-ta* aida_ construction:
*帰った間音楽を聞く。

All these illustrations are meant to say that とき has much stricter constraints than the English _when_.  It typically indicates that the actions in the main clause happen in a very narrow strip of time —maybe a moment is preferable.


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## Flaminius

myself said:
			
		

> The correct form is 帰ったら音楽を聞く if you mean that you always listen to music when you get home.


I am perhaps turning the table upside down but this may not be the most evident interpretation for 帰ったら音楽を聞く.  Anyone has better ideas?


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## ty604

Well why don't we talk about the function of tara vs. toki without the fluff then.

Is it safe to say that toki is more of an instant of time and tara is used for expressions that are closer to "while/during"?  Not like  nagara but closely related I'm thinking.

I think it's no accident why tara and nagara are similar. They both are used for durations of time rather than moments of time.

Is that tara the same tara that is used with moshi [if] constructions? How can it be used in such different constructions?


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## Flaminius

> Is it safe to say that toki is more of an instant of time   and tara is used for expressions that are closer to "while/during" ?



What do you mean by moshi [if] constructions?  _Moshi_ is an optional adverbial element that foretells that the subordinate clause is going to be ended by a conditional clause-marker.

A good discussion of _-tara_ can be found here.


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## ty604

ok I'll take a look. What I meant was もし公園に行ったら電話してね。

That 'if construction'. Conditional. Is that tara the same tara or totally unrelated? Because I think that's where I've been getting my dose of confusion.  When I hear my friends using tara for 'if' constructions and 'when constructions' it throws me off sometimes. The moshi....VERB+tara ending is easy for me but when I hear the other one, if I'm not on my toes, I think they are saying an 'if' sentence.

Thanks


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## kaito

It's the same, it just translates differently into English sometimes.


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## ms291052

Note that if we take 公園に行ったら電話してね (without the もし) it could be translated into English as either
1) When you go to the park, call me.
or
2) If you go to the park, call me.

Even in English those two sentences are _nearly_ the same, and it's not unreasonable for another language to express them using the same grammar pattern. However, if we add もし then the hypotheticalness is explicit, so it becomes something more along the lines of "If, by chance, you go to the park, call me."


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## Flaminius

たら just describe two events in a sequence.  _A tara B_ is that first A happens and then B happens.  It does not matter very much if A has already happened, often happens, will happen or is unlikely to happen.

It must be noted that the relation between the two events are not very tight.  A is sometimes the cause of B but not always.  In a general framework apart from the given context for the sentence, B can happen without A.  For instance 帰ったら音楽を聞く _per se_ does not preclude the speaker may listen to the music in the office or on the way home.  The tie is not so strong as to guarantee that getting home always results in listening to music.  In fact, taken out of all contexts, 帰ったら音楽を聞く is to be understood NOT that he listens to music everyday but that he will listen today when he gets home.

The weak tie between the events can express unexpected results (Cf. link _supra_ #6):
家に帰ったら、誰もいなかった。 
The sentence takes up two events from the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash  and present the second one as a low-probability outcome of the first.


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## ty604

Flaminius said:


> The tie is not so strong as to guarantee that getting home always results in listening to music.  In fact, taken out of all contexts, 帰ったら音楽を聞く is to be understood NOT that he listens to music everyday but that he will listen today when he gets home.


Most definitely. In that case you'd need itsumo or mainichi.

Are there cases when you don't need to use moshi at the beginning of an "if" construction if the "if" nuance is understood?


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## ms291052

ty604 said:


> Are there cases when you don't need to use moshi at the beginning of an "if" construction if the "if" nuance is understood?



Absolutely. If the interpretation is clear from context you don't need もし at all.


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