ばよかった / てよかった Japanese Grammar Lesson
Grammar Type: Phrase
Essential Meaning: I wish X had done Y
Construction:
- Group 1 Verbs:
- Verb conditional form + ばよかった
- E.g. 話せばよかった [I wish X had spoken]
- Verb conditional form + ばよかった
- Group 2 Verbs:
- Verb stem + ればよかった
- E.g. 食べればよかった [I wish X had eaten]
- Verb stem + ればよかった
- Irregular Verbs:
- 来る = 来ればよかった [I wish X had come]
- する = すればよかった [I wish X had done it]
Notes:
- ばよかった is an idiomatic usage of the conditional conjunction ば in which some condition did not come to fruition in the past, but the speaker wishes that it had. In other words, ばよかった expresses counterfactual, wishful thinking and can be translated as “I wish X had done Y“. ばよかった conjugates just like ば, but it is only used with verbs and is not used with nouns or adjectives.
- When a sentence with ばよかった does not specify a subject, the speaker is assumed to be the subject.
- E.g. あの本を読めばよかった。[I wish I had read that book.] In this case no subject is specified, so the speaker is assumed to be the subject.
- When a third person (i.e. someone other than the speaker) wishes someone had done something, the phrase と思っている is appended to ばよかった.
- E.g. ビルは日本へ行けばよかったと思っている。[Bill thinks that it would have been good if he had gone to Japan.] Here a third person named Bill is the subject, so と思っている is appended.
- てよかった (i.e. て-Form + よかった) is a similar grammatical structure to ばよかった. The difference is that てよかった expresses a factual past state or action, while ばよかった expresses a counterfactual past state or action.
- E.g. あの本を読んでよかった。[I’m glad that I read that book.]
- E.g. あの本を読めばよかった。[I wish I had read that book.]
Example Sentences:
先生に聞けばよかった。[It would have been good if I had asked the teacher.]
マークは日本へ行けばよかったね。[It would have been good if Mark had gone to Japan, don’t you think?]
もっと英語を勉強しておけばよかったなあ。[It would have been good if I had studied more English in advance.]
WILD Examples:
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