Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Masaegu, would you agree with the notion that saying
私の日本語が下手だったら、ごめんなさい！
is a little weird?
I would say
私の日本語が下手だから、ごめんなさい！
In other words, instead of qualifying it by saying "If my Japanese is strange, then I am sorry," saying "My Japanese is strange, so I am sorry."
My feeling is that "If... then I am sorry" statements aren't genuine. So if it isn't true, you aren't sorry? Either you are sorry or you are not. Is this also true in Japanese?
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Good question. I didn't even notice that one on my first read through, which is probably because it was already in the context of not natively written Japanese. The whole letter sounds "foreign" to me from the very first sentence 「私の名前はリアムです。」. Isn't that straight out of Japanese textbooks used outside of Japan? It isn't something we would ever say.
The sentence 「私の日本語が下手だったら、ごめんなさい。」 actual ly is weird because it can imply that the speaker feels his Japanese is pretty good.
Not that OP should sound like a native speaker, a native speaker would phrase this as:
「下手な日本語で失礼します。」
「下手な日本語でお許しください。」
or if I had to use ごめんなさい
「日本語が下手なので、ごめんなさい。」
I agree with your notion of the combination of だったら and ごめんなさい being less than genuine even though I must admit that some Japanese-speakers would actually use the combo in informal speech if they aren't paying attention to what they are saying.