Woulda, shoulda, coulda...

[Christa]

How do you guys use these sorts of would have, should have, could have conditional expressions in Chinese?

 

Things like:

 

"I would have done it, if I'd had the money."

"I could have done it, if I'd had the money."

"I should have done it but I didn't."

 

My translations for these would be:

 

如果我有钱的话，我是会做的。

如果我有钱的话，我是能做的。

我是应该做的，但是我没有。

 

But does that seem correct to you?

[QAQo.]

I think you’re correct.

[Beelzebro]

The 是...的 structure isn't really necessary here. Below are my translations:

 

"I would have done it, if I'd had the money." (只要)我有钱的话，我(就/肯定)会做的  

"I could have done it, if I'd had the money." (只要)我有钱的话，我就可以做(到)的  

"I should have done it but I didn't." 我(本来)应该做的，但没做  

 

The bracketed terms are interchangeable or optional, or in the case of the 到 in the second sentence it depends on what the "it" is that you're referring to. 只要 fits well in the first two sentences because they have a feeling of "all that was required for me to be able to have done it/for me to have done it was for me to have a bit more money". The 的s at the end of the sentences are modal particles and indicate the speaker is making some kind of prediction that they strongly feel to be accurate.

 

Edit: I've realised that by rephrasing a little, you could actually use 本来 for all of these. Here's how the first two sentences would look using this word:

 

"I wanted/was going to do it, but I didn't have enough money/it's just I didn't have enough money." 我本来要做的，但钱不够/只是钱不够  

"I could have done it, but I didn't have enough money/it's just I didn't have enough money." 我本来可以做的，但钱不够/只是钱不够

 

Obviously changing the structure like this changes the emphasis of the sentence, but I've included them as I figured they may be helpful. Good article on 本来 here.

[Christa]

On 6/24/2018 at 10:49 PM, Beelzebro said:

The 是...的 structure isn't really necessary here. Below are my translations:

 

"I would have done it, if I'd had the money." (只要)我有钱的话，我(就/肯定)会做的  

"I could have done it, if I'd had the money." (只要)我有钱的话，我就可以做(到)的  

"I should have done it but I didn't." 我(本来)应该做的，但没做  

 

The bracketed terms are interchangeable or optional, or in the case of the 到 in the second sentence it depends on what the "it" is that you're referring to. 只要 fits well in the first two sentences because they have a feeling of "all that was required for me to be able to have done it/for me to have done it was for me to have a bit more money". The 的s at the end of the sentences are modal particles and indicate the speaker is making some kind of prediction that they strongly feel to be accurate.

 

Edit: I've realised that by rephrasing a little, you could actually use 本来 for all of these. Here's how the first two sentences would look using this word:

 

"I wanted/was going to do it, but I didn't have enough money/it's just I didn't have enough money." 我本来要做的，但钱不够/只是钱不够  

"I could have done it, but I didn't have enough money/it's just I didn't have enough money." 我本来可以做的，但钱不够/只是钱不够

 

Obviously changing the structure like this changes the emphasis of the sentence, but I've included them as I figured they may be helpful. Good article on 本来 here.

 

Interesting! Thanks for this!

[stapler]

If I had to say something on the fly i’d probably use a 要不是.

 

"I could have done it, if I'd had the money."

要不是沒有錢，我能去做那件事

 

Not even sure if what I said is grammatically correct. But that’s just my instinctive response