Can 【～たら】 be a short form of 【～てから】?

Question

I picked up a bad habit of using ～たら (a form of conditional) when I mean ～てから (once something happens, something else will happen) from a friend many years back while learning Japanese.

In the years since, I learned the difference and felt bad when I still used たら out of habit. But, I was just thinking, since there are spoken short forms of various ～て forms (～ておく　→　～とく、～ている → ～てる) and I can't help but wonder if this is another case like that.

In short, is ～たら　one of the spoken contractions of ～てから?

Answer 1

I'm not the first to say "No", but I want to actually show where ～たら comes from, if it's not an abbreviated form of ～てから. Consider it a proof of sorts. :)

The Classical Japanese of early Heian period had a form called ～たり form, which was used for several jobs that today are fulfilled by the ～た, ～て and (the modern) ～たり forms. This form was attached to the renyōkei (連用形), which is the verb stem that ends in I for Godan verbs (this is the stem to which you attach the ～ます or ～たい endings).

The ~たり form was later shortened to ~た in speech and became the past form we all known and love today, but before that, it was actually used to build a few other forms. Now, the ～たり form was actually creating a new verb (just like adding the potential, passive or causative endings to a verb today create a new verb), so it had it's own stem to which other endings could be attached. One of them was the old hypothetical ending ～ば (actually, the famous particle は which became ば after the verb). ば was attached to the mizenkei (未然形), which is the verb stem that ends in A for Godan verbs (this is the stem to which you attach the ～ない ending used for negation). Since, the mizenkei of ～たり was naturally ～たら, the whole thing together was ～たらば, which at sometime became a very common complex form for conditionals. e.g. (I invented this up myself, so it's probably not quite authentic):

書きたらば、死ぬ。 If you write, you die.

In modern Japanese, the classical ～ば form became the modern conditional ～ば which is now attached to the E stem (已然形 izenkei), and is much better known as the -eba conditional ending. But what happened to the complex ～たらば～ form? It was shortened to ~たら, but also started using the different base that ～て and ～た forms (the later also a shortened form of ～たり) were using. In Ichidan verbs (such as 見る or 食べる) this is still the same as good old renyōkei, but in godan verb, a few changes occured:

• wakari + tara -> wakar + tara -> wakat + tara -> wakattara
• kaki + tara -> kai + tara -> kaitara
• oyogi + tara -> oyoi + (voice) + tara -> oyoi + dara -> oyoidara
• mati + tara -> mat + tara -> mattara

There are more, but that's the gist of it.

Answer 2

Short answer: No.

～ておく and ～ている can become ～とく and ～てる because they have consecutive vowels, which are easily slurred/elided, but to get ～てから to become ～たら, you'd have to drop a consonant, which I don't believe ever happens in Japanese (but I would welcome a correction here). In addition, the ～たら and ～てから forms have different functions grammatically, so you can't simply interchange them without considering the context and the rest of the sentence.

Answer 3

I would say No.

たら has sense of "if ... then ...."

てから "... then ..."

Following with たら　is ok

雨が降ったら出かけないことにする。If it rains, I won't go outside.

but following with てから　is kinda strange.

雨が降ってから出かけないことにする　After it rains, I won't go outside.