Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is hard to explain in a title, so here is an example of what I mean. In English, we can say things like:
If you haven't noticed, the entry's actually over on the other side.
Noticing where the entry is and it being in that location are not conditionally related, so the 'if' here is more like "I'm telling you this just in case you haven't noticed, but...".
Can any of the Japanese equivalents of 'if' like 〜たら, 〜ば, or なら be used in a similar manner?
I don’t think so. They all sound weird.
x 気づいてなかったら、入り口は実は反対側にあります。
x 気づいてなければ、入り口は実は反対側にあります。
x 気づいてないなら、入り口は実は反対側にあります。
x 気づいてない場合（は）、入り口は実は反対側にあります。
The last one sounds to me the least bad, but still weird.
I would probably say:
気づいてないかもしれませんが、入り口は実は反対側にあります。
