nihongo wo benkyou shitai

日本語：	[verb (plain)] でしょう
日本語：	[adjective] でしょう
日本語：	[noun] でしょう
English:	Probably..., Isn't that so?, Isn't that right?

It's always embarrassing to have to admit my lack of understanding of rudimentary Japanese, but here's another basic point that I've only really just comes to terms with. Today, we'll look at でしょう and it's casual equivalent だろう.

To be fair, I've known since my first year of study that でしょう is a sentence-ending conjugation that adds an element of uncertainty to the statement that comes before. I covered the concept of conjecture last year when looking at かもしれません, and from that we discovered there are different degrees of uncertainty. でしょう is used when the the likelihood of the statement coming to pass is high. It can be seen as being the equivalent of the phrase most likely.

What I didn't really understand is that it can also be used as a tag question. In sentences where we want to seek confirmation from someone as to the statement we've just made, we can add でしょう to the end and instantly we have the Japanese equivalent of isn't that right? or right?. Not a big thing, but one that makes for a much more natural sentence.

The conjugation is pretty straightforward: it follows the plain form of verbs (so bases 1, 3 and 7), adjectives and nouns. To use as a tag question, both でしょう and だろう are spoken with a rising edge.

English:	After last night, Matt will surely have a hangover.
Jenglish:	[last night][after],[Matt][hangover][have + surely]
日本語：	昨夜の後でマットくんは二日酔いがあるだろう。

English:	Because it's new, you probably can't download it.
Jenglish:	[it][new][because][download][can + negative + probably]
日本語：	これは新しいからダウンロード出来ないでしょう。

English:	If I go to confront him, you'll come too, right?
Jenglish:	[him][confront + go + if],[you][also][come + right?]
日本語：	彼に直面しに行ったら、あなたも行くだろう。

今はインターネットで、例を探そう！

一番目の例：

この例はこのサイトで見つかった。

日本語：	皆さんもよく経験があることだろう。
Jenglish:	[everyone] [too] [often] [experience] [have] [thing] [probably]

じゃぁ、この例は簡単なようだね・・・On the face of it, this sentence may seem a little unusual, but it is taken from an ongoing conversation on the site. Other than some mild confusion about the use of こと (which I believe is preceded by my favourite grammar - the subordinate clause), nothing really seems too challenging. So my translation is: A thing that probably everyone often experiences.

二番目の例：

二番目の例はこのサイトで見つかった。面白そうだ。

日本語：	終電に逃げられた人は、毎夜一杯いるだろう。
Jenglish:	[last train] [on] [escape] [people] [TM] [every evening] [a lot] [are] [probably].

Again, other than a new verb (逃げる) nothing really challenged me too much. Yet another subordinate clause (honestly, I don't go looking for them). My translation is: There are probably a lot of people who, every evening, escape [home] on the last train.

じゃぁ。。。またね！