nihongo wo benkyou shitai

日本語：	[verb (volitional)] と思う
English:	I think I will...

Way back in my first year of studying I came across と思う as a means of expressing my thoughts. So I was a little confused when I started looking into today's grammar point, as it seemed to overlap with this simpler と思う form, however there is a difference.

Whilst the previous use of と思う came after verbs in the plain form (as well as adjectives and nouns), today's usage is after the volitional form of verbs. In this context, it takes on a meaning similar to 'I think I will...' which added to my confusion as I now had two ways to express the same idea. For example: to say "I think I'll eat the sushi" could now be translated as either of the following:

寿司を食べると思う。
寿司と食べようと思う。

Luckily, this ambiguity is a(nother) case of my lack of understanding: the simpler と思う conjugation is used to express one's thoughts and views, but to express one's intentions we have to use the volitional form if the verb followed by と思う. As such, the first example sentence above is not grammatically correct.

Things do get a little cloudy, however, as there seem to be two common uses of the volitional form; と思う and と思っている. Usually this would be a simple (if time consuming) job for Google, but I have been getting conflicting answers on the differences. One source (my 元気 textbook) suggests that if the intention to do something has just been reached, then use と思う, otherwise use と思っている however, a source on the web suggests the opposite. However, given that ーている expresses a state, I am inclined to think that と思っている expresses an intention already reached と思う expresses an intention that has just been made.

例文を見ましょう！

English:	I think I'll order the pizza at the restaurant tonight.
Jenglish:	[tonight][restaurant][at][pizza][order + I think I will]
日本語：	今晩レストランでピザを注文しようと思ってる。

English:	Actually, I think I will buy two batteries after all.
Jenglish:	[battery][2][buy + I think I will]
日本語：	電池を２本買おうと思う。

次は、インターネットでし調べよう！

例文１

最初の例文はこのサイトを見つかった。

日本語：	携帯を買い替えようとおもってます。
Jenglish:	[mobile phone] [replace + I think I will]

OK. An easy example to start off and the opening question on a web site asking about what people could recommend and why. As there seem little of real difficulty here, I'll go straight for the translation: I'm thinking of replacing my mobile.


例文２
このサイトから、この例文はもっと難しいと思う。

日本語：	株の勉強をしようとおもっているのですが、初心者でもよくわかるサイトありませんか？
Jenglish:	[shares] [study + I think I will] [NO] [is] [but], [beginner] [DEMO] [often] [to understand] [site] [there is] [KA]?

Well, where to start? I've left a couple of particles in as they require special discussion. The first part seems relatively straightforward. Then we have the particle NO, used here to normalise the preceding statement into a noun. After that we have です which most will recognise as the verb to be. Here though, there is no English equivalent and so it will get dropped from the translation. Next we have the conjunction but, thereby creating a natural break in the sentence. So , at the halfway point we have I'm thinking of studying shares but... which, although not natural sounding , is understandable.

The next part of the sentence slightly more complex. We have a verb in there (わかる) followed by a noun, so it's my favourite subordinate clause again. Since everything before the noun is describing it, I shall ignore that for a moment and look at the remainder of the sentence, which is straightforward. This should give us: Is there a site that....

The final part looks at the subordinate clause. The first difficulty I had here was the translation of でも. I covered this a while ago here and here and as both can follow a noun, it's difficult to choose. I have decided to translate でも in this case as or something... on the grounds that it seems a slightly better option. The last part (よくわかる) seems a little odd to me. The literal translation is often understand which really feels awkward in this context. I have therefore decided to change the translation to a more natural-sounding easily understand because if something can be understood frequently, it must be easy to understand. Right?

Anyway, my final translation is: I'm thinking of following stocks and shares but is there a site that is easily understandable for beginners and such?

またね・・・