I'm not really sure there is an equivalent for hypothetical questions in
Japanese, but here's hoping there is.

In English, hypothetical questions are generally prefaced by "What would you
do if..." or something along those lines. It seems like 「何しよう...」 would almost
work, but that sounds more like "what _could_ you do if...". To be really
specific, how would one say "What would you do if you were dying?" or (for the
sake of variation) "what would you do if you went to the park?"

I'm assuming 「公園に行ったならば、何しようか？」 is not correct because it sounds very
unnatural.
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2014-07-09T02:38:03.067
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grammar set-phrases
Is there a special way of asking hypothetical questions?
English uses specific verb forms (past subjunctive / would) to express
unlikely/counterfactual conditionals. Japanese doesn't have this feature, so
if you want to stress the unlikeliness, you need to express it in other ways,
for example with adverbials like もし or 仮に

> 仮に公園に行ったならば、何する？ What would you do if you went to the park?  
>  仮に公園に行ったならば、何した？ What would you have done if you had gone to the park?
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2014-07-09T03:32:45.053
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1. 「公園に行ったならば、何しようか？」 is unnatural, and the main reason is that 「～しよう」 means "Let's ～", referring to something someone is actually going to do right now or in the near future. Instead, expressions like 「何をしますか？」 or 「何をして／どうやって過ごしますか？」 will do.

  2. Basically this type of question is asked without any _if_ -clause:

> いつも公園では何をして過ごしますか？  
>  ふだん公園ですることは何ですか？

  3. When you ask the similar question to someone who really is unlikely to go to parks (for some reason), you can use "仮に", "もし", "もしも", etc., combined with "～のであれば", "～としたら", "～なら" or "～ならば". You can omit 仮に or もし, but that will make the question a bit unclear:

> もし公園に行くとしたら、何をして過ごしますか？  
>  仮に公園に行くなら、何をすると思いますか？  
>  もしも1週間後に死ぬのであれば、何をすると思いますか？

  4. Using past tense here is also possible if it's the conditional of the present (≒past subjunctive in English); that will not change the meaning:

> もし公園に行ったとしたら、何をして過ごしますか？  
>  仮に公園に行ったなら、何をすると思いますか？  
>  (* もしも1週間後に死んだのであれば、何をすると思いますか？: weird)

(I've been aware of this fact since I learned English subjunctive many years
ago, but I don't know the underlying Japanese grammar here. I don't think it's
related to honorific/humble expression, but it may be some kind of euphemism?
Any comment is appreciated.)
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2014-07-09T10:01:44.803
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answer